Employment: Work Programme

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we monitor very closely what is happening within each of the prime provider contracts, and we have introduced—I think for the first time by any Government, in this country certainly—a process where the prime providers look after their supply chains, which we call the Merlin Standard. That is the main protection for subcontractors to make sure they are treated appropriately.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, when travelling the country with the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, a frequent complaint was that the Work Programme did not have any subregional targets. For example, if you had a couple of wards with very bad unemployment, which could potentially be a reason for future disturbances, a contractor could actually meet all its targets by cherry picking people from other areas who were easier to move into work, and leaving that area untouched. Can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing about that?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the way that we are trying to reduce the cherry picking, which has been natural in all of the programmes that have been introduced, is to try to fine-tune the financing so that providers are incentivised to help the hardest to help. That is why providers can earn up to £14,000 to help the very hardest to help. If we see problems developing, in that we have not priced accurately, we will need to look at pricing structures, because that is the way to solve the problem.