SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Vacancies
1. It has been suggested that employers should
be compelled to notify Jobcentres of vacancies in order that the
number of total vacancies can be better assessed. Although this
would certainly improve the quality of labour market data, in
our view it would place excessive administrative burdens on both
business and the Employment Service. Nonetheless, now that the
Government has given greater prominence to vacancy data, the method
of estimating total vacancies does need to be improved. We recommend
that the Government should show caution in drawing inferences
from vacancy data until it has established a robust method of
estimating total vacancies (paragraph 18).
2. We recommend that the Employment Service should
publish in its Annual Report details of the effectiveness of the
programme to improve services to employers, including the impact
of the strategy on its market share of vacancies (paragraph 19).
3. We recommend that the Government should undertake
an assessment of Jobcentre vacancy data to establish that they
are accurate (paragraph 20).
Jobs gaps using broader measures of unemployment
4. We recommend that all Government statements
on unemployment should include the headline ILO measure, together
with the claimant count and the Want Work rate. Where it is not
possible to present the broader measures of unemployment, because
the geographical area in question is too small to provide robust
survey data, announcements should always explicitly recognise
the limitations of the claimant count (paragraph 26).
Performance of the New Deal
5. The evidence presented here leads us to conclude
that, in certain parts of the country, a lack of appropriate jobs
is one of the barriers to employment faced by unemployed people
(paragraph 31).
Achieving better co-ordination at national and
local level
6. We recognise the difficulty in attaching specific
local employment quotas to grants. We are concerned that the refocusing
of the RSA, and the focus of the Enterprise Grant, on skilled
jobs might make it more difficult for local people in deprived
areas to benefit. We recommend that in the administration of the
grants, Government should make every effort to ensure that local
people will benefit from the investment in their area (paragraph
34).
7. We welcome the Government's recognition that
co-ordination of policy should be improved. We recommend that
the Government should develop and bring forward specific proposals
aimed at streamlining the funding and administration of regeneration
and employment assistance initiatives and achieving greater synergy
between these policy areas (paragraph 38).
8. In our view there is scope for greater devolution
in employment assistance and that this would allow for better
co-ordination between demand-side and supply-side initiatives.
We recommend that the Government should examine how this could
best be achieved (paragraph 39).
Enhanced role for the Employment Service
9. We welcome the enhanced role for the ES outlined
by the Minister. In our view, in order for the ES to be effective
in this role, there will have to be greater decentralisation within
the organisation so that it can respond to local needs. We recommend
that the Government explore ways in which greater decentralisation
within the organisation can be achieved (paragraph 41).
Which groups are most affected?
10. The Minister for Employment stated that the
Government must "aspire to saying that nobody will leave
the New Deal for Young People illiterate or innumerate".
We welcome this commitment and we urge the Government to bring
forward detailed proposals as early as possible on how this could
be achieved (paragraph 43).
11. We recommend that the Government should actively
encourage organisations from ethnic minority communities to develop
bids for the Intermediaries Fund (paragraph 44).
Attitudinal barriers: unemployed people
12. We agree with the Policy Action Team conclusion
that job tasters should be used more widely. These may not always
lead immediately to an employment outcome, but they will help
to supplement the work of Personal Advisers in providing people
with a knowledge of new forms of employment (paragraph 45).
13. The attainment of communication skills should
be a theme which runs right through the New Deal. We recommend
that New Deal participants should be given the opportunity to
develop these skills in both the Gateway and as an intrinsic part
of their work-based and training options (paragraph 46).
Attitudinal barriers: employers
14. We urge the Government, when it develops and
publishes the details of the Action Teams proposal, to ensure
that there are specific targets for helping the most disadvantaged
people and that the emphasis will be on placing people into high-quality
jobs. The Government should also set out how the Action Teams
will work with existing local intermediaries (paragraph 48).
Transport
15. We welcome the Minister's commitment to engaging
at the national level with the DETR on transport issues and the
prospect of an enhanced role in this area for the Employment Service.
It is important that the Transport Plans being developed by local
authorities should be effective in improving people's access to
work. We recommend that the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions and the Department for Education and Employment
should work jointly with local authorities to develop "access
to jobs" targets for inclusion in the full five-year transport
plans which will come into effect in 2001 (paragraph 51).
16. The cost of public transport can present insurmountable
barriers to mobility and employment. We recommend that, in areas
displaying the lowest levels of employment, the Government should
pilot a scheme in which the travel to work costs of those leaving
long-term unemployment would be subsidised for a period of six
months (paragraph 52).
