New clause 1 - Advice
State Pension Credit Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Professor Steve Webb (Northavon, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question. I do not know, because I do not understand the sentence. It is a huge organisation and the odd letter that is gibberish slips through. I do not want to make a cheap point; I am trying to say that, if it is to match the tremendous goals that we have heard from both Ministers, the whole culture of the organisation must change fundamentally.
My question—which is reflected in the new clause—is: how confident can Ministers be that that sort of
transformation will take place? Will every decision maker, like the person who wrote that letter, be trained in what the hon. Gentleman has mentioned—plain English? I assume that some of them already have been, yet we still receive letters like that. What is the training programme? The new clause mentions suitably qualified people. That means not only people who understand the nitty-gritty of pensions but people who can communicate such things in plain English to pensioners and to their representatives, be they councillors, MPs, advisers or welfare rights workers. The person who wrote that letter might have assumed that I had some understanding of such matters—