TRY NOT TO VOMIT. THIS IS A POST ABOUT IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

Is it just me or do others agree that Iain Duncan Smith’s Department of Work and Pensions descending into a very unfunny farce?

We've long known that Smith himself is a figure of fun. That was never in dispute. The Quiet Man...his University of Perugia degree (or not as may be the case), his management diploma at a posh college (or the two day course he did there), his expenses for underpants and wet wipes, his wife's salary for being...erm... his wife, his sick leave... The list goes on.

We have known too about the wasted money, the inefficiencies, the lies about sanction targets, the gross inefficiency of Atos, the computer programmes that don't work and the deadliness that have not even started to be met. We even know that Cameron tried to reshuffle him away from the DWP, and failed. 

That should tell us something!

But in the last few days we have heard that the DWP have invented characters and situations, and then used “stock pictures” to make posters that support the idea of a caring sharing DWP. 

People, they implied, were actually being helped by his department. 

Of course there aren't any real success stories so they have had to make them up. Of course it wasn't IDS. His officials are to carry the can. Whatever happened to the buck stopping here?

Then we heard that, having just made 3824 people redundant, they seem to have suddenly found a need for 2,800 new staff (which the unions claim are to do approximately the same jobs and the redundant staff, but on temporary contracts of 18 months).

That's just plain rotten. IDS wastes millions on computer soft wear that isn't worth diddly, and they make up the money by paying off staff, then taking on temps.

Additionally, they listen in to staff on the telephone and nit pick when they treat clients like human beings.

But worst of all, yesterday we were told that call centre staff have been sent a leaflet on how to deal with suicide threats from “customers”.

The article in the Sunday Herald, where I originally learned of this, suggested that most of these staff earn around £15,000. That is to say they are junior admin staff.

Dealing with people who are so distressed that they may be contemplating suicide is a job for a professional with a great deal of training in how to read the situation and respond to it. Getting it wrong can make a bad situation 100 times worse, and in this case, lead to deaths.

En passant a little story. I recall a colleague in a place I worked in many years ago, was sent on a “counselling” course. It lasted a mere 2 days, and upon her return to work aforesaid colleague thought she was the very dab at counselling.  

Indeed within days she had put her new-found “skills” to work. 

However, it seems that a two day course doesn't provide quite all the skills required to do this kind of work effectively in real life situations...and, long story short, the client got very disturbed. This upset provoked a relatively dormant (and unknown to the colleague) heart condition the client had… and an ambulance had to be called.

My colleague had had 2 days’ instruction in dealing with difficult situations complete with role playing exercises. The DWP staff are getting a leaflet to read, and wave in the air if they require supervisor support! I wonder what training the supervisors have had.

According to the  Guardian: "Absolutely nobody has ever seen this guidance before, leading staff to believe it has been put together ahead of the incapacity benefit and disability living allowance cuts."

Making a mess of the staffing levels relatively incompetent management; making up names and success stories is pathetic… but suicide counselling with no training is altogether another kettle of fish.

Firstly from the point of view of the staff it is utterly ridiculous to demand untrained junior staff deal with potential suicide threats as part of their call centre work. That’s WAY above the £15,000 pay band responsibility.  How traumatised is a member of staff going to be if the client ends the call with: "Right, that's it. You can bin my claim. I'm dead by 5 o'clock!"

From the client’s point of view it is nothing short of criminal to leave untrained staff to deal with them. If you are taking away the last vestige of their humanity and leaving them to starve, the least you could do is to provide someone with a bit more than a typed out instruction list to deal with them. Surely they deserve at least that.

Then again, when you consider that paramedics and nurses in Atos have been allowed to override diagnosis made by specialist and professors of medicine, who would really be surprised at how low IDS will stoop to save a bob or two, and who could doubt that he doesn't give a damn about the people who use his "service"?

AMATEURS AT THE TAX OFFICE ...

Why on Earth does everything in this country have to be so complex?

First issue that I can remember was the Child Support Agency. It was set up in the 90s (with huge support from a public that was sick to the back teeth of picking up the bill for lads whose idea of a good time was a quick one on and Friday night, and whose idea of a bad time was any resultant kind of reduction in their beer, cars and clothes budget). But it was made so complex, and made so many errors, that in the end the public was sick to the back teeth of it.

Then there was the (again) well meaning child tax credits. No one, not matter how anti Labour could say that it wasn’t a good idea to target the very limited amount of money on the poorest. It was of course, as was family tax credit, a subsidy to employers, and thus to jobs. But once again it was so complex that it caused more grief than it gave comfort, and people were terrified of it, lest there be an over payment, which there frequently was, and it be taken back.