The benefit trap
17. We recommend that people who have been unemployed
for one year or more should continue to receive their existing
entitlement to income support or Jobseeker's Allowance for two
weeks after they enter employment (paragraph 53).
18. We agree with the Policy Action Team on Jobs
and recommend that the Government should introduce a scheme, initially
for those who have been unemployed for two years and over, which
guarantees that if a job collapses within 12 weeks of a person
taking up employment all relevant benefits will be reactivated
at the preexisting level until a new assessment can be made
(paragraph 54).
19. We welcome the commitment to make payments
under the Housing Benefit Extended Payments scheme as near-automatic
as possible. We also welcome the Government's commitment to provide
a four week Income Support for Mortgage Interest runon for
those entering work (paragraph 55).
20. We recommend that the Government should undertake
and publish an analysis of the cost of our proposals for removing
benefit traps (paragraph 56).
Measuring unemployment
21. We recommend that the ONS should investigate
the possibility of establishing a composite measure of unemployment
for use in small areas (paragraph 58).
22. There seems to be a general consensus that
TTWAs do not provide useful information on the state of labour
markets and that it might actually obscure important trends. We
recommend that the ONS should establish whether there is any value
in continuing to publish workforce claimant unemployment rates
for Travel to Work Areas (paragraph 59).
23. Workforce claimant unemployment rates are
used, with other indicators, to determine which areas will receive
Assisted Area status and benefit from the European Structural
Funds. Given that policy decisions are founded on claimant unemployment
data, we recommend that the ONS undertake a review to establish
whether data should be presented in a workforce or residency-based
form (paragraph 60).
Regional venture capital funds
24. We welcome the Government's objective of expanding
the venture capital provision available for small enterprises
(paragraph 61).
Investment incentives
25. We recommend that the Government should develop,
in co-operation with the Regional Development Agencies, innovative
area-specific tax structures aimed at attracting job-creating
investment into low employment areas (paragraph 64).
Local labour clauses
26. Local authorities have an important role to
play in facilitating and supporting regeneration and job creation
in their areas, not only through strategy documents but also in
their capacity as major employers in deprived areas and through
their role in contracting with third parties for a range of works
and services. In the absence of a substantial overhaul of the
legislation, we recommend that the Government should issue guidance
to local authorities encouraging them to incorporate local labour
clauses in contracts and setting out how this might most effectively
be achieved (paragraph 66).
How can new jobs be created
27. Although we recognise that spending on infrastructure
is essential as part of the process of regenerating deprived areas,
we reject the notion that demand-side policies on their own will
be sufficient to provide employment opportunities for the long-term
unemployed (paragraph 67).
The role of intermediate labour markets
28. We recommend that the Government should explore
ways in which it can support the growth and effectiveness of ILMs
(paragraph 68).
29. In our view there is much greater scope for
the use of ILMs in both the New Deal and the enhanced New Deal
for 25 plus. We recommend that all participants in the New Deal
options, other than the Full-time Education and Training option,
should receive a wage (paragraph 69).
30. We recommend that the Government should examine
ways of increasing the flexibility in the New Deal, including
providing the opportunity, for some clients, to move through more
than one option and to remain in work-related New Deal options
for more than six months (paragraph 70).
New employment opportunities in the public sector
31. We recommend that the Government should explore
ways to engage the public sector in providing jobs in the provision
of local services, for those people who have been unemployed for
two years, within demand-deficient labour markets (paragraph 71).
Job guarantee
32. We recommend that the Government should pilot
a job guarantee scheme, in areas displaying the lowest levels
of employment, for those who have been unable to secure employment
in the open labour market after leaving the New Deal (paragraph
72).
Employment Zones
33. We recommend that the Government should publish
its full-scale evaluation of the prototype Employment Zones and
indicate how the lessons learnt have been taken into consideration
in the development of the fully-fledged Employment Zones (paragraph
73).
34. We recommend that the Government should pilot
additional Employment Zones in the original ONE areas, in which
ONE clients who have been in receipt of benefit for one year or
more, would be eligible for the full range of Employment Zone
assistance (paragraph 74).
35. We recommend that the Government should renegotiate
the design of the financial incentives in the Employment Zones.
Providers should receive a proportion of output-related funding
when clients have been in continuous employment (although not
necessarily with the same employer) for six months (paragraph
75).
36. We strongly recommend that the Government
should publish an evaluation of the effectiveness of private sector
providers in the delivery of the New Deal (paragraph 76).
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