Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)Jobcentre Plus (Wales)
Chris Bryant Excerpts
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to make provision for the transfer to the Welsh Government of certain functions relating to the work of Jobcentre Plus offices in Wales; and for connected purposes.
The Bill’s aim is to devolve responsibility for elements of Jobcentre Plus’s work in Wales to the Welsh Government. I am grateful for the support I have received from Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, the Alliance party, the Liberal Democrats, the Green party and the Labour party.
The argument for the measure is straightforward. The Welsh Government have responsibility for education and training under the Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills portfolio, and for the economy under the Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science portfolio. They operate a large-scale programme of social inclusion in particularly deprived areas, one aim of which is to improve employability. Jobcentre Plus will work through the Work programme with large numbers of Welsh people who are looking for work, but the responsibility for that activity in Wales lies with the Government here. I think that getting unemployed people back to work would be more effective, better organised and co-ordinated, and that accountability would be much stronger, if that was the Welsh Government’s responsibility, working closely of course with the Government in London.
It would be up to the Welsh Government to determine how to organise matters, but elements of a possible model might be derived from Northern Ireland, where the Department for Employment and Learning works to promote learning and skills, to prepare people for work and to support the economy. Its objectives are to promote economic, social and personal development through high quality learning, research and skills training, and to help people into employment. It works with individuals to improve their skills and qualifications, with those who need support and guidance to progress their employment, including self-employment, and with businesses in the public and private sectors.
Some of the Department’s key activities include: enhancing the provision of learning and skills, including entrepreneurship, enterprise, management and leadership; increasing research and development, creativity and innovation; developing and maintaining a framework of employment rights and responsibilities, and, crucially, helping individuals acquire jobs, including through self-employment, and improving the links between employment programmes and skills development.
All that offers many elements that we could adopt in Wales to tailor a comprehensive employment service, better suited to the needs of our country. That need, I am sorry to say, is great.
I am glad that unemployment in Wales was lower in the last quarter, but it still stands at 115,000 people or 7.9%, with the United Kingdom level being 7.7%. The number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants increased in the last quarter by 1,700 to 72,000, and total employment was up at 1,349,000.
However, the number of economically inactive Welsh people stands at 480,000, including many older people, who find it particularly difficult to find a job. They represent 25.3% of the working-age Welsh population, compared with 23.3% for the UK as a whole. Most tellingly, 77,000 Welsh people have been without a job for 10 or more years. The need is indeed great.
My aim in the Bill is therefore to integrate better learning, skills and development and job finding, education and social action, enterprise and self-employment in Wales, all under the Welsh Government, to fashion them into a better organised and more coherent form. That change would help unemployed people build on their individual skills and find relevant and worthwhile employment that meets their needs and those of society. It would also help to promote Welsh business and enterprise, by working with the grain of the system of Welsh government in a simplified, one-stop model. Essentially, this is a common-sense matter of improving co-ordination and delivery, and of locating the task at the most local level where it can be best carried out.
I have concerns about the current system, and particularly about the Work programme. Currently, job seeking is all too often associated negatively in the public mind with claiming benefits. That creates a negative and often stigmatising view of the process, when it should be part of our wider contract between people and communities. We should assist in the provision of work, which allows people to pay taxes and contribute to the wider society. There is no reason why that negativity should be so, particularly if job seeking is linked with positive activities such as providing education and training, and enterprise and development. Job seeking could and should be viewed as positively as entrepreneurship is viewed.
Jobcentre staff do a difficult job in hard circumstances. It was difficult enough running the new deal in good times, but now times are very much harder. It is not simple or easy to find employment, especially for people who have been out of work for a long time and those who face a disability of some sort. We have many such people in Wales. People fear that, under the Work programme, some severely disadvantaged people will not be helped because there are insufficient funds to meet their more complex needs. The task in deprived areas will also be difficult, because there will be few job outcomes. People fear that such areas will be sidelined.
Ministers have said that the Work programme will tackle the endemic worklessness that has blighted so many communities for decades, but I fear that insufficient account has been taken of the differences between labour markets, the different conditions that businesses, especially small businesses, face, and the nature of education and training in Wales. In Wales, much of the expertise in such matters lies with the Welsh Government.
Furthermore, in Wales, the voluntary sector and the capacity of organisations to become subcontractors in the Work programme varies enormously. I have very competent and successful third sector employment organisations in my constituency, such as Agoriad and Antur Waunfawr, but in rural Wales in general we have a preponderance of voluntary bodies that do not employ professional staff. There must be doubts about the ability of some such organisations to participate.
Interestingly, Neil Lee, a senior economist at the Work Foundation, has pointed out that the
“Work programme is based on a national payment structure and does not take into account local and regional variations in labour demand…There is the danger that private contractors will focus on investing in places where they are more likely to get people into work to secure a return on investment.”
There are many such places in Wales, most notably the Rhondda, where I believe there is one job for every 120-odd people seeking it.
