Employment: Universal Jobmatch

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their plans for the Universal Jobmatch website.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

As I stated last week, our plans are to continue to make improvements to the Universal Jobmatch site based on feedback from employers, jobseekers and staff.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister not just a bit embarrassed that the official government job website has about a third of a million bogus jobs on it, such as “MI6 target elimination specialist” or “International courier for CosaNostra Holdings”? If the Government are anxious to tackle fraud, should they not put their house in order immediately?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there is a great deal of confusion around this. I am pleased to be able to straighten it out, because there has been a lot of misrepresentation. There is a small amount of fraud on the site, as there is on other sites. It is less than one in 1,000. We clear them off. This is a hugely successful site. It has more than 500,000 employers on it and nearly 6 million job searches a day. It has transformed the service of getting people back into work, which is of course now at record levels.