Lord Freud
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for leading this evening’s debate on the European Social Fund. I also thank the other noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The report and this debate are well timed. They come at the midpoint of the current 2007-13 programme, just at the time when negotiations are about to begin on the future of the EU budget and on the structural funds after the end of this particular programme.
Our approach to the European Social Fund is shaped by the coalition Government’s programme for welfare reform. We are transforming the welfare system—as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, mentioned just now—to encourage responsibility, to make work pay and to end the cycle of benefit dependency. The work programme within that ambition is a central pillar of our approach, aiming to move people back into the labour market where it will replace a series of programmes that have been built in the past. One of the elements of the work programme that is novel is its emphasis on sustaining people in the world of work for a much longer period than has been the practice in the past. It pulls in a unified structure that forces providers in practice to treat people as individuals and also gives providers the freedom to tailor the right support for the specific needs of those individuals.
So the question—and it is the question that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, put with his customary elegance—is what role the European Social Fund can play in that context. It is clear that competence for employment and skills policies rests at the national level, as does the primary responsibility for funding. The role of the ESF—as all noble Lords in this debate have pointed out—is to add value to the core offer that the member state provides. This poses what we will call the “Lord Knight challenge”. The ESF must fit the integrated approach that we are developing. It must not fund alternative programmes just for the sake of additionality.
The methodology with which we are introducing the work programme is through a framework for employment-related service. In practice, this is a pretty effective structure for integrating the European Social Fund with our national employment provision, while ensuring that the ESF remains additional. Let me spend one minute on the attraction of, and the opportunities provided by, the framework. Once you have a framework set up, and providers set up within the framework, it is permissible for any government or local authority organisation to use that same framework. It does not take a lot of imagination to see that one can start to channel different sets of funding to provide an holistic approach for particular individuals.
I pick up on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, made so eloquently with her concern about cherry picking and that the most disadvantaged will not be looked after properly. One of the key tenets of the work programme is that we will have price differentiation to encourage providers who will see just as much profitability, ideally, out of helping the harder to help as the easier to help. That is the concept behind it. On top of that, when you have a framework construct, you can see other funding coming into the same place to help the even harder to help. It is potentially a most powerful tool for getting rid of silos and putting in money and extra resources to help the hardest to help. We will write to the noble Baroness with further details. Actually, we will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, with further details of the department’s next procurement round in due course.
Several noble Lords have referred to the role of the voluntary sector in the European Social Fund. We recognise that localised, specialised voluntary services are often well placed to address the complex barriers that prevent disadvantaged people returning to work. Again, the framework will allow smaller voluntary organisations to participate in consortia, to form partnerships or to act as subcontractors to deliver the work that the core work programme and the ESF contracts. This deals with the concern that my noble friend Lord Cotter raised about the position of voluntary groups.
Several noble Lords asked how the effectiveness of the social fund is measured. We agree with what several noble Lords have said: that there is substantial room for improvement, especially at the EU level. We will judge the success of the ESF by job outcomes. After all, the ESF is primarily a labour market and skills fund. Our objective is to help more people back to work and with the right skills. We make no apology for measuring performance primarily on hard outcomes, particularly hard outcomes around jobs. In this way we are closer to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of February than the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of November. Having said that, we recognise that people will achieve soft outcomes on their journey to employment. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, when she says that she has problems with this terminology of soft and hard. We are using it this evening, so let us stick with it.
The work programme that the ESF contracts will encourage sustainable employment. That is the Government’s stated objective. In practice, it will not be possible for providers to achieve that hard outcome unless they build the intermediate soft outcomes, so soft outcomes should not be an end in themselves. We need to see through the process where people go through the soft outcomes into the hard, measurable outcome. One of the keys in developing the work programme is to make sure that there is a financial structure that allows the provider to see the whole process through to the end, rather than chopping it up and looking at intermediate steps. It is much easier to lead the responsibility through the whole programme.
