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7 May 2003 : Column 693W—continued

WORK AND PENSIONS

Age Discrimination

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps his Department is taking to address the issue of age discrimination. [109441]

Malcolm Wicks: We have already implemented recommendations from the Performance and Innovation Unit Report, "Winning The Generation Game". The Department has already implemented policies to allow staff to stay on up to age 65, and we have delivered the Green Paper on Pensions. The Department has also taken steps to promote the provisions of the Government's Code of Practice on Age Diversity in Employment.

We are currently developing our policy on age alongside new legislation from the EC Article 13 Employment and Race Directives. The legislation to outlaw unfair discrimination at work on the grounds of age is required to be in place by December 2006.

The Department has taken age into consideration in its development and equality proofing of all human resource policies and processes and is committed to tackling any negative attitudes towards older staff. We are currently working with the Employers Forum on Age to progress age diversity policies by using their policy review toolkit 'One Step Ahead'. The toolkit sets out the framework to enable employers to undertake a comprehensive age equality review and to deliver age "neutrality" across the business. The toolkit will shortly be issued across the DWP HR community.

The Department plays an active role in promoting age diversity to the wider employment market through the Age Positive Campaign. The campaign material can be

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accessed via the website and includes the Government's current code of practice "Age Diversity in Employment" which is also available in the Library. It has examples of good practice and ministerial support.

There are well-advanced plans to establish an Age Champion and a network of staff groups across my Department's businesses to focus on age issues. A Diversity Awareness Programme is being rolled out across my Department and this includes important messages about behaviour and negative attitudes towards age.

Departmental Expenditure

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what expenditure has been incurred by his (a) Department, (b) agencies and (c) non-departmental bodies in 2002 on (i) opinion polling, (ii) focus groups and (iii) other forms of market research; and if he will list the surveys commissioned and the purpose of each. [106274]

Malcolm Wicks: Details of expenditure incurred by this Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies, in 2002 in respect on opinion polls, focus groups and other forms of market research of opinion polls, are given in the following table.

The cost information provided in the table is, in the main, that incurred in the financial year 2002–03. Financial information provided for the 2002–03 financial year is provisional and subject to final audit.

Some of the projects listed may have been undertaken by a mixture of methodologies, for example, in-depth interviews and surveys, in addition to focus groups and opinion polls. In such instances, it has not always been possible to disaggregate costs for the individual elements.

While this Department is keen to hear what people have to say about proposed new policies and ideas, we are committed to obtaining best value for money. Public opinion research, including focus groups and polling, is subject to the usual strict rules that spending must represent good value for the taxpayer and must not be used for party political purposes.

