Jobcentre Plus

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing this debate.

Jobcentre Plus performs a crucial public service, and I put on record my thanks to the staff who are coping with immense changes to the welfare system. Many Jobcentre Plus staff are doing an excellent job in demanding circumstances and are dedicated to improving the lives of the people they serve. Nevertheless, as we have heard clearly this afternoon, there are undoubtedly concerns about service quality, claimant experience and outcomes. There are also questions about staff morale and whether Jobcentre Plus has the resources and capacity it needs.

The major reforms with which Jobcentre Plus staff are grappling—such as universal credit and Universal Jobmatch—have been beset by systems problems, resulting in poor service to claimants and major delays. Although more people are moving into employment and Ministers like to claim that welfare reforms are the reason, people are not moving into work and out of poverty, and in any event there is considerable dispute about the contribution of welfare reforms to the rising employment rate.

Last year, the then Work and Pensions Committee carried out a review of Jobcentre Plus that looked at some of the major challenges it faces and how it is coping with them. The Committee made a number of suggestions for improvements, on which I hope the Minister will be able to update us today. Perhaps I can start with universal credit, which Ministers have claimed will transform the prospects of those who are out of work. The project is in total disarray. Today, some 65,000 people are on universal credit; when it was first introduced, we were told that 1 million people would be on it by April 2014. That is less than 1%—

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Order. I am afraid that that is outwith the scope of the debate.

[Kate Green]

I accept your ruling on that, Mr Williams, but universal credit has of course been argued to be the tool by which Jobcentre Plus will be able to move people into employment. Clearly, if the universal credit programme is way behind in the number of claimants it is supporting, it cannot be fulfilling its function and Jobcentre Plus cannot be taking advantage of it in order to move people into work. The problem with universal credit is that it is shrouded in secrecy. We have not seen the business case that would show us whether it is indeed going to be an effective tool for Jobcentre Plus staff to use to fulfil their role of supporting people into work.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) has recently written to the Secretary of State with some questions, and I want to ask the Minister the same ones. Will she ask the National Audit Office to publish quarterly progress reports on universal credit, to be laid before Parliament, and will she publish the full business case and plan? Will she also explain how Jobcentre Plus staff are being supported with the roll-out of universal credit?

As we have heard, Jobcentre Plus has the important role of supporting people into employment and, if they are further from the labour market—perhaps they have been out of work for a long time—routing them on to more specialist support programmes. There are a whole range of interventions under the “Get Britain Working” banner, and for the long-term unemployed there is the opportunity to be routed on to the Work programme or, for some disabled people, the Work Choice programme. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn was right to observe that those programmes have not often performed well for jobseekers and those experiencing long-term or youth unemployment—particularly long-term youth unemployment.

That is why Labour proposed a compulsory jobs guarantee so that every young person who was unemployed for more than a year would be guaranteed a job, education or training, or the opportunity to undertake proper work experience. That would be modelled on the future jobs fund that we introduced in 2008, or the more successful programme in Wales, which, as my hon. Friend highlighted, draws on factors that make for a successful labour market programme: it is commissioned locally; it involves local authorities, specialist local organisations and, crucially, local employers; and it is designed around the needs of the local labour market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is right. We can never stand still on this issue and it is important that we learn the lessons as we go forward. On that basis, I would welcome Members’ views.

To conclude, Mr Williams—

[Hywel Williams (in the Chair)]

Order.