“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, and I do not need persuading of this. One of the most inspiring things I have seen in the DWP—I did not start it, so I can say this—has been work with prison work coaches. They are based inside prisons, working with those who are preparing to leave, to try to make sure that we can get them into a job. I am working closely with my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, and our departments are working together to try to find the best ways in which we can ease the transition from prisons into work. When we look at the levels of recidivism, which are staggeringly high—never mind what happens in young offender institutions—we know that, if we cannot crack this, it will not only be a potentially lifelong challenge for an individual, which they will never really overcome, but a huge problem for the state, both in the loss of opportunity for that individual and their talents and in terms of future crime. My noble friend raises a really important point.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. Black and Asian women, particularly Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, have high unemployment rates and find it very difficult to get back into work after 15 or 20 years of caring responsibilities; for example, they may not have the digital skills they need. What are the Government doing to get these women into work? Are the apprenticeship schemes aimed at returners to work reaching these groups of women?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises an important point and I pay tribute to her work with the Muslim Women’s Network and with so many in her community. There is a range of support out there and I have seen some good examples. On Employability Day, I spoke to one programme which was doing fantastic work with women from a number of minority communities who were returning to work, or maybe had never been in work, after their children had grown up. They had very particular barriers and the scheme was designed to focus on them.

One of our challenges is finding a way to get people not only into work, which is really important, but to develop in work. I am sure the noble Baroness will know this better than I do, but if you look at the distribution of people who are in jobs at national minimum wage or national living wage, there are overwhelmingly more young people and older people, but also Bangladeshi people and Pakistani people are much more likely to be in low-paid jobs. The one thing we know from the evidence is that if you start at a low pay, you stay in low pay—it is very hard to break out of it. One of the challenges in the new system, which we are determined to get right, as we develop the new national jobs and careers service, is: how do we help people, whatever their background, to have the opportunity to get in, but also to get on and have ambitions?