Caroline Selman
Appearances
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
We see from casework that quite a common story is, like you say, where somebody has been awarded something by the DWP, relied on that as being something that they are entitled to, have often gone back and double checked and said, am I definitely entitled to that before then relying on that to spend it?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And then finding that they weren't entitled to it and having it recovered from them, causing the financial hardship that comes from that. So that's something that is very familiar to us from casework.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And again, in terms of DWP's own data, in terms of that context of official error, so where that mistake has been made by DWP, we know from statistics from a couple of years back, which have stopped publishing now, that three quarters of the overpayments they had on their debt management system were things that were caused by DWP.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And that's partly reflective of a change in policy and the legal framework which was introduced when universal credit was introduced, which basically gave DWP the power to recover overpayments even when it was their mistake. That said, they do have discretion as to whether to do it. And one of the concerns that we have is that they don't really apply that discretion before they apply deductions.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
generally the default position is to recover that overpayment regardless of the context and regardless of the potential harm for somebody if it's recovered, even if it is to do with their own mistake.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
In terms of what people can do is that people can, in those contexts, get in touch with DWP to ask for some relief in terms of the rate that it's recovered, or they can ask for it to be waived as well. So if particularly in that kind of circumstance where they've relied on something and checked about it, that is the kind of context where they can and should be able to ask for a waiver.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
What we've found is that that is not well communicated to people and that people don't know that they have the ability to request that and ask for that and that in some circumstances DWP really should be granting that waiver, which is something we're quite keen for people to be more aware of and for DWP to do more as well so that people know about it as well.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, so what we know, and DWP has been very public about the fact that it's putting about £70 million into developing what it refers to as data analytics and machine learning, in particular in order to try and predict or identify whether cases should be investigated for fraud.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
The concerns we have about that is that those things have been flagged up by, for example, the National Audit Office as having particular inherent risks of bias, which is also something that we know from other contexts in terms of risks associated particularly with predictive tools, where there's a risk that what happens is that they are baking in pre-existing biases that might exist in the system or flushing out some other forms of bias.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So we can't say what's happening because we don't have the data. But the risk of bias is roundabout. Like you say, certain ethnicities or other characteristics. So, for example, if you... have something that can be treated as a proxy for a particular nationality.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
For example, the individuals might be being disproportionately picked up and identified as somebody to investigate for fraud, not necessarily because there's any more risk that that individual would have committed fraud, but because of how the algorithm has worked in terms of what it's using for proxies to pick people up and identify things.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So the key concern is whether tools that are being rolled out might be disproportionately picking up individuals and investigating them for fraud when they haven't committed fraud.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, so I think, first of all, with sanctions, the starting context that looks through all of this is, again, it's a system that doesn't work and causes harm. And what those figures show is that if you're black or mixed ethnicity, you are more likely to be impacted by that system which doesn't work and causes harm.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And there's still lots of gaps in terms of that data, but that raises really serious questions for DWP about who is being impacted, how and why. We have some statistics now for sanctions, but it's a concern across universal credit and how decisions are being made in relation to social security.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So again, like those considerations about if you're ruling out automation, that risk that you're potentially baking in some of those things that might be pre-existing bias and not having the ability to properly check for that or prevent that from happening.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, so I think we've talked already about the real need to properly reform the sanctions and conditionality regime. But there is a fundamental point about some of these things needing quite a big culture shift and fundamental change. And that is,
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
could include looking at, for example, in Scotland, they're trying to take a more rights-based approach, inclusive of kind of radical things like listening to people and making sure that the evidence is at the heart of things as well. But alongside that, there are things that could make things a little bit incrementally better now.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
