Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
CAROLINE FLINT
MP AND MR
ADAM SHARPLES
23 JULY 2007
Q20 Michael Jabez Foster: Who is
going to do this? You talk about the Local Employment Partnership
managers and it is unclear in the Green Paper whether you are
going to be recruiting them from Jobcentre Plus or whether it
is going to be from the private sector. How is that going to work?
Caroline Flint: Our idea is that
it is going to be from Jobcentre Plus. They will act as a lynchpin,
working with a range of employers and stakeholders locally but
at this local level they will be holding this together, as well
as what we can do at a national level and what we hope we can
achieve at a regional level through other organisations like the
RDAs to support this initiative and increase the numbers of employers
taking part and firming up the number of jobs available.
Q21 Michael Jabez Foster: Will the
continuing support be essentially through Jobcentre Plus or will
that involve private sector partners?
Mr Sharples: In the first instance
Jobcentre Plus. This is really a development of the continuing
work the Jobcentre Plus does with employers, taking vacancies,
talking to them about how to prepare people for filling those
vacancies. It is a development of that. Of course we have a number
of partners providing employment services through the different
New Deal programmes and other programmes and where we can make
links between those programmes and these employers we will be
trying to do that. It would be crazy to have partnerships with
local employers and then exclude the private sector employment
service providers from accessing those vacancies. That would not
be the case at all.
Caroline Flint: At the breakfast
meeting we had the other week with the Prime Minister, as well
as Peter Hain we also had John Denham. Part of making these Local
Employment Partnerships work is how we can better align the skills
agenda in terms of what employers need but also what happens when
someone enters into work as well. Some of the areas we will be
developing over the next couple of months will be our work between
Jobcentres Plus and the Learning and Skills Councils in terms
of things like Train to Gain, the in-work support, and looking
at how we can get a better element of both the employment side
and the skills side together to get the best possible outcomes.
Q22 Mrs Humble: May I ask you one
or two questions on the lone parent section in the Green Paper
and start off with the part of it which is perhaps the most controversial,
namely asking parents to move from Income Support onto JSA when
their youngest child is seven? There is some logic in 12, because
moving to big school is seen as a momentous step for children
and even those who think there can be problems with identifying
suitable child care for secondary age children might see that
at least there is some logic in picking the first year they are
in secondary school. What research have you done to pick on seven-year-olds?
Caroline Flint: A number of factors.
Firstly, in terms not only of the European level but the international
level, the evidence would suggest that our system in relation
to lone parents has the least number of conditions in it compared
with other countries. Many other countries have work tests which
operate, in some cases, at the age of one, at three, five, six.
Our present situation at 16 is completely out of kilter with a
number of other countries which are trying to address these issues.
That is where we fit. Certainly Lisa Harker in her report suggested
that, given other support, child care, flexible working and what
have you, it would not be a bad thing to introduce more conditionality,
partly as a way of getting engagement. I mentioned earlier that
we are just not getting the numbers coming through as we should
be presently through the New Deal for Lone Parents, given the
resources in there, given the training which has been provided
for those advisers for New Deal for Lone Parents, to warrant that
sort of programme in itself. The second point is around our aspirations
in relation to child poverty. If we are really going to make inroads
in supporting children out of poverty, we have to do something
more about the number of households where there is no work at
all and children are present. Certainly, if you look at the numbers
of lone parents whose youngest child is 12—as has been said
many lone parents already work when their child is over the age
of 12—the figures on that are quite small but when you actually
go down to the age of seven the numbers are higher. We have to
think about how we engage with a larger number of lone parents
in order to support them into work. Part of the way to do that
is to think about reducing it incrementally to a lower age. There
is the international evidence that we are out of kilter with a
lot of support programmes around lone parents and the point at
which conditionality is part of that support, but also, in terms
of our ambitions to tackle child poverty and meet our full-employment
provision, we will not really do that unless we have policies
which are about engagement in a much more upfront way whilst recognising
that with that conditionality there comes a responsibility on
us to recognise how we support. The proposals are asking those
lone parents in these circumstances to look for work; that is
what we are seeking here. It sounds like common sense but all
the evidence shows that if people are not looking for work, they
are not going to find work. That is just the reality. What we
do find, even amongst our inactive work groups, lone parents being
one of them, is that when they are engaged and start looking for
work many doors open up in a way that currently many are not coming
forward to take advantage of.
