HC Deb 12 July 1985 vol 82 cc1449-54

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

2.30 pm
Mr. Chris Smith (Islington, South and Finsbury)

I wish to raise the subject of the conditions for public and staff in local Department of Health and Social Security offices serving the London borough of Islington.

The House has spent much time today discussing the difficult and inadequate conditions that hon. Members have to endure in doing their job. The subject of this debate is even graver, because it concerns the conditions that members of the public and hard working members of staff in the DHSS have to endure in carrying out their tasks.

I shall concentrate on conditions in the Tavistock square office of the DHSS, which are particularly bad. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) will speak about conditions at Archway tower where a claimant armed with an air rifle recently attempted to attack another claimant. The rifle was later found in the toilets and the circumstances that enabled that incident to occur have caused considerable alarm to members of staff, especially in the light of what happened at the Westminster office of the DHSS recently.

About a month ago I received a letter from a constituent who was nearly 40 weeks pregnant and was claiming supplementary benefit and a maternity grant. She wrote: I went to the DHSS again on 31st May 1985 a Friday. I waited to be seen all day. I was there at 9.30 am waiting for the door to be open and stayed there until 3.45 pm. At 1 pm I was told I might as well go out for 1 hour get something to eat and find a toilet. I did this and returned at 2 pm. At 3.45 pm I was told that they had not been able to find my file and that I should return on Monday. On Monday 3rd June 1985 I went to DHSS at 11 am, after a hospital appointment. At about 2.30 pm I was told that they had found my file and that someone would see me which happened about 3 pm. I was told I would receive a giro the next day. By this time because I had not been paid for the period before 24th May 1985 I had no money not even the bus fare and I had only been able to afford a cup of tea all day. I asked for payment that day and about my maternity grant. I was told that I could wait and get my giro and that the grant would be sorted out. I got the giro at 5.20 pm and just managed to cash it. That was a disgraceful way to treat a woman who was nearly 40 weeks pregnant. The tragedy that she endured is repeated many times over for many of my constituents at the hands of local DHSS offices. I hasten to say that it is not the fault of the staff in those offices; it is the fault of the conditions that they and the public have to tolerate and the facilities that are available.

At the Tavistock square office there is seating on hard wooden benches for 50 people in the public waiting area, which is a small and dingy room. On most days there are far more than 50 people waiting. Many have to stand and some have to wait outside. The conditions in the waiting room are appalling. I sat there for half a morning to observe what happened and the conditions that people had to endure. I was lucky—I could go away. I am paid at the end of the month. The conditions endured by people who depend upon DHSS assistance are appalling.

The gross overcrowding is made worse by the fact that there is no privacy in many of the interviewing cubicles. The acoustic qualities of the screens are so poor that people have to shout to be heard by the officers. The private details of their medical, social and family circumstances are broadcast to the world.

Even worse is the fact that people waiting in that office have no toilet facilities. If she is lucky, a woman is allowed to use the staff facilities behind the counter. A man is told to use the car park at the back. In 1985 such conditions should not be imposed on citizens seeking their rights from a Department.

Staff conditions are not much better. In 1982, 66 staff were working in the Tavistock office; there are now 92. In 1982, the 66 staff had just about enough room to operate satisfactorily. In 1985, with 92 staff, the staff space is grossly overcrowded. In addition to those staff who form part of the complement of officers at the DHSS office, there are regional reserves and detached duty staff. Because of the enormously heavy work load of the office, many of those people work there regularly. The already overcrowded conditions are thereby made worse.

There is no proper ventilation system for staff. Some years ago, double glazing was installed to cut out the enormous traffic noise from the busy corner on which the office stood. The ventilation system, which was first requested by the trade unions seven years ago, was supposed to be installed in June this year. There is still no sign of it. The recent hot weather makes life even worse for the staff trying to operate in such overcrowded and hot conditions.

Next year, computers are supposed to arrive. New technology is to be installed. This will take up a lot of space and, at the moment, there is no space in which to put that equipment. The result is an incredibly low level of morale among staff, frayed tempers and a reduced ability to deal with the public's problems. There is a high turnover of staff, especially of clerical officers who do much of the most important work in the office. In the past six months nearly 20 clerical officers have left the office.

It is clear that the conditions that the public and staff have to tolerate are a disgrace. Several years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) raised this matter with the Department. Nothing has been done. Better facilities are desperately needed for that office, and I suspect the same is true of other offices throughout the country. There have been some halfhearted attempts to improve matters. It is proposed—this has not yet been implemented — that board and lodging payment matters should be hived off to a separate office dealing only with them. The management at Tavistock square has asked the authorities to grab some scattered rooms from other organisations elsewhere in the building. Those are not sufficient answers to the major problem caused by the lack of facilities and space available to people who have to work in or claim from that office.

