Employment: Universal Jobmatch

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, Universal Jobmatch has revolutionised the service of Jobcentre Plus. It is a transformative service. We have many people registered on it on a paperless basis. Half a million employers are on that service. As I said, we monitor it the whole time. We are now looking at 179 employers who may be in breach of our conditions and will suspend them if they prove in breach. I can assure noble Lords that no jobseeker will be sanctioned for not applying for a job that does not exist.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, this website is crucial to people seeking to find a job, and many tens of thousands of people have found jobs as a result of it, but obviously there are concerns about people’s personal information and the security of it. What action has been taken against hackers, particularly those who seek to spread individuals’ personal information in their CVs to people to whom they have not applied for jobs?

[Lord Freud]

We have a thorough communication exercise to jobseekers to make sure that they look after their information online, just as anyone else needs to be careful with their information online, and we are currently looking to enhance our service through Universal Jobmatch to make sure that we do not have this kind of problem.