Informal Employment and Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council

Lord Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The informal meeting of Employment and Social Policy Ministers took place on 7-8 July 2011 in Sopot, Poland. The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), who is responsible for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs, represented the United Kingdom.

The theme for this informal meeting was active labour market policies and reconciliation of work and family life. On the first day of the meeting, the presidency invited views on how to increase the effectiveness of pro-active employment policies through greater competition. The Commission stressed the need to improve further the efficiency of public employment services. For the United Kingdom, my hon. Friend, delivered a keynote speech explaining how, in the UK, we are using competition to help reduce the numbers of people on-out-of work benefits. He highlighted that the recently introduced Work programme aimed to help those furthest from the labour market, including providing support for people moving off incapacity benefit and those coming from the most challenging backgrounds. This support would be provided by specialist private and voluntary sector providers, rewarded on a payment-by-results approach. The funding for this programme would come from savings generated as well as from the European Social Fund.

On the second day, there were three simultaneous workshops aimed at sharing national experiences covering: reconciliation of work and family life; raising the retirement age; and solidarity between generations. The United Kingdom chose to participate in the workshop discussing reconciliation of work and family life. My hon. Friend, described the success of the right to request flexible working and how the Government plan to extend this to all employees. He further described how the United Kingdom Government are consulting on changes to its parental leave system to make it more flexible by allowing greater sharing of leave between partners and for leave to be taken in blocks rather than a continuous period. Other member states described their own domestic priorities. In conclusion, the presidency once again underlined the value of sharing experiences and stated that its family ministerial conference on 21 October would build on these discussions by focusing on reconciliation of work and family life issues including the pregnant workers directive.