Caroline Selman
speaker
38 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Caroline Selman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for having us.
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.
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