Q23 Mrs Humble: May I press you a
little further on the research? It is not enough just to say that
some other countries do it at younger ages and therefore we have
to because there are lots of other questions to be asked in that
context. What support systems are in place in other countries?
If we are comparing ourselves to many northern European countries,
they have a much more extensive range of available child care
provision so that parents of much younger children can access
it. Secondly, there are questions to be asked about the success
of any such programme. Does it actually work for the parents and
if it does work, does it work at the level of them taking up fulltime
employment or part-time employment? In making these international
comparisons have you drilled a bit further down to ask those sorts
of questions and others to see whether we are comparing like with
like and whether it will be practicable for us to proceed?
Caroline Flint: There is no one
system in any other country where conditionality exists which
it is easy to say we can just take and implant it here. Before
I was a Member of Parliament I was chair of a national child care
organisation. I was involved for a number of years in the campaign
against attacks on workplace nurseries. Whilst I would not say
that we are at the ultimate point in terms of child care provision,
we should not sell ourselves short on what is available and what
is possible and what is coming down the road. By 2010—and
this is not just down to DWP but other government departments
and also local authorities—the expectation is that all secondary
and all primary schools will offer wrap-around activities and
care from eight until six, including through most weeks of the
year. That would cover the summer holidays and what have you.
There is a duty on local authorities to look at how they assure
sufficient accessible child care at a local level. With the development
of other services in terms of children's centres we know that
child care has a real opportunity to expand. We also know that
for many lone parents—and we have got more lone parents
into work—where we can get the support right, part of that
support is making sure all the other in-work benefits are understood,
because that is a factor here. I was reading through a document
on child care and often there does seem to be a perception about
what does not exist as opposed to what does exist. I have to say
that it is only when you get engagement that you suddenly find
that there is more locally. I am not trying to say that there
are no difficulties; certain areas, London in particular, have
particular factors which need to be addressed. Clearly people
will be asking questions as part of the consultation about the
in-work benefits and premiums and what-have-you for the child
care element, support, for example, in London where it is more
expensive. I really do think we should at least open up our eyes
to some of the opportunities which we know exist and are far away
from what existed 10 or 15 years ago. Unless we have something
which somehow forces this issue, we will end up constantly saying
it is too difficult, we cannot do this. I met a woman the other
week and she had got support through Jobcentre Plus. She had not
worked for 10 years; she was seeing opportunities she had never
seen before. She came in as part of a voluntary programme and
I asked why we had not got to her five years earlier. Essentially
if we do not do something more for more women—and they are
mainly women—whose children are of primary school age and
secondary school age to get them into work, part-time work in
and of itself, the problems down the road in terms of poverty
will be incredibly hard to overcome.
Q24 Mrs Humble: As the chair of the
all-party child care group in this place—
Caroline Flint: Which I have to
say I founded.
Q25 Mrs Humble: I remember it well. I
very much welcome the huge improvements which have taken place
over the past 10 years and also, through last year's Child Care
Act, the new statutory requirement upon local authorities to have
sufficient child care available for working parents. But—there
is always a "but" I can only be nice for a certain amount
of time—even though the Child Care Act does also specifically
refer to families with children with disability, there are real
concerns amongst those families about how these proposed changes
will affect them. Even though there has been a big increase in
the availability of child care and wrap-around care in mainstream
schools, for families with disabilities there are still huge problems.
