Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what progress has been made in the merger of Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service.

We are reforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new service across Great Britain that will enable everyone to access support to find good, meaningful work, and support to help them to progress in work, including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers. We will design, develop, and test options for the new service in partnership with key stakeholders as we move into policy design and delivery.

As a first step to better integrate employment support and careers advice in England, we will launch a pathfinder in early 2025 to test more enhanced collaboration between Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service. The department has also worked with the Department for Education to put in place a new agreement on data sharing between the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus in England. This will be used to encourage closer co-operation in the collective delivery of jobs and careers guidance for adults and promote a simpler and more streamlined process for our customers. Joining up the support a customer receives from both a work coach and national careers advisor can remove unnecessary repetition, link up advice and ensure holistic support for the customer to help improve outcomes.

We currently have two large scale trials in progress contributing towards our vision for the new jobs and careers service. The first, to test providing support for people by telephone and video as well as face to face appointments. The second, to test whether meeting unemployed people less frequently in a Jobcentre would have an impact on their work outcomes and whether this approach is more beneficial for particular groups.