The Department should be able to give some help to the many hundreds of people who have to put up with the conditions. The Government must provide resources to make the facilities better and tolerably decent.

An attempt has been made to tart up the waiting area at Tavistock square. A splash or two of paint has been put on the walls and some new tiling placed there. Appropriately, they depict scenes from Dickens. Nothing could sum up better the Government's attitude in refusing to allow anything other than Dickensian conditions for the public and the staff at that office.

I plead with the Government to show some concern about the facilities, the conditions, the space, the dirt, filth and degradation that people have to put up with at Tavistock square. I plead with the Government to provide better facilities and to make that office a decent place so that people may go there, not as supplicants, not as Dickensian waifs, but as people who deserve to claim their rights in decent and tolerable conditions. I hope that the Government will show that concern and make a commitment this afternoon.

2.43 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)

I thank my good Friend the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) for allowing me to take part in the debate. He represents the southern part of the borough and I represent the north. I am in regular contact with claimants' organisations, welfare rights organisations and the trade union involved in the administration of a large social security office at Archway tower, where most of my constituents go, although some go to the office in Hackney. Archway tower is a huge building. The best that one can say about it is that the view from the staff canteen on the top floor is probably the best in London. What one can say about the rest of the building is not so complimentary.

About 34,000 claimants use Archway tower from the Finsbury park and Highgate offices. Only 400 staff handle that work. The building is leased and not owned by the DHSS. It is a tall, 15-floor building with serious structural problems. One is that it contains a large amount of asbestos. This has been removed from the public and waiting areas, and a system of identification of asbestos panels throughout the building has been agreed with the trade unions. I hope that all the asbestos will be removed. Can the Minister say when it will be removed, and whether he and the DHSS are satisfied with the presence of such a large amount of asbestos in a sealed building?

The windows are also causing a problem. The DHSS and the owners of the freehold are in dispute, and the windows have not been cleaned for some time. However, a window cleaning cradle has been erected and I hope that the cleaning will begin. In the meantime, staff are in difficulties because they cannot see out of the windows by their desks.

Staffing levels in the building need serious examination. A large amount of overtime is worked, and a large number of casual workers are employed, which has led to disquiet among the staff. This is an area of high unemployment—about 25 per cent. of workers in my constituency are unemployed — and to allow staff shortages is inexcusable. Such a large amount of overtime and taking on casual staff with no future are equally inexcusable. The DHSS must review the staffing position to take account of the increasing demands on that building. The trade unions have made numerous representations about this matter, as there is a great deal of staff disquiet.

There are other problems, such as the appalling problems of queueing and waiting within the building. There have been demonstrations by claimants, by unions and by other people because of the frustration over the queueing. A constituent phoned me at the House only 10 minutes ago to say that when she went to claim her housing benefit this morning 40 people had been waiting for an hour or more because there were only two staff on duty in that section. She was not critical of the staff — she complimented them—but she wanted to point out the problem.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury said, there is also the problem of reception areas in DHSS offices. The problems that he described in his constituency apply to the office in Archway tower. We are looking for an understanding of the fact that people who use Archway tower regularly do not like queueing outside, or even inside, and the atmosphere of hostility that is being engendered between claimants and staff in the DHSS. This atmosphere is created by the Government's underfunding of the DHSS and by the fact that they do not recognise the serious problems consistently faced in inner-city areas, with the growth of unemployment and a great many claimants.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury has pointed out, the atmosphere of trust that needs to be developed between claimants and staff of the DHSS cannot be developed while there are inadequate facilities and overworked, underpaid and often ill-trained staff trying to deal with people who are justifiably angry and frustrated at the inadequacy of the benefits which many of them receive and the poverty in which they are forced to live.

I hope that the Minister will seriously consider our points about the offices in Islington. Perhaps he will visit them himself and join the queues to see what the offices are like. He may then agree to provide extra staff and more and better facilities, such as toilets, telephones and so on, which will make life a little more tolerable for some of the worst off in our society.

2.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Ray Whitney)

I am glad to be able to respond to this debate. I seem to make a habit of responding to the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), whether on another of our interests, foreign affairs, or now, on social security. Not infrequently, he is accompanied by his colleague the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn).

Mr. Corbyn

We go together.

Mr. Whitney

Yes, the two hon. Members go together. I am tempted to make other comparisons, but I shall not.

Both hon. Members have raised important points about staff conditions and conditions for claimants. I am happy to respond to the points that they have made, not least because, since I had the privilege of joining the Department of Health and Social Security, I have started a campaign of working my way around the 500-odd local DHSS offices.

I have been impressed by the quality of the staff, the dedication they show and the understanding they have of the extremely complex system that has grown up over the past 40 years in the administration of our social security system. I am optimistic that the reforms proposed in the review published by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services on 3 June will lead to improvements in the conditions for staff and will make the system more simple over the next two or three years. That will be good for the staff and good for the claimants.

