Public Accounts

Before the Minister moves on from the subject of praising Government Departments and the roll-out of Jobcentre Plus, I want to say that the report on that was exceptionally impressive, highlighting that the roll-out had won nine awards. One thing that greatly struck the Committee was that although the three witnesses in charge who came before us had between them 112 years of experience of administering social security, not one of them had started out as a fast-stream administrative trainee. They had all worked up from the bottom and they plainly knew the consequences of their actions on the people who were still at the bottom.