Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Smith Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am pleased to say that there are 80,000 fewer people on out-of-work benefits today than there were at the time of the general election. It is worth the Opposition noting that as regards youth unemployment, when we take into account all the policy changes that have taken place, and if we strip out the ways in which the previous Government hid people and kept them off the unemployment register, youth unemployment is down as well.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

T3. A constituent has contacted me about a Work programme placement that is both unsupervised and offers no training. Is not the Minister worried that Work programme providers, such as A4e, deem that satisfactory?

[Chris Grayling]

If the Work programme providers do not deliver the right support, they will not be successful and they will not be paid. That is the joy of the system that we have put in place. The previous Government put hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds up front into the pockets of providers. We make the providers put their own money up front in a commitment to deliver support to the long-term unemployed, get them into work and help them stay there.