Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 69)
MONDAY 26 APRIL 1999
MR CHRIS
BARNHAM, MR
LEE BROWN,
MS SUE
DUNCAN AND
MR JEREMY
GROOMBRIDGE
60. To give you an idea where I am heading,
one of my concerns about the list you have got here is, for example,
there is no reflection of London, apart from Walthamstow which
is quite outside the main stream of London. For example, the problems
we have in London include the very high staff turnover in the
agencies, the much greater dependency on housing benefit because
rent is so much higher, the way in London we have pockets of deprivation.
Obviously one of the great strengths of the City is we have pockets
of deprivation cheek by jowl with more affluent areas which often
distorts the way that is approached for all sorts of benefit purposes.
You have the huge range of ethnicity, which shows itself in problems
including language, asylum seekers, you have got problems which
that causes within ethnic mixes in the area, we have language
difficulties that come up with those problems as well. Karen Buck
mentioned earlier on the problem of homelessness and temporary
accommodation. All these are very important factors which to my
mind, having previously been a councillor in Inner London now
representing an outer London constituency as an MP, are the factors
of the client which may make them difficult to place through Jobseeker's
or the other benefits. If those are not reflected in your pool
within the pilot areas I question to what extent that evaluation
is going to be valid. If you have effectively picked areas where
you have Jobseeker's, lone parents and disabled not having that
multiplicity of additional overlay problems I question to what
extent that evaluation is going to be valid for wider areas?
(Ms Duncan) If I have understood you
correctly, I think I can answer your point. The areas as a whole
reflect a balance of types and the different levels of unemployment
so it is not just the fact that there are enough people for us
to be reliable, we are looking at other things too. Inevitably
when you have got a number of areas to select there is only a
limited number of variables you can look at and still come out
with a workable scheme so I agree there are other things we could
have put into the list as things we are selecting from.
61. I do not want to pursue this too far. To
come back to my original point, are you putting the cart before
the horse? You have decided these are the benefits you want to
monitor rather these are the clients you want to help. What I
am trying to identify in that little list are people who are potentially
particular disadvantaged when it comes to trying to get back into
work whereas the list you have given me is more focused at the
benefit end rather than the client end. You find you have a list
of benefits, this is how it works against those benefits rather
than how does it keep helping these particular disadvantaged groups
get back into work.
(Ms Duncan) I think that will come in
at the later stages of the evaluation. Inevitably within those
client groups there will be people of varying levels of disadvantage.
62. If you have not got the numbers how can
you do the comparison?
(Ms Duncan) I think we probably will
have the numbers given the range of areas that we have.
63. That is what I am questioning. I am yet
to be convinced that the range of areas we have got actually are
sufficient to replicate that list of particularly hard to place
criteria. For example, this is where I come back to my problem,
there is no reflection as an example of inner city London which
has all those criteria as a multiplicity and even outer London
areas, such as my own area, where we have got schools with 40
or 50 first languages spoken in them, as an example, when they
are coming through at the other end. Those are the sorts of difficulties
we have to cope with. Karen Buck mentioned earlier on the tremendous
problems of homelessness in terms of accommodation in central
London. Because we are in the same Employment Service area and
we have got the same employment district and we are dealing with
the same people and we have been consulted on the same issues
together, I know from the feedback I have had the huge problems
there are to place people who are homeless or people in temporary
accommodation who are feeding through the New Deal process. I
am questioning whether this is going to produce a meaningful evaluation
of those problems.
(Mr Brown) We have Lea Roding which whilst
not inner London is one of the suburbs towards the east of London
which has some of the characteristics you have mentioned because
of its location and the level of staff turnover in the agencies.
It also has large ethnic minority populations around places like
Ilford and the particular issues there. The difficulty is when
you look at the other criteria that we needed to use, the types
of things you have mentioned that you would like to explore that
complex range of social issues and problems tends to attract other
pilots so that there is a range of pilots going on in many of
those locations. It would, therefore, be difficult to distinguish
what the Single Work-
focused Gateway was achieving compared to the achievement
of another set of measures that was taking place.
64. When you get into a national roll out that
is going to be position anyway and my concern therefore is when
you say one of the criteria we are looking for is areas where
there are good joint working arrangements between the various
agencies, how typical is that compared to areas where there are
not, effectively I suppose wrapping all this up, giving you a
relatively easy job than the real problems you have got to crack?
(Mr Brown) If only I had given myself
a relatively easy problem. It has not seemed that way. The areas
we chose finally when you looked at the balance and weight of
each of the criteria meant that in a number of locations there
were not fully formed relationships between the various partners
that needed to be brought together. The other aspect of it was
that there were complex social problems in other locations that
we will be able to explore in the later variants that we move
on to. A place like Leeds has the inner city problems that you
have mentioned and the variety of ethnic groups who will be going
through the Single Work-focused Gateway needing particular types
of help. We have had to get a range of labour markets that reflected
as broadly as possible as well as in specific instances the Great
Britain picture.
