Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 233)
WEDNESDAY 5 JULY 2000
MS CANDY
MUNRO, MR
JONATHAN BALDREY
AND MR
WILLIAM ROE
220. Kay Stratton told us that the New Deal
task force did not think there were many who were doing this or
who were capable of doing it very quickly.
(Mr Baldrey) There was a comment that was made in
the seminar that we had on intermediaries by one of the Americans.
There was a comment made which was, had the Government tried to
close the intermediaries down they could not have made it more
difficult for us to operate. A lot of us still exist today, despite
programmes like New Deal, et cetera, et cetera. We have not put
in a bid for the Innovation Fund because, to be honest, it was
not worth writing a bid sum for that sum of money because there
are other pots of money flying around at the moment. There is
a lot of money around at the moment. I say it is not worth putting
in a bid, it is another contract, another contract management,
another series of claims, another series of evaluations. I would
rather go for other pots of money which are easier to bid for.
What may well happen with the intermediaries fund, I agree with
what Candy has just said, is it is probably going to end up funding
organisations that, as I said earlier, want to pretend they are
intermediaries, so we will have a load of new competitors who
will come into the market. I think that it will probably take
a few months for those competitors to be flushed out again. I
think the other thing is that you are asking for a huge amount
of work for the amount of money that each bid is going to sustain.
If you look at action teams, the money has just come out, which
is well over £10 million, as I understand it, it has just
appeared in the market without any great fuss about that money
coming into the market, whereas intermediaries had a series of
dancing girls going out and claiming it is coming out. It is a
lot of fuss that is being made about a small pot of money.
(Ms Munro) There is another issue here that has not
cropped up under the intermediaries fund. During the discussions
last year around intermediaries it was identified that there were
areas in the country that were intermediary rich and areas in
the country that were intermediary poor. There is a real need
for best practice to be shared more evenly up and down the country.
We were just discussing this before we came in this afternoon.
Jonathan and I spend a lot of time talking to other organisations
about the effectiveness of intermediaries. We have had discussions
about should there be a school for intermediaries or some mechanism
to develop and disseminate best practice. That has been a missed
opportunity as well and that might be something that could be
considered under the next round of intermediaries: how can more
effective intermediaries help fledgling intermediaries to develop,
in areas where we do not exist?
(Mr Roe) Can I make three comments about different
levels of innovation. To pick up on Candy's last point, I work
with New Deals and the Zones, and all that, around the United
Kingdom all of the time. It is immensely striking how poor the
country is at learning quickly from the experience of others on
all sorts of small things. There are lots and lots and lots of
very interesting and effective practices around the country which
are not getting the oxygen that they need to be transferred rapidly,
applied rapidly and adapted for different circumstances.
221. Can you tell us why?
(Mr Roe) I will tell you why. I have thought long
and hard about this, it is part of my everyday life. The tradition
of large public sector organisations, and to be honest large private
sector ones as well, especially national institutions, is that
information and ideas and experience and results go up to the
centre and the entire structure of national public services is
about that. There is a command and control system which goes like
that and material goes like that. That is a culture which is generations
old and it is very hard to break. What you need to do to achieve
rapid learning from experience close to the ground are very horizontal
systems of learning. A lot of money is spent on long term evaluations
of programmes, I do not knock that at all, it is an important
thing to do where you get the results a year after the programme
has ended or the phase has ended and then policy makers get hold
of that and think and politicians get hold of it and it changes
things three or five years down the line. I do not knock that
a bit but as well as that long wave of evaluation and learning
we need thousands of short waves which happen each week. Big bureaucracies
find it very hard to put in place systems that make that happen.
My own company put a proposal to the Government three years ago
this week actually, this very, very week, which was around creating
for the country a system which would allow that to happen. It
was not going to be expensive, it was peanuts in terms of investment,
and it was going to be assisted by technology and by study visits
and secondments attached, all the things we know work in the horizontal
thing. It was never even responded to. Maybe the proposal was
not a good one. We got other people to review it and refresh it
and put it in again a year later and dead as a duck. If we look
at the amount of stuff that goes like that it is vast and if we
look at the amount of staff that goes like that it is paultry.
The second point is that at the level of significant intermediaries
I think it is a question to be asked for the future about whether
dependence on public sector contracts which come and go internally
is the best way forward or do we not need to recognise that 20
years from now we will still need an infrastructure of labour
market intermediations, so why do we not recognise this as part
of a system rather than seeing it as something to get us over
a problem? We would not think of primary care service as something
to get us over a hump, we see it as part of the fabric of society.
Why do we not see labour market intermediation as part of the
fabric of society and put the systems in place rather than just
programming? My last point is that we had a chance to look at
all public expenditure on services for unemployed people in Lanarkshire,
a very, very thorough piece of work. What we discovered was that
£17 million of public money was being spent through the Employment
Service or services for unemployed people, £17 million a
year, £21 million of other public money was being spent on
services for unemployed people from four sources. In Lanarkshire
these four public authorities had no system for speaking to each
other about the services they were planning, procuring, delivering,
evaluating, a completely disjointed system of public investment.