Research involving opinion polls

Title	Purpose	Cost
Welfare Reforms Omnibus Survey	Monitoring attitudes towards various aspects of the work areas covered by the Department.	£9,600
Disability and Carers Benefits Directorate (DCBD) Customer Satisfaction Survey 2001–02	The postal survey conducted in February 2001, provided Disability and Carers Service (DCS), which replaced the DCBD in April 2002, with valuable customer feedback and a baseline from which the DCS can measure future improvements in service delivery. The questionnaire asked customers to comment on their experiences when dealing with the DCBD by telephone, written correspondence or when visiting the offices and, additionally, when claiming one of the benefits DCBD administer.	£5,015
(postal charges onlyas survey wasconducted in-house).
Jobcentre Plus Customer Satisfaction Survey	A large scale client survey undertaken to determine satisfaction with the level of service received from Jobcentre Plus. The survey involved 3,100 telephone interviews with a range of benefit recipients accessing a variety of Jobcentre Plus services.	£88,600
Appeals Service Customer Survey	To assess performance against Service First Standards which cannot be measured internally and to obtain information direct from customers about the service they have received. The survey also informs the work being undertaken by the Modernising Appeals Programme on the shape of future service including opening hours and tribunal session times.	£46,455
Attitudes and Awareness Survey	To obtain information on the level of awareness of the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Rights Commission.	£20,000
Young Disabled People Survey	To obtain information on the opinion and attitudes of young disabled people.	£94,000
Attitudes to Electronic Service Delivery	To explore public attitudes to providing DWP services on-line, and examine how to maximise take-up. This research included 20 mini focus groups, as part of a wider project.	£41,347
Easing the Transition to Work	Focus Groups with (former) Benefit Agency, Employment Service and Local Authority staff in London and South Wales to explore their experiences and views of promoting and administering various work incentives measures. This was one element of a wider research project.	£15,970
Developing Services for Pensioners	Giving customers the opportunity to express their views on service development for The Pension Service.	£34,400
Evaluation of Action Teams for Jobs	Evaluation of Action Teams for Jobs during its first year of operation.	£2,950
Evaluation of the Remote Jobpoints Experiment in Port Talbot and Luton—surveys results from Stage 1 and Stage 2	This comprised a small scale quantitative survey of users and non users of remote jobseeking services in two Tesco supermarkets —market research, fed into the development of a larger project termed flexible service delivery.	£62,345
New Deal 50 Plus Regional Marketing Evaluation	Purpose of the survey was to evaluate the regional marketing programme for ND50+. The research provides an overview of how the marketing campaigns have worked and feedback to inform the development of future marketing activity.	£10,580
Diversity in Disability	To provide a greater understanding of the life experiences of disabled men and women from different minority ethnic groups.	£57,429
Evaluation of Community Sentences Withdrawal of Benefits	To establish staff views of the implementation of the policy in pilot areas. Group discussions were held with staff from the Benefits Agency, Employment Service and Probation Service. This was in addition to 31 interviews with staff and 55 interviews with offenders.	£81,395
Evaluation of the Permitted Work Rules for Incapacity Benefit Claimants	To obtain information on the use of the new arrangements by staff who apply them or refer to them in their work.	£85,500
Awareness of SENDA	To obtain information on the level of awareness among educationalists, disabled young people and their parents.	£19,000
Publication Focus Group	Consultation of DRC publications.	£509
Jobseeker Direct Customer Satisfaction Survey	Small scale national quantitative survey of users of Jobseeker Directive , looking at the views of the service and how it could be improved.	£30,350
Jobseeker Traffic Survey	Large national survey of jobseekers views of Jobcentre Plus services.	£67,000
Awareness Day Research	Pre and post research to evaluate the effectiveness of the awareness raising campaign.	£11,000

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Part-time Workers

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment he has made of the impact of the Part-time Workers Directive on staff in his Department. [109264]

Maria Eagle: The Part-time Workers Directive has not had a significant impact on staff in DWP. Existing policies already provided a range of working patterns for all our staff, both male and female. Full-time staff can work in non-traditional ways (e.g. compressed hours, informal home-working), and part-time staff can work part year, for example during school terms but not during school holidays.

We also recognise that some part-time staff do not have children; they have simply made other life choices. Staff may take the opportunity to match their working arrangements with their personal lives and responsibilities as carers, to study, undertake voluntary work, or pursue other interests. More than 25 per cent. (see Table A) of DWP staff work part-time (source: DWP baseline map for year ending 30 September 2002) against a little over 15 per cent. in the Civil Service as a whole (Civil Service statistics October 2002).

A recent survey of DWP staff indicated that 67 per cent. (see Table B) of staff were in agreement that "the organisation allowed people to adopt a work pattern to accommodate a work life balance" 22 per cent. did not have an opinion either way and only 11 per cent. felt that their work pattern conflicted with their home life (source: staff survey 2002).

DWP ensures that part-time staff are not treated less favourably in their contractual terms and conditions than comparable full time staff; the 'pro rata principle' applies wherever appropriate.

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Table A: Staff in post by work pattern and gender (DWP HR baseline map 30 September 2002)

	Full time	Part-time
Male	39,460	2,080
Female	62,424	33,020
Total	101,884	35,100
Percentage
Male	38.7	5.9
Female	61.3	94.1

Table B: The percentage of staff in DWP who feel that: "The organisation allows me to adopt a working pattern which helps me balance my work and home life" (Staff survey result 2002)

	Percentage
Strongly agree	14
Agree	53
Neither agree nor disagree	22
Disagree	9
Strongly disagree	2

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