By e-mail to stephen.george@wales.gov.uk

Mark Drakeford

Chair of Health and Social Care Committee

National Assembly for Wales

Cardiff Bay

Cardiff

CF99 1NA

8 February 2013

Dear Mr Drakeford

Firstly can I apologise for the delay in response to your letter of 11 December last year and for missing your deadline.

Please find below some information in relation to the specific questions within your letter.

The DWP Compensation Recovery Unit (CRU) were contacted by Kim Jenkins of The Department for Health, Social Services and Children, who we have met with on one occasion to explain the DWP CRU role in relation to recovery of benefits under the Social Security (Recovery of Benefits) Act 1997 and NHS Injury Costs Recovery (ICR) charges under the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003. We also provided a process map and explained that the CRU IT system is a bespoke system based on the legislation we administer.

Whilst implementing the scheme would be possible in principle we feel that such a decision would have to be made at Ministerial level and suggest that you make such an approach at the appropriate time. Notwithstanding the need for such clearance we would point out that there may be capacity issues as CRU is currently heavily committed to supporting the Welfare Reform agenda, which requires significant IT and process changes within CRU.

There are differences between recovering NHS costs under the new scheme and recovery under the proposed new scheme and consideration would have to be given to the following points:

§ Developing current IT to reflect the proposed tariffs and for recovering charges in disease cases in Wales only

§ Differences to processes in the issuing of the Certificate of NHS Charges

§ Repaying charges to the Welsh Government rather than the treatment provider.

§ Co-operation of the treatment provider as they would not receive the resulting charges.

Although we have been able to identify the above potential issues, we are unable to estimate the associated costs. Timescales to amend the CRU IT system and costs would need to be negotiated with the DWP CRU IT suppliers and would require more detailed information.

CRU have not had any input into the assumptions/calculations made in the Explanatory Memorandum. Whilst we do not anticipate that any of the issues would be insurmountable, we would need more detailed information relating to volumes and processes of the proposed scheme prior to commenting further on costs relating to IT changes and the administration of the scheme.

Alan Clark

CRU Policy Lead

DWP Finance & Commercial