Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the situation that he has outlined.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Minister’s predecessor made sure that nobody could find out what was really happening on the Work programme, and he has had his reward.

I warmly welcome the new Minister to his position. He can now make a clean breast of all this. I hope that he will heed the CBI’s call, made in July—after the announcement to which he has just referred—for Work programme providers to be allowed to tell local authorities everything about how they are doing. The CBI is right: the Work programme will not fulfil its potential unless that happens.

[Mr Hoban]

First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his congratulations; he and I have worked together from different sides of the Dispatch Box before, during his previous incarnation at the Treasury.

We have said that we will publish information. The first official statistics on Work outcomes will be published in November this year. We are keen to see providers, local authorities and other partners working closely together and using the available data to develop the right response. We are seeing success stories—such as in Barking recently, where there has been that local collaboration.

[Mr Hoban]

The Secretary of State should pipe down. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State should pipe down.

I say to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that there are success stories. We will publish the full data in November and he should wait for that.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful for what the Minister has said. I hope that he will pay very careful attention to what the CBI has called for. I am delighted to hear that we finally have a date for the publication of the first Work programme job outcome data, almost 18 months after the programme started. Will he, unlike his predecessor, accept that needless secrecy holds back public services such as the Work programme?

[Mr Hoban]

The right hon. Gentleman should remember that this is a two-year programme. Payments are made after six months of sustained work activity based on work outcomes. We need to build up the evidence to see how effective the Work programme is. I am confident that the statistics to be published later this year will demonstrate its effectiveness. It is a vital part of the work that we need to do make sure that we get more people into employment.