Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2004
Department for Work and Pensions and Department for
Education and Skills
Q100 Mr Jenkins: I thought it was
a good Report. I thought there would be no problems today, that
it would quite easy and we could nod this through and that we
were going along the right lines. I do not intend to go through
it, not in the same depth as yourself of course, but if there
were any point in this Report that you were most pleased with,
what would it be? Which part would you say gave you the most satisfaction?
Sir Richard Mottram: The part
that gives me satisfaction is that the employment level of this
group is rising.
Q101 Mr Jenkins: Which part of the
scheme do you think was most effective? Which part do you think,
yes, that did really work, I am quite pleased with that? Is there
any particular part?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think New
Deal has contributed.
Q102 Mr Jenkins: My second question
is, which part of the Report gives you most concern? Which part
is not progressing as effectively?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think we
touched on this before. The biggest problem that we face with
this age group in my view is that so many of them are on Incapacity
Benefit.
Q103 Mr Jenkins: If we go back to
page 5, we have a figure there for the range of barriers to employment.
Looking down there, you might think it is quite good but of course
it has no weighting alongside it and that raises a difficulty.
It is figure 3 on page 5. Going down the list, there is, "Lack
of recent or relevant work experience." Well, that is quite
easy, get a job and that is the problem solved. "Lack of
qualifications and vocational skills": I think we could work
on that fairly effectively. "Low basic skills": once
again we could work on that fairly effectively. "Lack of
confidence . . .": I think we could work on that one quite
readily with personal advisers. "Attitudes to employment":
I think we can work on that one quite easily with the personal
adviser. If I go back up and look at "benefit disincentives",
that is going to be more of a problem. That is outside the control
of the adviser, the department. It is more of a hurdle to overcome,
is it not?
Chairman: Mr Jenkins, could you speak
into your microphone more so that we can hear you around the room.
Mr Jenkins: Yes, of course.
Sir Richard Mottram: It could
be a problem, but I do not think that is the thing that is driving
this issue. Would you like me to say something about the weighting
of these things because we do have a view about which are the
most important?
Q104 Mr Jenkins: Yes, please.
Sir Richard Mottram: They overlap,
but I think the three that are most significant are long-term
health problems, lack of qualifications and, particularly for
women, caring responsibilities. They are the biggest three and
they overlap. We can give you sets that show how they overlap,
but they are the biggest three problems.
Q105 Mr Jenkins: I think about 17%
of the problems are caring responsibilities.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q106 Mr Jenkins: What strategy do
you want to put in place to overcome that particular problem where
they have got caring responsibilities? Is it possible to overcome
it?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes. It is
possible to help people into work where they would work part-time,
for instance, and they discharge their caring responsibilities.
Q107 Mr Jenkins: You have registered
that these problems are outside your scope in some areas, for
example, the disincentives?
Sir Richard Mottram: What are
the disincentives that are outside our scope because, obviously,
what we are trying to do, working with the Treasury, is to ensure
that work pays. If we think there are disincentives to people
taking on work, we should be addressing those disincentives. I
would not regard the benefit disincentives as being something
outside of our control, it is something for which we and the Treasury
would be responsible for jointly.
Q108 Mr Jenkins: I like the jointly
approach because when Mr Steinberg asked you about self-employment,
it did not spring to mind that PRIME had got 7,000 people into
self-employment in the last year. You were unaware of PRIME and,
believe me, I was unaware of PRIME before I read this Report.
Obviously we are not doing a very good job. Do you think that
we have got too many departments involved in looking after this
particular problem? Do you think we have got joined-up government
here?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think it
is reasonably joined-up. People have different views and different
interests which need to be addressed. I think the area which ministers
have the most concern about is skills; some of the issues which
the Committee have been focusing on this afternoon. I would say
that is an area where we and our colleagues in the Department
for Education, Jobcentre Plus, the Learning and Skills Councils,
aided and abetted by the work of the National Employer Panel,
really put a big effort into joining all that up much more effectively.
