Agent151: The DWP dictionary

Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, recently wrote an article extolling the virtues of ‘collaboration’. Agent 151 nearly spat out his cornflakes.

In a bold move by DWP, Lord Freud has announced that the meaning of the word ‘collaboration’ has been successfully redefined to fit better with its business model.

A spokesperson for the Oxford English Dictionary denied that the meaning had in fact been officially amended but warned that over time nearly all words take on new nuances and that some can, in fact, come to mean the exact opposite.

For example, the word ‘wicked’ can mean both ‘evil’ and ‘very good’; the word ‘peer’ can mean both ‘a person of equal status’ and ‘a member of the nobility’; and the word  ‘resign’ can mean both  ‘to quit’ and ‘to get a new contract’. DWP added that it also had plans for the words ‘successful’, ‘consultation’, ‘universal’, and ‘welfare’.

No, none of that is true, before you rush out and tweet it. But Lord Freud, minister for welfare reform, has been writing about the importance of collaboration, which is just as surprising.  “If you can garner support from the people implementing the change, your reform is more likely to succeed”, he declares in an article for Local Government Chronicle.

This is nothing short of a Damascene conversion, as there was no ambition to garner support from councils in the early stages of the universal credit programme.  Indeed, DWP’s track record on collaboration concerning universal credit has been nothing short of appalling.

It began with a top-down policy diktat. The welfare system had to be reformed and universal credit, in which councils would play no part, was the answer.

On that decision it is hard to find any trace at all of collaboration with other organisations, and especially councils.

Stephen Baker, chairman of the Local Government Delivery Council and chief executive of the Suffolk Coastal and Waveney District Councils, sums the problem up nicely: “…over the years councils have had to respond to various national initiatives which invariably start with a proposed solution.

“This typically results in either attempts to shoehorn in or adapt a ‘one size all solution’ with all the associated costs – the worst possible outcome for customers.”

After that uncompromising start, several decisions were made that had very significant consequences for councils.

The consultation responses on the localisation of council tax benefit all suggested keeping it as part of universal credit. This was ignored. Issues were raised about the Single Fraud Investigation Service. They were ignored.

The NAO’s early review of the universal credit programme was damning on many counts, but on the subject of collaboration recommended that: “The Department should set clear expectations about how interdependent programmes should work together both within the Department and across government.” In other words, the NAO found that DWP wasn’t collaborating effectively with anyone at all!

I can picture Lord Freud jumping up and down at this point, waving his arms. “What about the pathfinders!” he is saying. And he is right: the pathfinders turned out to be the best thing about the universal credit programme.

Through the pathfinders, which worked mainly because of local collaboration between councils and Job Centre Plus staff, many of the initial problems were ironed out.

But let’s be honest: at the time the pathfinders were established, no-one at DWP thought they were important. Huw Meredith, Local Authority Liaison, DWP UC Programme, recently admitted that if the DWP were to repeat the process of changing the welfare system they would recognise earlier the true delivery partner status of local government; implement co-production earlier; and aim to build greater confidence and transparency from the outset.

We should welcome Lord Freud’s acknowledgement of the importance of the role of councils in making universal credit work.

However, let’s not get carried away. As recently as July 2015, Ipsos Mori carried out research on behalf of DWP that found that ‘lack of clarity’ for councils about the timescales for universal credit was causing ‘uncertainty’, ‘preventing certain decisions being made’, and ‘hindering the amount of preparation that can be done’.

Somewhat hilariously, a DWP spokesperson said in response: “As this survey shows… we are working closely with [councils] to ensure this runs smoothly.”