HC Deb 25 February 1999 vol 326 cc434-5W
Mr. Field

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what is the expected completion date of the installation of the Benefits Agency/POCL project; [73018]

(2) what assessment he has made of how Benefits Agency staff judge the new Benefits Agency/POCL system; [73030]

(3) if he will list the savings which have resulted directly from the Benefits Agency/POCL project; and if he will indicate how these savings are measured; [73032]

(4) how many transactions using the new Benefits Agency/POCL system have been (a) single benefit claims, (b) two benefit claims, (c) three benefit claims and (d) four or more benefit claims; [73017]

(5) what is the average amount paid to date to the ICL-led consortium for each transaction using the new Benefits Agency/POCL system. [73033]

Angela Eagle

The working plans assume that all post offices will be automated by the end of 2000.

An approach has been developed to assess the impact of the payment card and the supporting customer accounting and payment systems on the operation of DSS benefits and Benefits Agency offices. This will capture data on staff awareness, perception and satisfaction, which will begin to become available from the middle of this year.

The trial of the payment card is estimated to have resulted in savings in benefit fraud of £68,000 during the period September 1996 to December 1998. The parallel introduction of the order book control service has separately resulted in savings in fraud of £1.4 million during the period May 1997 to December 1998.

Savings are measured using system-produced data on volumes of payment card transactions and volumes of order books recovered as a result of barcoding.

To date 750,000 payments of child benefit have been made via the payment card as part of a limited trial. No other benefits are presently involved in the trial.

Commercial information such as the value of transaction charges is confidential.