I would say that is probably the biggest joining up problem we
face and we are trying to tackle that. I would not say that it
is perfect, but I think we have made significant progress there.
Q109 Mr Jenkins: Do you feel that
one of your tasks also would be to encourage the public sector
to alter their attitudes in regard to employing older workers?
Sir Richard Mottram: I try to.
Q110 Mr Jenkins: Do you feel a lack
of success in that area?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think that
we are chipping away at it.
Q111 Mr Jenkins: Is there anything
that ministers could do to advance progress in that area?
Sir Richard Mottram: Obviously
the key in the case of the public service is to change people's
expectations about retirement age and the Government has such
a policy.
Q112 Mr Jenkins: I would not have
mentioned this but since you brought up retirement age, is it
still a policy in the Department—taking yourself as an example—to
take retirement at a reasonably young age when you could be working
effectively for society for much longer?
Sir Richard Mottram: Is that a
question?
Q113 Mr Jenkins: Yes.
Sir Richard Mottram: The Senior
Civil Service currently has a retirement age of 60. Obviously
that retirement age will have to change after 2006. That would
be an example of an area where we have been working with colleagues
to try and get a recognition that the culture in the Senior Civil
Service has to change and we have to have a different approach
to retirement. How that affects me as an individual is a different
matter.
Q114 Mr Jenkins: Not even as an individual,
it is a cultural thing. Mr Steinburg is only retiring because
he has reached the magic age of 60. His mindset in a previous
life was looking forward to that retirement age of 60 and he is
going to stand down at that age.
Sir Richard Mottram: I do not
know how old Mr Steinburg is, so I do not know when he is retiring.
Q115 Mr Jenkins: He is approaching
that age.
Sir Richard Mottram: Obviously
one of the important things that the Department is trying to do
is to get across the message, and this absolutely links into our
agenda in relation to pensions, that it is crucial for the future
of the pension system to get everybody to change their mindset
about how long they expect to work in circumstances where we are
all going to live much longer.
Q116 Mr Jenkins: If I could leave
that and go back to the section we are really concerned about,
getting people off the scrapheap and back into effective work.
I remember the days when people used to have good, well paid jobs
in heavy industry. When they closed heavy industry down, they
offered them a chance to retrain, travel and get half the income
but, worse than that, they lost their status. That was a cultural
problem which I thought was almost impossible to overcome unless
they could re-establish, within themselves, the status with the
job they were going to. Have you come across that as a problem?
Sir Richard Mottram: I have, yes.
Q117 Mr Jenkins: On your figures,
do you feel that it has been self-evident that the easiest people
are being placed into employment, and it would be with the economy
we have got now? In my part of the world I have got vacancies,
shops with signs up, buildings with signs up, they want staff,
but these people are not being moved over because they have got
more problems, they have got multiple barriers to employment.
How are we going to tackle that particular problem?
Sir Richard Mottram: I think the
way in which we think about the role of Jobcentre Plus, and this
is brought out in the Report, the way in which the target system
has been changed as it applies in Jobcentre Plus, all of these
things are clear evidence that we are focusing our effort, the
personal advisers' effort, on those people who have the biggest
problems, who are the hardest to help. I do not mean that in a
personal way. The thrust of how we intend to develop Jobcentre
Plus is if you are a person who can get another job quite easily
then certainly we will facilitate that but, increasingly, we will
facilitate it without any involvement of personal advisers and
such like, we will be using the Internet, telephones, all of those
things, very cheap channels that you use where you have very little
input from us—"us" being David and his people—and
the focus is on the hardest to help. If you look at the whole
thrust of the target system, that is where we have been going
and where we will go even more in the future.
Q118 Mr Jenkins: The growth in Incapacity
Benefit seems to have slowed down.
Sir Richard Mottram: The growth
in Incapacity Benefit has slowed down remarkably since 1995, yes.
Q119 Mr Jenkins: Why?
Sir Richard Mottram: Because in
1995 and from then onwards there has been a tighter approach to
the gateway.
| 