(Mr Barnham) To pick up the point you made about national
roll out, if there were to be a national approach on the Single
Gateway model, I think the point is more about evaluation than
implementation. Of course, we are not saying that the Single Gateway
conflicts with a range of other initiatives. Indeed, you could
have an approach like this alongside other programmes to help
particular disadvantaged groups like the New Deal. The point is,
if you have particular pilots in one place and not in the other,
you are trying to evaluate the effect those pilots have in order
to make decisions. We are also trying separately to evaluate the
effect of the Single Gateway in order to make decisions. It is
for the purity of the evaluation, not that you could not run the
programmes alongside each other.
65. I understand that point, but if all the
areas of greatest deprivation have all sorts of other projects
going on anyway that then must raise questions about the validity
of your exercise in transferability to the areas of greatest deprivation
in the conclusions that you may come to. I can see why you are
trying to get a pure comparison but that in itself may be perhaps
self-defeating in that the real test for this process is not in
the areas which by definition I suppose have not had the attention
so far. The real test for the project will be in those areas of
greatest deprivation, the extent to which they can complement
other projects that may be going on.
(Ms Duncan) Perhaps I can come back here
because I would like to reassure you. I accept what you say but
within the areas where we are conducting the evaluation those
problems will be identified. For example, in the operational evaluation,
if those cases take a particularly long time or are particularly
difficult we will pick that up. If there are particular cases
where advisers find that they need particular skills, we will
pick that up in the interviews with staff—with personal
adviser and registration and orientation staff. We will also pick
that up from the client survey where we will be asking people
if they felt that they had got the help they needed and were treated
in the way they would expect to be treated. We will pick up those
clues which will guide a larger scale initiative should it go
national.
Mrs Humble
66. Can I go back to the beginning in a way
and just clarify a few things about objectives? The Government
has listed its highly commendable objectives for the Single Work-focused
Gateway but have you set targets and, if you have, what sort of
targets have you assigned to each of the stated objectives?
(Mr Groombridge) I think we need
to understand that there are already targets in the agencies that
are dealing with the Gateway. We are not setting new targets for
the purpose of these pilots because they are, by definition, pilots
and we are trying to understand therefore what is going on in
them and that is why we have the process of evaluation. Obviously
the agencies in the areas concerned still have the various targets
to which they are committed by their clearance times and accuracy
and so on. Also there is a commitment to conduct the work assessment
interview within three days but we are not adding a new set of
targets or over-laying them on pilots.
67. But there are some new targets in the sense
of the objectives that have been set for the independent sector,
private sector and voluntary organisations that get involved.
I understand what you are saying about the departmental structure.
Certainly the TUC has expressed some concern about what sort of
incentive regime there will be for private contractors involved
in this. Can you tell me something about what sort of outcomes
will attract this output-related funding for the private and voluntary
sector?
(Mr Barnham) At the moment Ministers
are considering the details of what the output-related funding
will be. What they have said is that there will be output-related
payments in the four pilots where there are to be private or voluntary
sector lead. We are now at the stage of a short-list of interested
organisations and consortia and we are within a period of discussions
with the agencies and with the Single Gateway Project as a prelude
to the bidders submitting their final proposals. So the output-related
funding will have to be based to a certain extent on the sorts
of things that are agreed in that period of negotiation and Ministers
have not yet made a final decision on it.
68. I want to talk in detail about the role
of personal advisers because it is the key to the whole caboodle
but I have just had a note passed to me by the chair to stop now.
(Mr Barnham) You had only just started.
Mrs Humble:I know. Each of you has mentioned
the role of the personal advisers and as far as I am concerned
it will succeed or fail on that, but I am going to have to stop.
Chairman
69. We are in danger of running out of a quorum
and the rules of the House mean we have to at 6 o'clock bring
proceedings to an end. Joan is quite right to say that there is
a series of detailed questions that she has still to ask. Indeed
there are one or two other things on evaluation strategy and future
developments and the use of IT. I wonder if you would consider
answering those questions in writing if we send them to you and
we can then add them to the transcript. Honestly, that is the
only option available to me as Chairman because if the Committee
goes inquorate we have not got the advantage of being able to
pursue the line of questioning. Can I say thank you very much
again and apologise for keeping you waiting? I guess we all have
this difficulty of trying to be in two places at once. The session
insofar as we have been able to complete it has been extremely
useful. It is proving to be a very important inquiry for us and
I hope you do not think that because of the difficulty with the
timing it is a sign in any way of disinterest. Thank you very
much for your attendance this afternoon and thank you very much
for providing your memorandum. We anticipate some further correspondence
by way of further written questions and answers.
(Mr Barnham) My colleagues will probably
throttle me outside for saying this but in the time we had available
the memorandum did not fact cover all the questions that you asked
us so we do need to provide you with more information anyway.
We were intending to do that so there is no problem in adding
to it.
Chairman:The dialogue continues. Thank you very
much.
| 
