Young Offenders: Employment and Training

Lord Freud Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I join other Peers in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, for raising this important issue. I also thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions. Young offenders face multiple barriers in accessing employment, training and jobs on release from prison. If we are to tackle these problems and take effective steps to reduce reoffending, there has to be a co-ordinated response across government departments. Since May 2010, the Government have led positive change on how we tackle the causes of crime to reduce reoffending rates, as a number of noble Lords spelt out. The Government are committed to offering young unemployed people the opportunity to access high quality training relevant to the labour market so that they can gain the skills they need for sustainable employment and enable them to progress in a learning and work environment.

I will do my best to answer as many of the points put to me as possible, but I suspect that I will not get through them all in the limited time available. Before I do so, I will go through some of the steps that DWP is implementing to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, who looked at the programmes she liked, to try to explain that what we have replaced them with are in many cases doing the job rather better. Since last April, Jobcentre Plus managers and advisers have been given more flexibility to tailor support to claimants and local market needs. To support this, Jobcentre Plus has introduced a suite of measures bringing together communities, the voluntary sector and employers to help people get back to work. That support is complemented by the Get Britain Working measures: the new enterprise allowance supports those looking to start their own business; work clubs help claimants to share skills and experiences; the Work Together programme helps claimants to develop skills through volunteering; work experience is particularly important because it enables young claimants to get a placement with a local business; and finally a range of sector-based work academies which offer pre-employment training and work experience placements.

We added to that in April this year the Youth Contract, providing an additional £1 billion of support for young unemployed people over the next three years. The Youth Contract builds on existing support to provide young people with more intensive adviser support and work experience, as well as providing employers with wage incentives and apprenticeship incentives to encourage them to recruit young people. Within that total, £150 million of new support is directed at the most disengaged 16 and 17 year-olds to help them get into sustained learning, an apprenticeship or a job with training. In addition, we have launched a new innovation fund of £30 million over three years for social investment projects of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, would, I am sure, have his eye on in terms of providing opportunities. These projects aim to support disadvantaged young people and those at risk of disadvantage, with a particular focus on those aged 14 and over. We have completed the first round of commissioning for the projects and we are now looking at the second round.

Apprenticeships are right at the heart of the Government’s drive to equip people of all ages with the skills that employers need to prosper and compete. We want to make it as simple as possible for employers to take on apprentices, and we want advanced and higher level apprenticeships to become the level to which learners and employers aspire.

I am sure that all noble Lords are aware that last year we introduced the Work Programme, the biggest single payment-by-results programme in this country and possibly anywhere else. In response to the inquiry of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, we introduced a feature to ensure that all offenders leaving custody are given immediate support through the Work Programme, on the proviso that they claim jobseeker’s allowance. So it is that group. Of the total of 80,000 leaving, 30,000 are in that category. I can also confirm that when we move to universal credit, the effect will be much wider. Not only can prisoners get on to the benefit system in prison, they are then picked up on day one. As the noble Baroness pointed out, that is a wonderful development.

Is that money enough? That is a good question. We will find out. It can be supplemented by the apprenticeship and employment incentives structures, so that is not all the money that is going to those youngsters. The noble Baroness was concerned that there would be parking after a period; it does not work quite like that. If you get a person into a job within two years, they are sustained well beyond the initial two-year period. You are not locked in to that two-year period; you have two years to start them on the process.

I will now try to pick up on as many other questions as I possibly can. There was an enormous number, so I will not cover them all. Where I have not been able to cover them, I will write.

Many of the questions surrounded my noble friend Lady Linklater’s jingle of a roof, a relationship, and a job, and looking at how one achieves that. When we look at the schools agenda, both the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, talked about the Youth Justice Board which supported the establishment of seven resettlement consortia which aim to provide a co-ordinated approach across local authorities for all young people leaving custody, so that they can access the services that they need to help prevent them from re-offending. Each of these consortia engages with the third sector and private providers through national and local organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, pointed out.

In addition, the Ministry of Justice is now working with the Department for Education to take forward the commitment in the cross-government Ending Gang and Youth Violence report to explore ways to improve education provision for young people in and released from the secure estate.

The result of the review, Making Prisons Work: Skills for Rehabilitation, which came out in May 2011, means that a refreshed curriculum is being introduced in prisons, and there will be a strong focus on providing training and access to apprenticeships to prepare prisoners for employment. We are increasing collaboration between Jobcentre Plus, the National Careers Service, probation, colleges and other training providers to make sure that they are referred to the appropriate training and work opportunities.

The work in the private sector that my noble friend Lady Linklater talked about is based on the Jobcentre Plus provision of about 180 advisers working in prison, providing help and advice to offenders. Clearly, that ties in with early referral to the Work Programme.

With regard to some of the further measures that the Government are taking, the Home Office has committed £18 million of funding for 2012-13 to support the police, local agencies and the voluntary sector to tackle knife, gun and gang-related violence and prevent young people entering a cycle of crime. An Ending Gang and Youth Violence Team is now place, with the support of a virtual network of more than 100 advisers.

Picking up the concern raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, on housing benefit for under-25s—the “roof” in the jingle—I remind her that that is not government policy, as she suggested; it is a topic of debate at this stage and no decisions have yet been made. I should also point out that were such a decision to be made, the issue that was being discussed was around automatic entitlement to housing; it does not necessarily mean that the most vulnerable groups would be excluded from such housing.

My noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott raised the issue of commissioning. Coincidentally, I have been taking a deep interest in that lately and have been meeting some of the financial groups considering it. She has put her finger precisely on the issue: we need a group that organises the structure between government and providers, a commissioning body or bodies to do that and get it to work well.

I must conclude. Punishment of offending behaviour upholds the values of law and order that all civilised society is based on. We know that work is a primary factor in reducing reoffending. The Government are working hard to ensure that young offenders emerge better equipped to become part of law-abiding communities and better able to reintegrate into society and build the skills necessary to have useful and productive lives.

House adjourned at 7.32 pm.