Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to use his Department's machine learning skills recommendation prototype on the gov.uk Find a Job website.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The DWP does not have any plan to use the skills recommendation prototype with Find a Job.
We recognise that some jobseekers do need additional information to support them identifying the skills they need in the labour market. We provide this online through Job Help (https://jobhelp.campaign.gov.uk), which includes support on identifying transferrable skills.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish a list of which benefit applications are (a) paper-based and (b) digital.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The answer on each DWP benefit is readily available via Gov.uk including advice on eligibility.
Check benefits and financial support you can get - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish (a) a list of the 20 Jobcentres trialing the use of artificial intelligence and (b) the evaluation of the trial once concluded.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
(a) The Job Matching Trial began in March 2022 and claimants joined until the end of August 2022 in the following 20 Jobcentre sites:
Blyth
Blyth 2 (Bridge House)*
Chester
Chester Foregate Street*
Edinburgh North Bridge*
Edinburgh Waverley Mall*
Exeter
Exeter The Depot, Belgrave Road*
High Riggs
Huddersfield
Huddersfield Unit 2, Trinity Street*
Huntingdon
Leith
Maidstone
Maidstone Lower Boxley Road*
Newark
Rusholme
Manchester Mosley Street*
Stafford
Stafford Greengate Street*
Note: * indicates a temporary Jobcentre. In most cases, where there is more than 1 Jobcentre in a town / city, the trial was delivered by both the main Jobcentre offices and the temporary Jobcentres. Temporary Jobcentres opened as part of the department’s direct response to the impacts on the labour market of the covid-19 pandemic, to rapidly introduce additional Jobcentre Capacity.
(b) The department is in the process of evaluating and quality assuring the results from this test.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department uses natural language processing to analyse communications from claimants.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP uses natural language processing to analyse communications with our customers via Telephony.
This includes Speech Analytics, Call Routing and Call Transcription. All of this is to improve the customer experience and assist our customers in accessing the services within the department.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the total number of young people aged 16 to 24 on Universal Credit with (a) limited capability for work and (b) limited capability for work and work-related activity was in (i) 2021-22 and (ii) 2022-23.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The latest available information on the number of people on Universal Credit at the second Thursday of the month, by stage of UC Health and age, from April 2019 to March 2023, is published and can be found in the ‘UC Health Caseload’ dataset on Stat-Xplore.
Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department spent on the Youth Employment Programme in each financial year since it was launched; and how much his Department is forecast to spend on the Youth Employment Programme in (a) 2023-24 and (b) 2024-25.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not collated centrally and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what support is available to young jobseekers in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group who are referred to a Youth Hub which is not available to those accessing services through their local Jobcentre.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Youth Hubs are part of the wider DWP Youth Offer. Youth Hubs are based in partner premises across Great Britain and bring together employment support from a Jobcentre Plus work coach and place-based wrap around support from local partners to help young people into work. The wider support offered in a Youth Hub will be dependent on local needs. Employability support to build confidence and motivation, access to training and advice on debt, housing and mental health are examples of the enhanced offer some Youth Hubs are providing.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of the people in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group were aged between 16 and 24 in total in financial year (a) 2021-22 and (b) 2022-23.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
In total, there were 790,000 16 to 24 year olds in the Intensive Work Search group in 2021/22 and 570,000 in 2022/23.
Notes:
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of using artificial intelligence to help job seekers find employment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As in many other aspects of the economy, artificial intelligence is now affecting job seeking and employers’ recruitment. DWP is already working to understand the challenges and opportunities Artificial Intelligence presents.
In 2022 DWP launched our Job Matching Pilot to test and learn how new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, might support jobseekers in all stages of planning, searching and applying for jobs.
We will continue to monitor this rapidly developing area and the department will consider opportunities for Artificial Intelligence and other technologies to better support jobseekers, alongside help from our Jobcentres, work coaches, partners and our digital services, including DWPs own Find a Job and Job Help.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the (a) planned workforce and (b) budget is for the Intelligence Automation Garage.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The goal of The Intelligent Automation Garage (IAG) is to develop standardised governance and best practice for uses of automations. In terms of planned workforce, we have a team of 80 people who work within the Intelligent Automation Garage. The current contracts value is £10.5m over the length of those agreements already in place.