Examination of Witnesses (Questions 196-199)
PROFESSOR ALAN
MARSH, MS
VICKY DAVIES
AND MS
CLARE JOHNSON
WEDNESDAY 16 JANUARY 2002
Chairman
196. Welcome ladies and gentlemen, I declare
the formal part of the Committee's proceedings this afternoon
open. I welcome Professor Alan Marsh, who is Deputy Director of
the Policy Studies Institute and Head of the Social Security Research
Team. We are also lucky to have Vicky Davies, who is the Senior
Research Manager of ECOTEC Social Policy Group, and Clare Johnson,
Associate Director of ECOTEC Social Policy Group. You are all
three very welcome. The Committee, as you know, is in the course
of an inquiry into the ONE pilots and the lessons which can be
learned from the ONE pilots for Jobcentre Plus. We have been interested
in and have had the benefit of your written research which helps
us enormously in terms of what you have been doing for the Department.
Maybe the sensible thing would be to say a little about what you
believe the bullet points, the main headline results, of your
research are for the Committee and for the inquiry, so we may
take the questioning from there. What do you think really has
been the outcome of the research work you have done on the Department's
behalf?
(Professor Marsh) This is a large evaluation, Chairman,
an enormous number of people were interviewed and enormous resources
went into it. In case I do not get a chance to say this, I had
better say it at once, this is not the strongest evaluation design
deployed by social science to evaluate an initiative, it could
not be because of the time and the strategy. One would have preferred,
for example, to have done a lot of research in these pilot and
control areas before the introduction of the ONE experiment. This
luxury was not available, so all of this is post hoc, so
one has to try statistically to provide controls for an awful
lot of things one might have designed into the experiment if more
time had been available. This is no one's fault but you should
bear this in mind. Although it is a very well large, well-resourced
study, it struggles to find its effects, because it is all post
hoc. Is that clear to everybody?
197. That is very useful. Thank you.
(Professor Marsh) Looking at the work that I did—and
I also represent my colleagues in the Office for National Statistics
who did the bulk of the research—one can detect in those
who were put through the ONE experience improvements in their
experience compared to those who have gone through the conventional
system in the control areas. More of them were exposed to good
advice, more of them were aware they had got some good advice,
broadly they evaluated their experience better, and all these
differences are statistically significant. Between you and I when
you have samples as large as these most things are statistically
significant, but there were differences and there was improvement,
which is good. The differences were small. How small is small
and how large is large is a matter for judgment, and you have
read the figures for yourself and you may want to ask me some
questions about that. If there is disappointment, perhaps it is
that it seemed very clear that the advice that flowed through
the ONE system to people who are newly compelled to listen to
this advice had more to do with benefits than it had to do with
jobs—this, at least, is what they said—which probably
was not fully the intention. For example, getting on for a third
of people, who were lone parents newly exposed to this advice,
said, yes, they discussed the possibility of getting a job, and
this was only 10 per cent among those going through the conventional
system, so that has to be better and that was quite a large difference
although still less than a third. One would have expected all
of them somehow to say, "Yes, I remember talking about jobs",
and that was very interesting. Among the sick and disabled clients
newly brought into the system and compelled to have an interview
at the second stage, they were interested, but the differences
again were small. So we are starting from a rather small base.
The employment outcomes were very uncertain. Yes, in the first
stage and the voluntary stage, we found that lone parents did
seem to get jobs quicker, but that difference faded when we interviewed
them some months later. In the second compulsory stage, and this
is my last point, we found the same effects for sick and disabled
clients. Yes, more of them seemed to get jobs in the ONE areas
than in the control areas, a small difference but statistically
significant. We await the last tranche of research which will
tell us whether this difference survived the intervening period
of time. They are my bullet points.
198. Thank you. Vicky, from your perspective?
(Ms Davies) The first thing I should emphasise is
the nature of the research we conducted. Ours was very much qualitative
in-depth research just with clients who had been involved in the
ONE pilot areas, so we have not covered the control areas in the
same way that Alan has. To a certain extent our findings should
not be taken as representative of the wider population of people
who have gone through the ONE service. Instead, what they do is
they explore in more detail what is working, the impact the different
aspects of the service have on clients, and their attitudes and
behaviour both towards the benefits system and the labour market
more widely. So it is very much about the softer things that influence
individuals' choices about claiming benefit and moving into work,
rather than broad brush quantitative statistics which can be taken
as representative of the wider population. So everything we discuss
here today from our perspective is very much from the clients,
what clients have told us and our interpretation of that. I think
the first important thing to say is that although there are some
broad findings within different client groups, within lone parents
for example, and when people claim sickness and disability benefits,
there is considerable variety of both experience but also outcome
in terms of whether they move into work or not, and that is very
important to recognise. We handle this by considering people's
position in the labour market, so whether people perceive themselves
to be job-ready and looking for work as an immediate priority
or whether it is something more distant and something for them
to look at in the medium to longer term. I think it is fair to
say that apart from job seekers, who obviously are looking for
work immediately and must be available, we found examples of lone
parents, sick and disabled clients, carers and widows, in all
of those groups, so that demonstrates the variety there is; you
have widows who were in part-time work, you have carers who were
also in part-time work. So I think great care needs to be taken
when thinking of the actual implications more widely about certain
client groups. As Alan has already said, the clients' experiences
and expectations of the service were very clearly dominated by
benefits, and to a certain extent the service they received therefore
was dominated by benefits although there was some discussion about
work. This was primarily because clients are concerned about their
financial security, it is their immediate concern, and from our
research in three rounds so far it is fair to say that a lot of
those concerns generally were addressed fairly early in order
that discussions could move on to work. Going on to the employment
outcomes, it became clear to us that the most significant impact
with clients tended to be with those who were already work-motivated,
who were already thinking about going back to work, or who were
interested in going back to work, rather than those clients who
had not even considered it an option and who were perhaps a bit
more distant from the labour market. Also for some clients, it
became quite clear from their position, their personal circumstances
and their situation, that it was not always appropriate to go
through the ONE service. The classic example was people claiming
sick or disability benefits who already had a job to go to, so
discussions with the personal adviser to a large extent were irrelevant
and clients perceived these to be a waste of time because they
had plans. Job seekers: nothing different really from what had
gone before, it was the same process and the impact is quite difficult
to unpick to determine what is new about ONE and what the additionality
has been. Overall there is quite a fine balance to be achieved,
both between different client groups but also within them about
when work should be raised, when it is appropriate, whether people
should be called in for work focussed interviews. I think it is
quite difficult to be very specific about what that fine balance
is.
Mr Mitchell
199. Of course the key to this whole process,
ONE pilots, is that the interview is focussed on work. Can you
tell us what your research found about the extent to which work
and training were discussed in personal adviser interviews with
the different client groups? Some of these points I am going to
make you have touched upon in your introductory remarks, but I
do not think that matters. Why is it you think that only a relatively
small proportion of non-JSA claimants received advice about jobs
and training?
(Professor Marsh) They are low; among the sick and
disabled particularly low, just 12 per cent in the pilot areas
discussed jobs and even fewer, training. Even amongst those who
managed to get case loaded, that is to say they went back for
another interview, still only a third of those appeared to be
discussing jobs. It must have something to do with the training
and expectations of the people who are giving the advice, and
the expectation of the people who attended the interviews. I think
a lot of people will somehow have expected that since they came
there to claim a benefit, benefit was what this person wanted
to talk to them about.
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