Now it’s the PAYE system. It seems that few in the Revenue really understood much of what they were doing. It appears that there is likely to be an overhaul of the way that tax is calculated which probably means that once completed, no one will understand what they are doing; the computers won’t be able to cope with it and the whole system will collapse.

This latest mess means that the wrong tax has been taken from around 1.4 million people. Some have paid too much, some too little. Those who have overpaid will receive an average rebate of just over £400 which will be paid to them by cheque.

Those who have been underpaying (around 1.4 million) will, have to pay money back. The amount will be taken in installments from their pay. The average amount is likely to be around £1200 and this will be taken at about £100 a month. Tax codes for next year will be altered to ensure the money is recouped over a year. Nippy at a time when prices are likely to rise steeply and salaries are likely to be static unless you are among the top earners..

Knowing my luck, and based on my past experience with HMIR, I will get a bill for 3 times my annual income and they will refuse to accept that they could possibly be wrong. The last debacle with them took enough phone calls to pay the BT chairman’s bonus.

The coalition has blamed the labour government, not unreasonably since they were in charge during the period when it happened.


According to the Daily Telegraph a Treasury source said: “A decade of meddling and intervening made the tax affairs of millions of families and businesses across the UK extremely complicated.”

So no bias there from the Treasury!

Ministers say that the Government is now using a computer system which can match taxpayers’ records up automatically and make sure the right amount of tax has been paid. So...we now have a government computer that does what it’s supposed to do......?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ..... when will they lose all the discs then?

Pic: Clever crest concocted by mehrdad in light of IR,s lost cds back in 2007. The crest is changed to include a cd carried by the lion and the unicorn under the crown and the text changed from the original "Dieu et mon droit" (God and my right) to "Deux cds sont perdus" (two cds have been lost). It is copyright www.aref.adib.com, and I hope they will excuse my non-commercial use of it. It sums the department up pretty well.

THE COMPLETELY EXPECTED HITS YOU BETWEEN THE EYES

Surprise, Surprise.

A new computer system at the Inland Revenue has resulted in mistakes in tax deductions for tens for thousands of people, many of whom have been left out of pocket until the money can be refunded. Pensioners, whose tax codes are complex, are as you might expect, among those worst hit.

People have had their personal tax allowances removed and been placed on higher tax codes or even had a '1' inserted in front of their salary, putting their taxable income by £100,000.

The Revenue has also admitted its call centres are "exceptionally busy" and that callers "are finding it difficult to get through to an adviser" and some have been disconnected before they can report their problems. Nice service guys. That’s what we pay you for NOT. Note to George....Sort it!

Although the problem first came to light in January, so it can hardly be blamed on the current government, HMRC has never publicly disclosed how many people had been affected. However, it is now reckoned that there could be up to 100,000 people affected in total.

Despite the awful service from the call centre, employers are still being advised that if they have enquiries from employees or pensioners about this to ask them to contact the Revenue in the usual way,....so that they can be ignored, or rather cut off after they have struggled through countless mechanical exercises in getting to the correct destination.

HMRC said that more customers had been contacting them because they wanted to query the coding used in their April pay packets. Noooooo, surely not?

They said: "We are aware that some customers, because of the increase in demand, are finding it difficult to get through to an adviser and we apologise for this and are doing all we can to meet the need.

"Inevitably at busy times we may be unable to answer all our calls. We are working hard to maintain a good customer service. We know, for instance, that some customers have been frustrated by being disconnected after they have been through the … messaging system, but before they speak to an adviser. We are now taking new measures to help prevent this from happening."

Actually it’s not really “inevitable” at all, and I can’t see why they think it would be. They knew about this mistake in January. They might reasonably have expected that if they didn’t fix it by April there would be a high demand for their service from confused, frustrated and sometime seriously worried “customers” or taxpayers as ordinary people would call them. So really the only inevitability is that they could expect one hell of a lot of complaints.

It begs the question ... why didn’t they prepare for this....?

The problem, needless to say, comes from the introduction of a new system, which combines information on National Insurance contributions and Pay As You Earn (PAYE) for the first time. But in some cases the system has incorrect information about earnings, meaning some people incorrectly being placed in the wrong tax band.

HMRC admitted the number affected was unknown because staff were not recording how many cases they had dealt with. Or maybe they just don’t want us to know how badly they have messed up...

I’ve dealt with the Revenue and frankly it gets about 6 out of 10 for politeness. but 2 out of 10 for reliability. My experience was that nothing gets done till you push and push and get cross. Then it gets done wrong and you have to start all over again.

I wish the people who have been wrongly coded the very best of luck in trying to get it sorted. They'll surely need it.