No-one knew that there was £38 million of public money rather
than £17 million going into the labour market services in
Lanarkshire. That pattern is not unusual across the UK. My last
point is what I would like to see as part of the Innovation Fund
is innovation at the systems level not just at the delivery level,
at the systems level. We need in Lanarkshire and in East London
and in Somerset a systemic change which recognises that this is
not just about the New Deal and ONE, it is about a whole range
of public money that is going in to target this client group and
it is completely disjointed. We do not have systems in place for
knowing what we are getting for our money. If you had £38
million to spend on services in Lanarkshire for unemployed people
you would not deploy it that way. The £38 million for the
number of unemployed people in Lanarkshire who are getting the
benefit of these services, £38 million divided by that number
of people comes to £12,000 a person. It would be cheaper
giving them the money.
222. We did not make this last point in our
last report but certainly the systemic lack of co-ordination of
various funding streams was one of the things which we honed in
upon pretty strongly. I wonder whether you would care to send
us your proposal that you sent to Government three years ago?
It sounds rather interesting.
(Mr Roe) It is very out of date now of course.
Mr Nicholls: It is very apposite.
Chairman
223. Yes. If you would care to then we would
be very glad to receive it.
(Mr Roe) Delighted.
Mr Nicholls
224. What you are saying leads on to the next
question: what is your relationship like with the Employment Service?
Do you think it could be better? Do you think there are some obstacles
in the way? Do you think there is a big obstacle that you could
cure and, if you could, why has it not been done already?
(Ms Munro) At a local level our relationship with
the local Job Centre is very good. We work very hard at it.
225. Both of you?
(Ms Munro) Yes.
226. Them as well?
(Ms Munro) Yes.
227. Especially you?
(Ms Munro) Yes, I think so. I think the change that
has happened this year where Employment Service Job Centres can
claim credit for jobs that are filled through partnership with
intermediaries has been a positive move forward. I have seen relationships
that we have developed over a number of years beginning to pop
up in other areas of the city where they did not exist. I think
the big issue with Employment Services is what you target is what
you get.
228. What do you mean by that?
(Ms Munro) Well, for example, at the beginning when
New Deal was introduced they were targeted to go out and get employers
to sign up to New Deal.
Chairman
229. Right.
(Ms Munro) Not to take it any further, not active
participation. That was what you got. In Glasgow we got a major
issue, thousands and thousands of employers signed up and only
a very small proportion were doing anything. We are trying to
get hold of that intelligence to try and turn that around.
230. That is a good point that we could do with
pursuing. 77,000 companies nationally signed up, how many are
doing something? Sorry, I should not have interrupted.
(Ms Munro) Yes. I have had issues in the past where
Job Centre staff have targets in respect of the number of employers
they visit. We have to work quite hard to break down these barriers
and work out ways that we can help them reach their targets but
in actual fact we are not confusing employers. What was happening
was we knew employers we were working with but then they would
go and visit them as well so they would get a tick in the box.
Employers were saying "What is going on here? You were out
here last week and this week we have the Job Centre working with
you. We do not want to work with two organisations, tell us which
one". I think there is a major issue around about Employment
Service targets.
(Mr Baldrey) I think again, similar to what Candy
has said, it has got better this year. The Employment Service
is aware that they need to flush out a number of staff still and
they are flushing out a number of staff. It ranges from excellent
in some areas where we operate to an example I do not want to
name. I was somewhere recently and there was a Job Centre manager
who was sitting in the partnership meeting with this many people
in it and we were talking about how we could take an area of very
high unemployment to get more people into jobs and how we need
to talk first to employers and she was saying "Well, that
is what my organisation does". We were saying "With
respect, you obviously are not doing it that well because you
have got 38 per cent unemployment in this particular ward"
and she said "Well, if that is your attitude then my organisation
is the only one who will talk to employers, if you lot will create
something new then I am out of here". She got up and walked
out and has since refused to co-operate and has now been saying
to unemployed people almost if they get a job this will spoil
this woman's patch. We have found that before.
231. Sorry, if they get a job this will
(Mr Baldrey) This will take this woman's job away.
Mr Nicholls
232. She sees the spectre of full employment
putting her out on the street.
(Mr Baldrey) We have had that said about our organisation,
about Talent, candidates have been told "Do not go down there
because they will get you a job and where will that leave us".
There is an issue here that the Government could address which
is that the Employment Service senses this intermediaries' agenda
is a run up to privatisation or market testing of what they do.
Chairman
233. Right.
(Mr Baldrey) They have seen it with schools, they
have seen it with hospitals, they feel that they are next. I think
we feel they are next as well. A lot of people in the market are
muttering the Employment Service is next, something will happen
at the local level. I think if Government said "Yes, you
are going to be market tested" or "We are going to have
management buy-outs on a pilot" or whatever, then I think
people would feel a bit less threatened. I do feel that is an
issue which has to be addressed by Government to say one way or
the other are we going to market test you or are we not?
Chairman: Some very interesting material you
have given us this afternoon. Thank you very much indeed. A lot
of food thought. We would like to continue the dialogue if we
may. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the submissions which
you made before that. On behalf of all my colleagues, thank you.
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