It is much more difficult to have wrap-around care in a special
school, because children travel far and wide to a special school
and the transport arrangements mean that they cannot arrive early
and stay late. How do you think what you have on offer here will
actually apply to those families? Are you as optimistic for them
as you are for the rest of the lone parents whose children do
not have disabilities?
Caroline Flint: I would very much
hope that whatever type of parent you are, whether you are a parent
of a disabled child or not ... Actually parents of disabled children
often want to work as much as the next parent but there are all
sorts of barriers in the way of that happening, because clearly,
as you have outlined, the child care which is available is not
suitable. I know that parents of disabled children have raised
with me in the past having child care in their own home for which
they could use the child care element of the tax credits. That
was something which was being looked at by Government because
your own home has the facilities you need and it might make it
easier. That would apply to shift workers as well in many respects.
I think two things. First of all, when someone walks through the
door and sits down for their interview, how much are we going
to have a process whereby we can really understand that individual's
need and recognise the flexibilities needed within that? The Secretary
of State has said and I have said that we cannot from Whitehall
know exactly what is available in different parts of the country.
That would be part of the work which would happen at local level.
So when the jobseeker's agreement, which is part of the jobseeker
process, takes place what would be looked at is what is available
locally, what is possible here. That is what I am interested in:
what is possible here? For some parents with disabled children
those children may be in a special school or they may be in a
mainstream school and therefore the opportunity to work within
those hours and the flexibility within that—and we have
provided a right to ask for flexible working up to the age of
18 for a parent of a disabled child—may provide some opportunities
which have not been thought about before. We are really interested
in hearing people's views on this because it is about treating
someone as an individual and looking at the whole family, which
is going to play an important part in whether it works or not.
I have to say that it should also create a situation where locally
in the different partnerships, particularly the local authorities
I would hope, it would be an opportunity to raise the profile
of some of the different needs of different families in the community,
maybe in a way that has not been achieved before. When you actually
have people in front of you for whom there may not be sufficient
child care support, in particular for children with disabilities,
then that becomes a talking point with our partners locally, the
local authority particularly, about how they are going to address
this and what could they do to improve the situation. I do not
think that conversation happens as much as it should, because
often we say we will not worry about a group because we think
they do not want to work and that is not always the case. For
some parents of disabled children the issues of work will present
greater difficulties but it is about having that conversation
and what the parent wants to get out of it and how we can fit
around that.
Q26 Mrs Humble: At the risk of labouring
this point, may I just ask, when the invitation is sent out to
a lone parent and especially one whose child is disabled, that
it be done in a sensitive manner and the appointment then is also
conducted with sensitivity? Sadly DWP do not have a good record
of sending out sensitively worded letters. Some of them are rather
abrupt and it can cause huge worry. Just a simple request of you:
please handle this with some sensitivity.
Caroline Flint: Yes, I totally
agree with you. I can think of other scenarios as well where someone
has just lost their partner or the relationship has broken up
in difficult if not traumatic circumstances where sensitivity
is going to be very important. I should be very interested in
exploring with the Committee and other stakeholders what sort
of form such letters and communications might take so we can try
to get this right. I was looking at some other letters in the
Department the other day which my predecessor Jim Murphy had a
look at which had been informed by what some stakeholders had
said. At the point where we are trying to discuss the formalities
of this I would be very open to people providing some input to
that.
Mr Sharples: Another reason for
being particularly sensitive and careful about communications
is that the lone parent of a more severely disabled child may
in fact be able to stay on Income Support. If their child receives
the higher levels of Disability Living Allowance, the care component,
they can qualify for Carer's Allowance which in turn can allow
them to stay on Income Support. Parents of more severely disabled
children will not be affected by this age change.
Mrs Humble: There is even an issue there
about parents being aware of their entitlement to DLA. I welcome
that aspect of the Green Paper, but there is a take-up point,
that some parents even now do not understand their entitlement.
