Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 267)
WEDNESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2006
MS FRANCES
PARRY, MR
GRAHAM HOYLE
AND MR
KEITH WYLIE
Q260 Harry Cohen: A very brief question.
It could be a long answer, but we have not got the time so a very
brief answer. What extra information is needed for a fair comparison
between the performance of Jobcentre Plus and the private and
voluntary sector organisations in the same sort of areas? Do you
think that we need extra information to make those fair comparisons?
Ms Parry: I think the amount of
input that is being put into that individual, the level of expertise
that is being put in, how many outsourced services have been utilised
for that individual, we can all learn from these activities. This
is the kind of data that is just not available. People have been
coming along for their half-hourly interviews and going away again.
What is going into those half-hourly interviews? What is working,
what is not working? It is sharing and disseminating that information.
I am convinced that there is a lot of good practice going on,
but it is not being shared.
Mr Wylie: From our point of view,
we are not in competition with the voluntary sector. We have different
roles. We think it is important that we work in partnership with
the voluntary sector. Much of the work done by the smaller, locally
based charities we simply could not do as Jobcentre Plus as an
organisation. Equally, we believe that the work that we do and
the employment adviser role, financial adviser, even the benefit
decision-maker role are roles that only we can do and only we
should be doing. The voluntary sector, in many cases, quite honestly,
would not want to be doing some of those jobs, but the area where
we do find it more difficult is where the private sector are providing
adviser services, and I think there is very little evidence to
support an argument that says that the private sector do it better
than we did. We believe that we did it better.
Q261 Justine Greening: I want to
finish off by talking a little bit about the City Strategy. We
have talked about some of the questions that I have a little bit
already around some of the co-ordination and the training providers,
but overall do you think that the City Strategy is going to be
something that will work, especially in terms of all the different
providers. We have talked quite a lot about the need for working
partnerships; you have got the Jobcentre Plus, the training providers,
the voluntary sector, the Learning and Skills Council. Do you
think the City Strategy will manage to knit those people together
and do you think employers are going to be included enough as
those strategies are being developed now? Perhaps if I can start
with Keith.
Mr Wylie: The City Strategy is
something we have not been heavily involved in, but we have always
supported the idea of joined up government, of joined up service
delivery and of making sure that the best service possible is
provided at the most local level possible. When we come to see
how the City Strategy develops, I think somebody said earlier
this morning, it is a bit too early to call it yet, but it is
a view that we would probably agree with. The only concern that
we do have is with the increased move towards centralisation of
benefits advice, of benefit processing. With more call centres
being set up in Jobcentre Plus, with Employer Direct being centralised
into call centres, there is a danger that we will lose the local
labour market knowledge that our Jobcentre Plus managers and Jobcentre
Plus advisers currently have, because it will be drawn away into
these centralised call centres and processing centres. I think
that one of the dangers to the City Strategy is quite simply that
the expertise that Jobcentre Plus has on the ground is drawn away
from the local offices and centralised.
Q262 Justine Greening: Do you think
that the Train to Gain initiative that is happening is going to
fit well with some of the training that Jobcentre Plus points
people towards getting? Do you think there is any conflict between
those different efforts?
Mr Wylie: I do not think there
needs to be a conflict. I think that the very good work that is
being done by the Learning and Skills Councils should be joined
up with the very good work that our members are doing, trying
to ensure that people are trained to get into employment and then
trained after being in employment to improve their employment
prospects. Lone parent gas fitters is a good example of that.
That is something that Jobcentre Plus initiated and it was done
on a local basis with a great deal of success for those particular
clients.
Ms Parry: I have to say that I
have learnt more about the City Strategy today than I have done
in a long time, and I think that is rather a shame. Again, I come
back to it, this is the kind of good practice, lessons to be learned
that we should be sharing, and my personal concern is that we
are going to have things going very well somewhere and failing
somewhere else.
Q263 Justine Greening: It will all
be done in a bit of a bubble?
Ms Parry: A bit of a bubble, yes,
absolutely. So there is a bit of a concern there. ERSA is concerned
that there was very little consultation around City Strategy before
it suddenly happened. It suddenly happened quite quickly.
Q264 Justine Greening: What was the
impact of that lack of consultation?
Ms Parry: The lack of consultation
means that we have been rather in the dark about how we can help.
We would very much like to be in the position where we could compete
to run a Cities Strategy ourselves. We think the private and voluntary
sector would be up for that. We think that is a model that would
have been very interesting, from the data collected. Our real
concern here is that the piloting period here must be properly
evaluated and this information must be shared.
Q265 Justine Greening: Do you think
we may draw conclusions too soon in the strategy? Is that your
concern about the pilot?
Ms Parry: We might draw them too
soon and we might not have looked at all the data we should be
looking at to draw those conclusions. I think that is the issue.
Mr Hoyle: I think there is a potential
tension between national policy and any kind of local strategy.
I think it is very important that we understand that there needs
to be a very clear national approach, a national policy, a national
strategy, which determines what it is we are trying to do, and
then, by all means, have City Strategies. There is regional city,
there are all kinds of models that could work. They have clearly
got to be focused on how we are going to deliver that here on
a collaborative basis and city strategies are perfectly capable
of doing that. I think there are other policies around that to
decide whether you go to cities, or regions, or whatever, but
the key is, whichever route we take, we need to make sure that
there is a national policy strategy which is understood which
confirms what we are trying to do here with this particular client
group, and then every locality is focused on that. What we do
not want are different strategies at different targets, different
approaches that do not marry up with each other, and that is going
to be particularly difficult for the large training providers
who operate in different places. I think there is a tension there
that can be avoided.
Q266 Justine Greening: So you may
end with lots of hybrids because different parts of the country
may have totally different employment needs and you are saying
that national training providers will provide some—
Mr Hoyle: That will certainly
give some problems, yes, that is absolutely the case, but I would
still support local delivery strategies within a national policy,
and if that is what everyone wants, then that is fine. What tends
to happen is that local delivery strategies start to impact and
modify national policies and the national policies come under
threat, and that is when it all starts to fall down; so I think
you have got to be very disciplined on that.
Q267 Justine Greening: In another
inquiry we did there was some evidence that part of the problem
for training providers locally was the funding mechanism. It is
quite short-term and does not allow people to plan ahead. Is that
something that in your experience you would say is a problem that
also needs to be sorted out if the City Strategy is going to be
successful?
Mr Hoyle: If you are going to
expect the independent private and voluntary sectors to get involved
and jointly invest in any project, and you do want and need their
investment—we have not talked about that this morning—they
are prepared to invest alongside public funding here. What they
need, however, is an environment which gives them a sensible level
of security. Obviously, funding levels is one, but security of
a contract has a tremendous impact. Year on year contracts where
it could all disappear is not a recipe for investment. The other
thing is quality. You have got to withdraw contracts if the quality
is not right, and I am very hawkish on that, but, basically, you
would get the independent sector prepared to invest and play the
long game if they believe it is a fair system.
Chairman: Thank you very much. It has
been a challenging session. I hope you make friends outside!
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