Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to her Department’s press release entitled, New jobs mission to get 500,000 into work, dated 27 January 2022, what targets her Department has put in place for the Way to work campaign; in what way she is measuring the performance of that campaign; what the evidential basis was for proceeding with the design of that campaign; and if she will make a statement.

I refer the honourable member to the answer given to PQ4709 for the number of movements into work during the Way to Work campaign as of 15 May.

On the 26 January 2022, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions launched ‘Way to Work’, a campaign across Great Britain to help 500,000 people into employment by the end of June 2022.

We are building on the infrastructure established through our Kickstart Scheme to work more closely with employers, to bring them into Jobcentres and move claimants into work more quickly. We are providing more time for new claimants with their Work Coach and delivering a renewed focus on moving claimants into work through more rigorously applying agreements made in claimant commitments. We are also using data to ensure that we are flexible and adaptable in our delivery. This means that we are collecting data that is relevant, effective and that allows us to monitor performance in a timely way so as to assess what is working.

Our ambition for 500,000 movements into work was developed in recognition of the 1.2 million vacancies in the wider economy (now 1.3 million vacancies), as well as the 1.6 million people searching for work within the Universal Credit caseload. It was based on historical performance in previous years over the same period covered by the Way to Work campaign (February to June) and included modelling based on enhanced delivery once Way to Work improvements have been applied.