§ Mr. Spriggsasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish in the Official Report details of the fees and expenses paid to chairmen of the appeal tribunals for which he is responsible in the current financial year; and how these sums compare with the fees and expenses paid five years ago.
§ Mr. Patrick Jenkin[pursuant to his reply, 17 December 1979, c. 89]: The earliest and latest financial years for which information is readily available are 1975–76 and 1978–79; and it is not practicable in all cases to split expenditure between fees and expenses, nor to isolate expenditure relating to chairmen only. The information which is available is as follows:
unemployment review officers have been employed since 3 May; how many claimants were sent for interview by these additional officers; how many claimants turned up for interview; how many claimants ceased to draw benefit before or shortly after the interview; how many of these claimants were found jobs; and if he will make a statement on the cost of these additional officers, including a detailed breakdown of the amount and method by which he calculates the savings to public funds.
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§ Mrs. Chalker[pursuant to her reply, 17 December 1979, c. 86]: Not all unemployment review officers are engaged full-time on this work so that I cannot be specific about the number of officers involved, but at the end of October the number was roughly the equivalent of 600 full-time posts. This represents an increase of approximately 300 over the position a year ago, and extra staff have moved into this work at various times since then, mostly over the past two or three months.
Separate statistics are not kept on the work of the additional staff but the situation is being closely monitored and in due course we shall be able to compare the results of the work done by the increased complement of review officers with what was done previously. It is too early to make such a comparison at this stage.
The estimated direct cost of employing each officer is about £5,500 per year. The calculation of the savings to public funds from unemployment review work is broadly as follows:
- 1. Records are kept of the number of claimants who cease drawing benefit after being called for interview, either before or shortly after the interview takes place. The figure is reduced by 25 per cent. to allow for those who might have started work anyway without any special action.
- 2. The adjusted total is then multiplied by the average amount of benefit in payment.
- 3. The current working assumption is that, on average, 20 weeks of benefit is saved per case (arrangements are being made to re-test this assumption).
- 4. The product of (2) and (3) is the assumed benefit saving per year.