Welfare Reform Bill

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, will not take it as an insult—I assure him that it is not intended to be one—if I say that he is genuinely an expert as well as an enthusiast on the use of the IT system in government. I warm to that, and I have a great deal of sensitivity to what he and my noble friend Lord German have said about the need to get the system right. I am perhaps a little less pessimistic than the noble Lord, Lord Knight, in introducing his remarks, which seemed a little apocalyptic at one or two points. Perhaps I may also say that they were not quite as differentiated as they might be between general concerns about the level of unemployment or economic activity, about which we could have a debate in another context, and specific issues about the impact on the universal credit system. In that context, one of the three points that I would like to ask the Minister to comment on is his assessment of the extent to which the system is sensitive to variations in volume, with all the difficulties that he is putting together, which have been rightly touched on. Depending on the number of claimants, there could be consequences if it has been under-specified; it could be resourced for a lower number but the numbers turn out to be higher. There could be quite a small movement of the margin which could tip over the sensitivity of the system. That is the first point. The second point is an extension or a reflection on the point raised by my noble friend Lord German about the transfer of data. I am not a great expert in this, although I have taken an interest in some of these security issues. Indeed, there has been a conversation about the dangers of discrediting the system or the political class more generally if all this went wrong. It would be helpful if the Minister gave reassurances, not only on the specification of the data transfer but on the security and understanding of the transfer of that data. I think there is a strong wish across the Committee that data that is publicly relevant and obviously impacts on people's housing benefit, as it now will, on their housing claim, on other aspects of their financial package, or on arrangements with the public sector, should be transferrable. As one makes that longer daisy chain, there is also concern that it might get out of control or get into inappropriate hands. Perhaps I may take the analogy produced by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about the Department of Transport system for vehicle licensing, a system which I used at the weekend entirely successfully and, to be honest, because it has rather good graphics, quite enjoyably. The first time I used it, I thought to myself, ““Do these people really know that I am insured and did I give consent that they should know?””. Now, because it is extremely convenient, I am very happy to accept that. There are issues about public reassurance, not least about employment data getting out to the public sector, to which the Minister may wish to respond. The third point—one could say it is my motive for making this speech—is having intervened in the noble Lord's introductory remarks, I realised when I sat down that I had given the wrong date for my entitlement to the pension. I did not want anyone here or in the wider world to assume that just because I said 2005, as I did, that in some way Members of this House or Members of the other place had an inside track to get their pension two years early. So I am now putting it on the record that when I said 2005, I should have said 2007. I want to cap it with a specific point. That is the kind of error which, however well conceived the system is, whether it is a public input or, in this case, a private input, it can be wrong; it can be a verbal slip or a misreading. We get older and we do not read the digits as clearly as we might. One of the biggest points—I come back partly to the experience of tax credits, as a former Member of Parliament, and no less to child maintenance claims under the CSA, as it was—is that there is a huge capacity either on the official side of the system or on the private side to make entirely innocent errors, which then need correction. They may appear and then need to be sorted out. One element that the Minister needs to bottom—perhaps my noble friend will speak about this—is a system that enables people to get such errors attended to when they are noticed, without huge bureaucratic difficulty or excess delay, otherwise people will often run away from putting them right. That is where the rubber hits the road and where, despite the macro concerns that have been set out in this amendment, we should equally recall that there are micro-concerns: ““Is it sensitive to me? Do I feel comfortable using it?””. I would be very grateful if my noble friend could give us some assurances along those lines.