Speeches by Timms.

“I remember extremely well when the right hon. Lady was a Minister in the Department—it was very striking how the disability employment gap, which had been falling up until 2010, suddenly stopped falling and plateaued from that moment on. We will deliver a decisive shift to early intervention, helping people to stay in …”

“I can confirm to my hon. Friend that we will produce a full impact assessment in due course.”

“As we have already made clear today, we are absolutely determined to protect those who need to be protected in the proposals we are bringing forward. I think the hon. Lady will welcome and be reassured by the proposals when she sees them.”

“Is the 400 additional a doubling? Do you know what the number was before?”

“It is true as well that the Department is experimenting with how to use those visiting officers and where they should be. Maybe they should be in a place that a number of people come to, which is not the jobcentre, as well as actually going to people’s homes.”

“This is a very important subject. We are getting towards the end of the migration to Universal Credit and some of the more vulnerable people who need to be migrated will be migrated over the next few months. I will ask Neil to say more about exactly how that is being done. A point that intrigues me about all this is th…”

“Can I just add that the Department meets regularly with quite a large group of national stakeholder organisations—68, according to my briefing—who have expert knowledge about the needs of vulnerable people. CPAG is one of them. I was on a very useful call with Neil a few weeks ago. I am not sure how many people were on…”

“I will ask Neil to pick that one up as well.”

“Let me start with that. I think it is very useful. The memorandum itself has been a helpful initiative. It has been in place nearly a year now and seems to be working well. I wondered, actually, whether the Committee might like to see it. It is a helpful document to read and says a fair amount about the approach that t…”

“A big part of their job is engaging with people outside the Department, including giving their phone number and just making sure that they are able to provide an effective link.”

“Should there be better data? I would certainly welcome there being better data. The question, I suppose, is how such data would be gathered. The Department works quite hard to gather information from as wide a range of sources as possible about what is going on. You may want to talk to me about the Serious Case Panel t…”

“Let me start. It is very important that there is much more openness in the future around this whole process. You have asked about the criteria and that is one area, but also about what is learned from these reviews and what the upshot of them is as well. That has been pretty opaque in the past and that needs to change.…”

“Yes.”

“We are looking at this. There is an argument for a more proactive approach here, but we do have to work through the various legal issues. It could involve providing information to a family member who did not previously know about a particular thing that was going on, and all that needs to be thought about. However, in …”

“It is, on the face of it, quite surprising that the Serious Case Panel does not look at serious cases. It looks at themes, as Neil has said. It does not look at individual cases. That is one of the things we just need to reflect on—whether that is right or whether there is something missing in the system that we ought …”

“Where the 75 came from—is that the information?”

“Yes, we can do that. Just a general point here about openness: there is a strong case for the Department being more open about this whole process than has been the case in the past, and I think if we do that, that will be quite an important step in rebuilding the trust in the Department.”

“Can I make one further point, sorry, before you all leave?”

“If you just indulge me for a moment, I just wanted to make a comment about John Pring’s book, “The Department”, which I have read and others may well have read, subtitled, “How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence”. It is obviously a very strong allegation that is being made. My view is…”

“I will ask Elizabeth to comment on this.”