The impact that we have achieved over the past two or three years in improving our services to the public has been marked. This has been a priority sector for the work of the DHSS in recent years. The results can be seen. I do not deny that there are problems at the offices to which the hon. Gentlemen referred. I ask them to accept that there is a strong thrust in the DHSS's policies towards achieving improvements in conditions for the staff and claimants and for the delivery of our enormous social security programme which will amount to £42 billion a year, after the November uprating.

It is ludicrous for the hon. Member for Islington, North to denigrate the social security programme. That was completely unjustified. He fails to recognise what the Government have achieved by providing increases in the social security programme above the rate of inflation and in addition to the impact caused by the unemployment figures. It does no service to the case that the hon. Gentlemen are putting to the House to ignore those facts.

I have not yet been to the local offices to which the hon. Gentlemen referred. I have a long-standing engagement to visit the Bloomsbury office. I hope that the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury does not think that it was fixed to coincide with this Adjournment debate, because that is not the case. I have been to the Hoxton office, which I hope will be familiar to the hon. Gentlemen. I was very impressed by what I found there. They will be better aware than I am that it is an area with social problems. The service which the Hoxton office delivers is an example of what can be done by local DHSS offices. I have a number of friends who have spoken highly of the service that they receive from that local office.

Difficulties have been experienced at the two local offices that we have been discussing. Today, we have focused more on the Tavistock square, Bloomsbury office. I do not quarrel with many of the points made by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury about overcrowding and the lack of facilities. We are conscious of them, and we are doing what we can to improve them. He should understand how the pressures on the services have exploded during the past two years. The supplementary benefit case load has virtually doubled over three years. No public service can normally be expected to respond to that pressure, because, as I am sure he accepts in his more charitable moments, buying and selling property in central London creates serious problems. The high volatility of the case load is one thing, but the use of social security resources, be they for benefits or real estate, must be planned over a longer period.

We accept that changes are necessary and some have been achieved. The hon. Gentleman dismissed uncharitably — somewhat uncharacteristically—what has been achieved. We have spent about £40,000 recently improving the area used by claimants. The area occupied by the interviewing booths has been increased by 213 sq ft. I have details of the achievements which that expenditure has produced already.

The fundamental difficulty has been created by the increased case load. In 1982, for example, there were fewer than 5,000 claimants and this year there are more than 9,000. Despite the improvements that we have made in accommodation for members of the public, the premises are not large enough to deal with the present caller load. We hope that during the next 12 months it will be possible for us to acquire more space in the building, provide a better service for the public and better conditions for the staff.

The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury referred to the treatment of a pregnant lady. I understand that the local office manager is making inquiries into the hon. Gentleman's allegations. He will report to me and either he or I will let the hon. Gentleman know about the detail which has been found. It is true that there are currently no toilet facilities at the office but it is normal office practice for pregnant women, the elderly and the infirm to use the staff facilities that are available. The hon. Gentleman suggested that the way in which a certain pregnant lady was treated is typical of the way in which the public are treated at the office. That I firmly reject.

The staff work hard within the facilities that are available to ensure that people such as the pregnant lady to which the hon. Gentleman referred are given special and favoured treatment to the extent that that is possible. It is of benefit to no one to exaggerate as the hon. Gentleman did. I understand that, when he visited the office in February, he was not dissatisfied with the efforts that were being made and the situation which he found. We both agree that under the present new case load the premises are insufficient.

Mr. Chris Smith

The Minister referred to one of my visits to the office, during which I met a number of members of the management staff. I was not dissatisfied with their desire to improve matters. They concurred with me when I identified one of the problems as the hierarchy of the DHSS beyond them not providing sufficient resources and not being determined to improve matters.

Mr. Whitney

The hon. Gentleman must take account of the fact that the overall budget of the social security programme has increased in real terms as I have described. Since 1979, it has increased in real terms by 30 per cent. and that cannot be gainsaid. The improvements that we have achieved at the Bloomsbury office within a tight structural framework are important. We hope and intend that in the months to come there will be still further improvements.

The staff are operating under great pressure. Many in Government service are, and that is undeniable. We have increased the staffing complement and the staff in post is at a level that is significantly above the agreed complement. That is not to say that I do not recognise that the staff are working under great pressure.

We have good service from our staff and we are making great efforts to continue to improve conditions for claimants. I refer the hon. Members for Islington, North and for Islington, South and Finsbury to the remarkable improvements that have been made since the Labour Government left office in 1979. The fundamental conclusion that we must all draw is that there is an absolute need to simplify, streamline and bring up to date our social security system. That is precisely the thrust of the reforms proposed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. That is what will be achieved by the continued and improved computerisation programme. We hope that the new mainframe local office computers will be in operation in the next three or four years. That will do great things for the staff and claimants in the social security system.

The Question having been proposed after half-past Two o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Three o'clock.