Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
MONDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2004
Department for Work and Pensions and Department for
Education and Skills
Q140 Mr Williams: Subject to the
economic cycle?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes, exactly.
Q141 Mr Williams: In 1999 the Age
Positive campaign was launched to produce age diversity and to
discourage discrimination. We are told that a voluntary code of
practice was introduced but many employers are not aware of it.
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q142 Mr Williams: How can that be
so five years on?
Sir Richard Mottram: Because it
is actually very difficult to communicate—
Q143 Mr Williams: I am sorry?
Sir Richard Mottram: Perhaps I
am giving an example here. It is very difficult to communicate
with, I have forgotten the total number of employers in the country
but it is huge. Communicating with small and medium sized
enterprises on a comprehensive basis is very difficult.
Q144 Mr Williams: I am sorry but
it is making them aware of the fact. What it sounds like from
this is a very large proportion of employers are not even aware.
Sir Richard Mottram: I do not
know what the number is.
Q145 Mr Williams: Who is responsible
for the Age Positive campaign?
Sir Richard Mottram: We are responsible
for it. We, the Department for Work and Pensions.
Q146 Mr Williams: So this explains
perhaps why it is a voluntary code of practice rather than a compulsory
code of practice when you would have had to do something about
it. What have you done to perpetuate it? Clearly you are making
excuses for why you cannot get to that many employers in five
years.
Sir Richard Mottram: The reason
why it is voluntary is because age discrimination is not yet outlawed
in the way in which it will be in 2006. We have issued 150,000
copies of the guidance on the Age Positive campaign. We have a
website which has 50,000 visits a month, which is a good number
but not an incredible number. Our evaluation of the impact of
how we have been seeking to change views is that the number of
employers using age as a criterion in recruitment has reduced
from 27% to 13%.
Q147 Mr Williams: How many employers,
as a ballpark figure, would there be? Approximately?
Sir Richard Mottram: Several million
I should think.
Q148 Mr Williams: How many?
Sir Richard Mottram: Several million.
Q149 Mr Williams: Several million?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q150 Mr Williams: And you have issued
30,000 leaflets a year?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes, we have
issued 150,000 copies of the guidance.
Q151 Mr Williams: You are not making
a very intensive effort, are you?
Sir Richard Mottram: For example,
we have 40 newspapers across the country supporting it.
Q152 Mr Williams: They may be supporting
it but if that is all you have done as a Department, and you are
the people responsible for promoting this campaign, all I can
say is thank heaven you are not going to be in charge of any of
our election campaigns, we would issue as many leaflets as that
in the course of our elections, if not many more. That is what
you have issued to several million employers over the space of
five years. Where does responsibility lie in the Department? Have
you got a special activist who is sitting there or do you just
say to someone, "Go and write a leaflet and send out a couple
a week"?
Sir Richard Mottram: We have a
website.
Q153 Mr Williams: You have a website?
Sir Richard Mottram: We have a
website.
Q154 Mr Williams: Oh, my God.
Sir Richard Mottram: If we have
guidance and if we are working in partnership with other people
you can assume that we have got a small team of people who are
working on it.
Q155 Mr Williams: What worries me
about your website is that was what was being recommended to Mr
Steinberg to resolve his problems, but having seen how little
impact it has had on your problems I would have to tell you, Gerry,
you will be wasting your time and money having a website. As far
as you are concerned, you are signed up to this Age Positive campaign
inevitably or even the initiators of it. Are you the initiators?
Sir Richard Mottram: We are the
Department responsible for it, yes, on behalf of the Government
as a whole.
Q156 Mr Williams: Who initiated it,
the Government?
Sir Richard Mottram: Yes.
Q157 Mr Williams: By golly, a really
dynamic initiative. What about yourselves? This comes back to
my first question; I should have started the other way round.
In that case I would have expected you, as fully signed-up members,
to have the most complete statistics available for the NAO and
for this Committee to convince us that you at least are observing
the terms of the campaign.
Sir Richard Mottram: We as a Department,
you mean?
Q158 Mr Williams: Yes. Not you personally.
Sir Richard Mottram: We as an
employer?
Q159 Mr Williams: Yes. Yet from your
first set of answers it was highly nebulous as to what you have
achieved as a result of your action in pursuit of the campaign
and what has been achieved regardless of you and would have been
achieved anyhow because of the economic cycle.
Sir Richard Mottram: I am sorry,
there are a number of different strands here. In relation to our
PSA target and whether we have achieved it, we are confident that
the two percentage point change is significant and meets the target.
We have technical econometric problems which we have spent a lot
of time talking about improving, but it is a significant change.
That is for the whole economy, obviously. In relation to us as
an employer, we have substantial numbers of people working beyond
the age of 60 and we have a policy in the Department that now
allows people to work beyond the age of 65. We are seeking to
be a champion of the policies that we are espousing to other employers.
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