Welfare Reform Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I would like to join my thanks to those made this afternoon, and to speak briefly about the importance of involving employers, about the governance of Jobcentre Plus, and briefly about housing.

I thank the Minister for the help of the civil servants. There were a number of very helpful briefing meetings which were most welcome, and I am sure this will continue.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, raised the issue of involving employers, and if I might I will give an example of how effective that can be in terms of reaching the most hard to reach people out there.

There is a programme, started by the National Grid utility about 10 years ago, led by their chairman, Sir John Parker, which employs young people from within the criminal justice system, and has reduced the reoffending rates among those young people from 70 per cent to below 7 per cent. National Grid has brought in a number of other partners, such as the engineering firm Skanska and another engineering firm Morrisons, and other businesses have been joining in such as software businesses. Because this has come from businesses they have been able to build trust among other employees, and while it would seem most unlikely that many of these companies would wish to employ people from the criminal justice system, in fact they found that because they have made the effort to recruit these young men—they have given them the training and the promise of employing them if they complete the training—those young men have become loyal employees, and have actually risen quickly up the managerial ladders of these companies. They are filling a gap, because these companies have an aging workforce and they need young people to enter their firms.

That is a very important point, and it brings me again to think about whether employers are firmly enough plugged in to the governance of Jobcentre Plus. I hope to table an amendment later in the Bill which will look at how one might perhaps involve more of the stakeholders in the running of Jobcentre Plus. I will not expand too much on this now, but if you look at the example of the Youth Justice Board, which has proved so successful since its introduction about 10 years ago you will see that, its chairman is a former chief executive of a local authority, so she can go to chief executives and directors of children’s services in local authorities and explain to them how important it is that they provide employment and find housing for young people who leave young offender institutions if they are not to reoffend, cost the taxpayer huge sums of money, and ruin their own lives. So I will bring that amendment later.

I am certainly very concerned about housing, but I am grateful for the signals from the Government, who listen very carefully to concerns, and I look forward to that debate. I will sit down at this point, but I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for allowing this opportunity for a broader debate at the beginning of the Bill.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on a couple of the speeches that have been made. The way the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, introduced the whole of this absolutely explained my frustration and irritation at the short amount of time any of us have been given to do anything at all with this Bill. The noble Lord’s hard look at the use of language was very illustrative too, and that has of course been added to as far as things like social tax are concerned and other points that have already been made.

Above all, I hope that it will help us, because the atmosphere has not been particularly good regarding the whole of the way in which this has been arrived at between the usual channels. To have a little debate like this, setting the scene, will I hope influence how we all approach what we are going to be dealing with. I will leave it at that, but I have been very impressed, let me put it like that, particularly by what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood has said, and by the way he set the scene for the opening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for that. I am at a slight loss at how to respond, in case it is an “Am I beating my wife?” question. I am getting some help from the Box. The universal credit will be built on a computer system, or rather a pair of medium-sized computer systems. We have a careful introduction process. One of the options we had, if I can explain it in layman’s terms, was that we could have picked everyone up electronically out of current systems, moved them over and dropped them into the universal credit, with effectively a Big Bang approach—go for it.

That would have been the conceptual framework in which the noble Baroness asked her question. We are not doing that. We are moving people into the system over an extended period. We will start with the flow in October 2013, and then as we get the system working we will have some managed migrations over a four-year period. It is not the Big Bang approach—where you wait for the thing to go, and then you throw everyone in—that one might envisage. It is a much more considered, steady, incremental approach. Indeed, we are developing the actual IT by using elements and units of what we have much more incrementally than it might seem from outside. That is one of the things that I will try to show noble Lords when we have the presentation; indeed, it will be a wider presentation for all parliamentarians. I see that a few in the Room may be very interested.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I am trying to visualise in my mind what you are doing with your groups. What worries me is the older group, who may not be quite as alert to the modern methods of IT and may find it not as easy to move around and get the right information via an IT system. It would be helpful if you could answer that point, or take it into account when setting up your demonstration.

[Lord Freud]

Yes. Picking up on that point from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, one of the most complicated areas in practice is not the development of the IT system; it is the interface between the user and that system. We must develop, and are developing, a sophisticated set of gateways. There are a lot of issues to get right surrounding identity assurance, ease of use—which we are doing a lot of work on—and where you go to get access when you do not have broadband in your home or do not necessarily understand how to use programs. Getting that help right and balanced is something that we are spending a lot of time and energy on. I accept the noble Baroness’s point: that is one of the key issues to get right.