We would support there being much more transparency about things around about evidence. So some of what John has been talking to, I think what it demonstrates is the sheer amount of effort that he and others have had to put into and how difficult it is for individuals on the outside to be able to evidence and demonstrate that systems aren't working.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And it is quite difficult and intensive to do that from the outside. So as a starting point, a culture shift in terms of being open and transparent about, you know, when you've had an inquiry that it doesn't take several Freedom of Information Act requests and decision notices requiring you to put that stuff out in the public domain, that that is put out in the public domain.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And also that there's a culture of wanting to learn from what that evidence says and do things differently. and change things. And there does have to be something fundamental about looking at that relationship that people have with their work coaches and DWP generally, and whether it is one that's based on trust rather than viewing people as a potential bad faith actor.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
People can and should challenge things through internal reviews. So that's mandatory reconsideration, which you can do on your journal if you've been sanctioned and you think that you shouldn't have been. And also on things we were talking earlier about deductions for overpayments.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You know, if that is something that you either think you can't afford or was occurred in a context where you really... don't think it is fair that they're recovering it because it was a DWP mistake and you checked that and you tried to make sure that you were definitely entitled to it before you relied on it, you should also think about whether you want to ask for a waiver as well.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And what we know is that when people do ask for these things, they can be successful in either successfully challenging something or getting things waived. But that only happens if you do know to and then are able to ask for those things.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So across different decisions, some of them have got really high, like you say, sort of challenge rates. There's other bits where, again, so for sanctions, at one stage, we had data which showed that really there was both quite a low number of people who were challenging, but a really high success rate when you did challenge them. But again, a lot of that data is now not being published.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And again, so it's harder to kind of hold it to account and see that. But like you say, you know, it's good that individuals managed to challenge the sanctions successfully. But how much better would it be if you weren't in a situation where someone was being unfairly or... incorrectly sanctioned in the first place.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Thanks for having us.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Well, that's because women often had to not work. They had to stay at home. So is that the solution? That's not that you're putting words in my mouth.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Really? I've not come across that before.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, so like you say, we are currently working with Centring and Law Centre round about supporting people in relation to sanctions. So that's when people have money taken away if they haven't, for example, attended a work-focused interview with the DWP. And although they tend to be things that are put in place for not particularly serious things like being a bit late to an interview,
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
The consequences for people are really very serious. So you're looking at sort of about 100% of somebody's standard allowance if you're a single person, sometimes for really quite a long amount of time. And one of the key concerns we have about the sanction system is it's been shown not to work. in terms of supporting people into work or better paid work.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
But it has been shown to be really harmful repeatedly across both sort of independent studies and also some of the government's own evidence as well. So there's a core concern as to why that regime should be being used at all.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
But the piece of work that we're doing with Central Good Law Centre is about supporting people to challenge sanctions if they are challenged, because people can ask for an internal review and appeal them. And what we find is that if people do challenge them, they're very often successful.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I think most people, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, if you have something that's been found not to work and which causes harm, that's probably not a policy that is a good one to be applying to people. More broadly, we have also got concerns about how fit DWP is to understand who is being impacted by things and how.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
What we've seen recently in terms of that statistics is that some people are more likely to be impacted or harmed by the sanctions regime than others, which also raises a whole host of concerns about how decisions are taken by the DWP in terms of...
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
how policies impact people but another area that we do a lot of work on is how the DWP is increasingly using things like data analytics and machine learning that's been identified by the National Audit Office as having a real risk of bias within it but where the DWP is on record as saying they don't have the data or the way of knowing whether that bias is in place but still rolling it out at pace.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
The thing that rang really true was that bit about the impact on trust as a result of sanctions. And I think, you know, that's not just in terms of our own experience in relation to it. It's also, you know, borne out by DWP's own findings. And then I think in terms of some of our own sort of experience in this area. So we often come at stuff from an access to justice perspective.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So how we're supporting people to exercise their rights or challenge incorrect or unfair decisions. But one of the things that really comes through so strongly in that is that wider pernicious impact of justice.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Everything that John's just been describing of people's experience of the system as whether it's one that you see as supportive and one that you can trust or whether it's one that you feel is set up to potentially assume the worst of you or to be punitive.