Written evidence from Public and Commercial Services Union [SWP0072]

Introduction

1. PCS represents around 180,000 staff in the Civil Service and related agencies, bodies and contractors. Within this, we represent around 50,000 staff in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

2. Thousands of our members are involved in delivery of Universal Credit (UC) in the national Jobcentre network and in the 24 UC Service Centres handling telephone calls from claimants. Our members are currently classed as key workers as part of the Government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Measures taken by the Department in response to Covid-19

3. Measures have been taken by the department to address the ongoing crisis and the influx of over one million new UC claimants as over 40% of staff are currently off work.

4. The department has reduced the processes currently involved in making a payment on a new claim which has enabled claims to be processed much quicker. UC claimants are also being advised not to ring DWP so as to let staff focus on making payments than answering calls to determine when a payment will be processed.

5. The punitive sanctions and conditionality regimes have been suspended as claimants are no longer being expected to sign on in order to secure payment.

6. Job centres across the country have closed to the public with only the most vulnerable claimants accessing these buildings on an appointment only basis.

7. The ability of our members to work from home processing claims has begun to increase with wider availability of capable technology likely to be extended in the coming weeks. Staff classed as vulnerable have been told not to attend their office and this combined with those ‘self-isolating’ has resulted in over 40% of the workforce not being in their place of work.

8. All FTA appointments have been converted to permanent posts and staff from child maintenance, debt collection and counter fraud are currently being redeployed to work within the front facing UC/benefit system.

9. Overtime rates have been increased to incentivise more staff to work overtime in order to deal with the vast numbers of claims with overtime being worked over Easter weekend with significant numbers of claims being processes as a result.

Although the Department is moving in the right direction in numerous areas in order to manage these extraordinary circumstances, there are, numerous key areas in which the Department continues to fall short. As an organisation we have noted numerous issues still to be resolved.

Areas of concern

10. At the beginning of the crisis it was clear that the department had very limited ability to enable large numbers of staff to process and pay benefits from home meaning that most staff have had to continue to travel to work in an office environment putting themselves, their colleagues and families at increased risk. We accept that there are clear security issues in allowing staff to work from home we note that most other large government departments are reporting large increases in staff working remotely. Even with increased efforts by DWP, on 13% of staff are currently able to work from home. We understand that the aim is to increase this by 2500 per week.

11. At the beginning of the crisis we briefed some members of the committee regarding ongoing issues within DWP offices across the UK in relation to social distancing, cleanliness of offices and the availability of soap, hand sanitiser and cleaning products for our members (Q25 Chris Stephens MP)[1]. Although this is now improving, we believe that centralised advice and arrangements were not given early enough therefore leaving local management to improvise and potentially put members at risk.

12. Key workers have been identified across numerous sectors and our members are proud to play their role in ensuring the continued security for millions of service users across the UK. We believe, however, that by declaring all DWP as key workers we have many staff members attending work when they do not have to do so. We believe that unless staff are processing and paying benefits they should not, therefore, be classed as key workers.

13. The department continues to hire agency staff across the Department and PCS believes now, more than ever, these workers should be identified as civil servants and therefore hired as such. They, like our front line members, are putting themselves at great risk, they deserve access to the pay and terms and conditions which are members are accustomed to.

14. We have many thousands of members of staff who live with or care for a vulnerable person yet they are still expected to attend work. We believe this is fundamentally wrong and that these workers should have the opportunity to work from home.

      PCS has long argued that staffing within the DWP, previous to Coronavirus, has been too low, calling for the immediate recruitment of 5000 additional frontline staff to deliver UC. With delays to the full rollout of UC now extending past 2023 and the significant impact of the global pandemic, we believe that the DWP should recruit and train new, permanent staff as a priority. Redeployment of other civil servants will, we believe, only partially deal with what is clearly a systemic problem in the department.

      Retention in the department continues to be an issue and this has been compounded during this outbreak. Although some incentives have been given to encourage overtime and weekend working, we believe that pay across front line services including service centre staff, has remained too low for too long. Our members are ensuring that the most vulnerable in society and those struggling without any source of income due to coronavirus are supported quickly and adequately, putting themselves at risk in many instances. Our union continues to call on government departments to work with us to ensure fair pay is secured across the civil service, particularly for those in the lowest grades.

We welcome the opportunity to submit evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee, we acknowledge the significant work which has been carried out by your members throughout this difficult period and we would like to further support out submission by giving oral evidence to members of the committee in the near future.

April 2020