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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I thank all hon. and right hon. Members for welcoming me to my new position, and I thank the members of the Liaison Committee for securing the debate. Can the Work programme work for all? I believe it can and it will. We are on a learning curve, and we have to make things better.
Hon. and right hon. Members will be pleased to know that I met all the providers this morning. I told them to watch the debate and listen to all the contributions, because the Work programme is work in progress, and there are things that they can take away from the debate. The comments of the prime providers are quite pertinent, particularly as the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) mentioned low skills and low aspirations. A representative from the Shaw Trust said that they had been working in the field for 35 years, and the system was the biggest and most rigorous ever; they had never been monitored or measured so much. They took great pride in what they were doing, the journey they were going on and how they were helping the most disadvantaged into work.
According to Serco, the Work programme must be viewed not over a year—that would not be correct, because it is a two-year programme—but within the five to seven-year cycle. A representative from Ingeus said that the work was about helping people, and that, fundamentally, individuals are being helped by people who care. They made the point that people who work in the profession chose it, they know what they are doing, and although it is tough, it is what they want to do.
I know that the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee has to speak, but before I answer the many questions that have been asked, I want to emphasise what a massive step change the Work programme has been. It is bold and ambitious, and I want to set out the motivations behind it. When people ask, “Is it failing?” that is fundamentally the wrong question. To fail would be to do nothing at all. To fail would be to leave people on benefits without even reaching out to them. I believe that the fact that we are on a journey and we have to get it right must be the start of success, and the Work programme must not be viewed from a perspective of failure. We are on a journey together.
I take on board all the points that the Select Committee has made; some of them drive a hard message home, and we must listen to them. The Work programme is evolving as we speak. What did we have before the Work programme? Hon. and right hon. Members have talked about the performance of various previous programmes, but I have different statistics. Those programmes covered a different mix of claimants, using a different measure, in a different time frame. Pathways to work can be classed as a failure because they could not have been rolled out nationally; they would have had zero positive impact if they had been. The previous approach was piecemeal, and people tried and failed to get it right. We have to continue with what we are doing now and make sure it works.
The individuals who are on the Work programme are the hardest to help. When I looked at their journey, I saw that out of every 100 people who go on to jobseeker’s allowance, almost 90 will leave before they reach the Work programme. That core group of people—approximately 10 out of every 100—will end up on the Work programme. Those are the people whom we are trying to support, and it is a difficult task. I have talked about the length of the contract and how we are continually refining it. Our approach is about continual improvement; we have to work with it, monitor it, adapt it and improve it.
I can see that time is running short, and I must allow time for the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), to speak, so I will move on to answering the questions. The Committee Chair talked about the annual underspend being held back, but the system does not work like that. We have negotiated a sum of money, and the programme is about performance-related payment on results. We have used some of that money to look at new pilot schemes, to see how we can expand our provision to incorporate people who have had prison sentences, for example.
When we talk about the flexibility of the system, we have to understand the people we are talking about well. I hate using such words, but there has to be multi-segmentation or multi-differentiation. We have to look at health and other conditions, including attitudinal factors, and anything that holds people back. We are doing that, not only with people who have been in prison, but with those who have had addictions. We are also helping and working with them, which adds to what we are doing.
The improvements made since the report came out are key, and I must acknowledge the work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), whose changes have had a significant impact. Since the report came out in November 2012, the results of the adaptations he made, including the new pilots, can be seen in the numbers that are coming through. We have a set of numbers going back a bit more than a year, and the figures have quadrupled in that time, so there have been significant changes.
I want to pick up a couple of points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd). He mentioned the attachment fee, but there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is and what it is for. It was designed to provide cash flow in the early years to get businesses going and to support providers, but that money was only ever given on the basis of payment by results. There was therefore nothing that, as he would see it, could be moved round or taken elsewhere. I needed to state that, because that involved a fundamental misunderstanding about how the system works.
My hon. Friend is quite right that we in the coalition Government are doing the right things. He mentioned relations between employers, employees and the Government, and people must understand what we can do as the Government, what employers can do to provide jobs, and what I hope employees can do. We are actively engaged in a two-year Disability Confident campaign with 430 employers across the country, including 35 of the FTSE 100 companies. It involves asking what we can do, and we should all get involved with it. From the point of view of spending, people talk about the figure of £80 billion, and the purple pound or the disability pound. We should ask what companies can do, including with would-be employees and their families and the extended community. That is something we are looking at, and it is positive that 1.4 million new private sector jobs have been provided, as have 1 million new apprenticeships. It needs to be put on the record that everything my hon. Friend is doing in Eastbourne totally reflects what the coalition Government are doing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) mentioned a key point about how we can help people in north Wales who would not otherwise receive full support, and how we can ensure that we are not preventing people from receiving additional support. We are actively involved with and talking to the devolved Governments to see what can be done. The key factors are flexibility and engagement with employers, as well as getting segmentation to work, so that individuals’ particular needs are given support.
Another key factor is the new enterprise allowance and how it fits with the Work programme—a point that has been mentioned. It does work, although not exactly in the same way. There is flexibility in the Work programme, so support can be given by providers to encourage people to set up in business. I wanted to ensure that that was the case and, fortunately, because this is fundamentally about people, I have some examples. They both involve people called Emma, so if someone’s name is Emma and they are on the Work programme and want to set up a business, it looks as though they have a high chance of success. Emma King said that she had never thought about setting up in business before, but now has, having been supported by A4e. Her goal now is to get other people like her into work. Emma Thompson, whose home is in Anfield, has said that if she had not met Dawne, who helped her through the Work programme, she would not now have her own business and would not be on a totally different path, one on which she feels she has self-esteem and self-confidence and can look after herself.
Another key point made by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth was about people’s low esteem in starting-off or primary jobs, but in most instances the process is about getting promotion from those jobs, and the question is what we can do to get people through that process. Getting a job is the start of a journey, but getting a better or improved job is another. Some of the people we have worked with—including young men who have just got a child, and who have never worked before or never had a job—have some very positive stories about how they have got on the ladder, got through the process and got a good outcome through their own drive and the support of the Work programme.
I am painting some of the positive stories, and it is correct to do so. We appreciate that some things have not worked as well as they might have done, but we have been on a journey together. As I said, this is the biggest ever programme of its kind, and it has taken time, effort and energy. We have used the whole notion of transparency, and decided to have a black-box approach, because that would give flexibility to providers, particularly at the start of their journey, so that they could better understand people’s needs and see what they could do with the money. However, there are measurements, processes and monitoring within the system, and because we need to reach out to those who are hardest to help, there is also a payment structure so that the most difficult to support get the appropriate amount of money. All that is being developed at the moment.
We therefore take it fairly and squarely on the chin when we are asked whether the Work programme is working, and whether we are working with the hardest-to-reach people. We are now asking people and key providers to get back to us on which issues they found the most difficult, and to tell us what support we need to give them. Yes, a lot is being done, but there is still a lot to do.
The Work programme is not perfect, but it is a major step forward in supporting some of those who are hardest to help. I want to make sure that the programme reaches its full potential, and I am committed to fixing the bits that do not work. Many questions to me today have been about whether we are committed to doing that, and we certainly are. Another question raised was about culture and leadership. Transparency is key, as is bold ambition, hard work and determination to reach out to those who most need our help, and I give a commitment to those things today.