As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of February would have said—or maybe even did say—the problem is that, unless one has an extraordinarily effective measurement tool, it is very easy to fall from soft outcomes into spraying money around ineffectively. We have just launched a longitudinal study to capture the status of leavers 18 months after their ESF provision to measure the sustained jobbed outcomes. We are also developing a quantitative impact analysis of ESF.
Several noble Lords referred to the administrative burdens on providers of the programme. We will continue to use the co-financing system to relieve providers of the burden of finding match funding and we will work with the Commission and other member states to seek to simplify EU rules. However, we must also ensure that there is rigorous financial management and control across all member states and that there is value for money for the taxpayer. We also believe that there should be greater flexibility within the overall focus of the European Social Fund on employment and skills. The fund needs to be more responsive to new policy developments, changes in the economy and local needs.
Concerning the future of the European Social Fund—I think that this issue was raised by all noble Lords who took part in the debate—I will respond first to points raised about the budget and then to the policy focus. The Commission published its communication on the EU budget review on 19 October. The Government welcome the Commission’s focus on the need for reform of the budget to support the EU’s priorities, in particular economic growth. However, the review does not go anywhere near far enough on recognising the economic and fiscal context. We need to see a much stronger focus on prioritisation and where savings can be made. The EU budget cannot be immune from the huge budgetary challenges facing EU member states. This will have implications for the structural and cohesion funds, including the European Social Fund. The funds should focus on stimulating economic development in member states where income per capita is far below the EU average, where there are clear economies of scale with respect to financial and institutional capacity, and where EU spending can significantly add value. Receipts in richer regions, particularly in wealthier member states, should fall significantly in the next financial period after 2013. The share of receipts going to the poorer countries should continue to rise, albeit within a smaller overall structural and cohesion fund budget envelope.
The committee’s report criticised the previous Government for seeking to withdraw ESF funding from member states. Under the coalition Government’s approach, a reduced ESF budget would continue to fund some activities in the UK in the next financial perspective. However, in the longer run we aim to phase out structural funds from the richest member states entirely, and end the recycling of funds between member states that have the capacity and ability to finance their own development.
A smaller budget will make decisions on the targeting of ESF even more important. The Government believe that in the next financial perspective member states should target ESF on the most disadvantaged groups, focusing on employment and skills. For us, this will mean ensuring that the ESF continues to complement the work programme. We will expect the European Social Fund to be consistent and coherent with our policies to help individuals make the most of their lives and to get Britain working again.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friend Lord Liddle referred to the strategic alignment of funds. We want better strategic alignment of the ESF with Europe 2020 and national policies, and especially so on challenges such as climate change. My noble friend Lord Cotter and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pressed me on the timing of the work programme. I will not use the word “delay”, as they did. I assure them both that the work programme is on track to be delivered in the first half of next year, starting in the spring. They will be delighted to know that the Treasury, the DWP and the Prime Minister all vigorously support this programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, made a pointed query about additionality and the working neighbourhoods fund. I assure him that we will not use the European Social Fund to backfill that fund. As he will understand, we are ending the piecemeal approach to employment programmes and integrating in an entirely different way. As regards his point on regional priorities, our focus is on local communities and individuals, not on regions, which we regard as artificial and bureaucratic. In our White Paper on local growth, published last week, the noble Lord may have noted our view that labour markets do not exist in the main at regional level, with the exception of London. Therefore, we will want to see the ESF responding to local needs, not to regional priorities.
I close by thanking noble Lords once again for a series of most constructive and thoughtful comments, including some pretty nifty and interesting ones from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which I enjoyed answering. This evening’s debate has reinforced how complex some of the EU rules and principles can be. I can certainly think of better things to do than debate concepts such as EU additionality at this time of the evening—or at any time of the day for that matter. However, we need to make sure that the European Social Fund is integrated with our welfare reforms and is made to work for the most vulnerable. This may raise the question of whether the European Social Fund can be additional if it is also integrated, but then I suspect that additionality is in the eye of the beholder.