Jobs and Social Security

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The motion suggests that people would have been better off without the Work programme and with no extra support, but the support it provides is valuable and not entirely different from that provided in previous programmes. Payment by results, which I will come to, provides a far greater incentive to providers to get people back into work and, most importantly, not just to start a job but to find a sustainable position where they can remain for a long time. That is a key part of the programme.

The Work programme also fixed the problem of providers going for low-hanging fruit and getting back into work those who could do so most easily, while not placing quite the right focus on those who were more challenging. Remuneration for the Work programme means there are far more incentives to focus on the harder parts of the cohort.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), I have visited providers in my constituency—A4e and Ingeus—and I have seen their work and how they go about it. Importantly, somebody does not come through the door on the first day and start applying for jobs on the second; there is a long period of working out a person’s needs, what support they have, the training they need, and building their confidence, before they start applying for jobs. One does not expect providers to get people into work in the early months of their referral, which is why there is a problem with the statistics. We are looking at numbers of people who have been in work for six months of a programme that has existed for 13 months during a double-dip recession. The providers might not have even tried to get some of those people into work at the start of the programme—it is not a fair measure. Providers in my constituency are doing great work and the support they provide is valuable. I commend them on that, rather than saying that their work is worthless or worse than nothing.

No one would pretend that yesterday’s results were anything other than disappointing and concerning. We all wish that progress was quicker, and the whole House wants to get people back into work to improve the quality of their lives and for the sake of the taxpayer. However, the Work programme is a seven-year programme that gives individuals a two-year programme, and it is unfair to judge it on the basis of its first-year performance. We should look in a year’s time when the first cohort has spent two years in the programme. Let us look at the outcomes after the full two years, and see how many people are in work at that point.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is entirely right that the figures are disappointing. I am sure that he, like me, has had successful cases in his surgery. Two people who came to my surgery went through training schemes under the previous Administration—one of them had been unemployed for eight years—but found a job through the Work programme, so it is having an effect in individual cases. It is certainly making an impact in my constituency, as I am sure it is doing in his.

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend reinforces the point that it is utterly unreasonable to say that the scheme is worse than doing nothing.

Providers who cover my constituency have told me that they had only a short time to prepare before they started work. They said they had not worked in the east midlands before, so had not only to find staff, but to build links and form relationships with employers to convince them to take people in more challenging situations. Expecting brilliant results at the start of the programme does not work.

The latest data show that 29% of first referrals from June 2011 have now had a job start, and that 37% of under-25s have had a job start. Those are not terrible results; they are encouraging. In Amber Valley, the results are better than average: 4.2% of those referred have met the target of spending six months in a job. I accept that that is less than the 5.5% target, but it is well ahead of the national average. Amber Valley is generally performing well. Total jobseeker’s allowance claimants are down 21% since the election, and JSA claimants under 25 are down 24%. Claimants per vacancy are down from 6.2 to 1.5. That is not a disastrous situation, but a sign that things are going in the right direction. I sincerely hope it continues—[Interruption.]