Speeches by Cane.

““Until we sort this out.” Why are you not just offering it to them and making it, as it were, their right, because they are owed that money?”

“Once somebody is answered, are any of those calls dropped partway through—do you measure that?”

“That is good to hear, but I would like to see the figures. As you know, at PACAC there was discussion of insensitive call handling. I understand from the media that you consider the particular case that was raised to have been during MyCSP rather than Capita. Could you talk us through the sort of training you are givin…”

“It was not working for him, and your staff knew he had an asterisk in his name. If there was an issue with how he had to enter his name, he should have been told. That should be clearly in the instructions.”

“They are speaking to a person and then the call gets cut off.”

“I am told by a constituent that they wanted to make a lump-sum payment. On the previous portal, they were able to do that online. On the new one, they had to download a form, print it out, fill it in and either scan it back in again or post it. Was that a temporary workaround, or is that now how it’s going to work goin…”

“Yes, I do. We heard at the beginning about the gentleman who is terminally ill and not yet receiving regular payments, and about some widows who are not receiving them. Why are they having to come up with the magic words to ask for a loan? Why don’t you automatically offer them a loan?”

“When does the wait time start from? Calls start with the instruction, “If your call is about X, press number 1,” so is the 100 seconds measured from when they get through to that, or from when they are speaking to a person?”

“How many complaints have you had regarding inappropriate service from call centre staff?”

“I am interested in what testing you have done. I have a constituent who is now on the portal, but I was regularly told that he could get on and to ask him to try again. He could not, and it turned out to be because he had an asterisk in his name. Are you absolutely certain—”

“I understand that.”

“Could changing the criteria based on demand lead to a perception of unfairness? Is it right to say that, if I brought you a case now that was a score four you would look at it, but if I brought you the same case in six months’ time and you did not have the extra resource, then you would not?”

“Going back to an earlier question, are you worried about the risk that people may self-score? For instance, they might say, “Oh, it’s only a two, I won’t send it in.” If that happens, you lose your data collection.”

“So they would get feedback that they had influenced a positive change to the system?”

“You have talked about how you communicate with complainants. When a caseworker decides not to take a complaint forward, how much detail do they give the complainants as to how they arrived at the scoring?”

“When you talked about the scoring, I noticed that you started with two things that are very much about the complainant—the impact it has on them, and whether it is influenced by any protected characteristics—and yet you call it a public value model. Do you think that is a good name, or do you think it might imply that …”

“You mention the new Independent Public Advocate. What role might they play, or is it too early to judge?”

“So the referral method would need those bodies to come together of their own volition, as it were, and decide whereas, if it were going through the Select Committee, this Committee would probably invite the relevant bodies to come and give evidence. Their concerns would then be on the public record and then this Commit…”

“Why not?”

“Would they recommend it to the Minister individually, or would they all have to agree to recommend it?”