You are going to need to do something about that.
Q27 Chairman: A very quick anecdote
on sensitivity which I know is true. Couple; man buries a hatchet
in his wife's shoulder; he gets arrested and goes to jail; she
is in hospital. A letter comes from the Jobcentre because he has
not signed on. Eldest child of about 16 gives it back to the postman
saying he does not live there any more because he is in jail.
They send a letter to his partner saying they understand the claimant
no longer lives at the address therefore there is no money and
she might need to make a claim. This was front page news. It was
not an isolated incident. So sometimes they do press the wrong
button without thinking.
Caroline Flint: I agree.
Q28 Mrs Humble: I want finally to
talk about your comments in the Green Paper about wanting to learn
from the Australian model, where parents with the youngest child
over six are only obliged to accept an offer of employment which
makes them financially better off than on benefit. A couple of
questions linked to that. As the Committee have travelled around
and visited Jobcentre Plus offices we have been surprised at how
few claimants are offered a Better Off Calculation—something
around 20%. We have asked questions about why that does not happen
earlier in their claims so that they have a much clearer idea
about whether they will be better off in work rather than on benefit.
The second issue is that in evidence the Committee have received
to earlier inquiries there is one group who are not better off:
lone parents who take up part-time work and who then find themselves
above income limits to get free school meals, travel to school
even. There are all sorts of hidden costs in going back to work.
Earlier you said parents of a child with a disability could work
during those part-time school hours, but they could be caught
in that trap of not being better off. Are you going to increase
the number of better-off calculations so lone parents do have
a much clearer idea whether they are going to be better off. If
you are anticipating that some lone parents will only be working
part time, how many of them will really be better off?
Caroline Flint: A good question.
I was looking at the weekend at some of the Better Off Calculations.
It has improved but it is still relatively low. That is something
I want to have a closer look at. One of the things about selling
this—for want of a better phrase—to lone parents and
others is whether it is worth their while. Being in work has to
be better than being on benefits. You are right that it is complicated,
not so much because of the in-work benefits, because you can work
that out, but some of the other add-on stuff you factor in when
you have a family. You made the point about free school meals
and so forth. I would be interested in responses to the consultation
on that. It is something we want to work through because it would
be not very helpful if, having gone through all this, we could
not show that someone was actually on the road to a better standard
of living, certainly better than anything they could have just
relying on benefits. I will take that away. Some of these issues
are about engagement early on. I was reading a child care briefing
over the weekend and often there seemed to be a perception about
what was not there rather than what was there but also, on working
the financial calculations out, most people, even any of us if
we were in the same situation, would find quite hard and not as
clear as it might be as an incentive for us to make that leap.
Mr Sharples: It is really important
that we get much better at providing the information quickly for
people. At the moment it is a slightly clunky process which involves
you sitting down, going through quite a long discussion with the
personal adviser to get the calculation. What we would like to
move towards is a position where you can just answer a few questions
on screen yourself, possibly do it at home on the Internet and
to get the calculation instantly as to how much better off you
would be in different circumstances.
Q29 Mrs Humble: Except it becomes
very complicated for the claimant because it is not just looking
at benefits and tax credits, it is also asking how much the school
meals actually cost, how much the school uniform actually costs.
There are costs which your officer in the DWP may be unaware of
because he or she is simply looking at a computer screen which
lists those benefits and perhaps tax credits as well.
Caroline Flint: And activities
for children and things like this. Often if you are in receipt
of a Jobseeker's Allowance or something you will get free activities
at your local leisure centre and discounts and things like that.
How do we work our way to making work pay?
Mr Sharples: There is also the
plus side as well that sometimes people are not aware of the tax
credits they could claim if they moved into a job or the fact
that they could go on receiving housing benefit even when they
are in work.
Chairman: Often Jobcentre Plus staff
are not aware of that either. You cannot make it simpler when
you have things like maintenance being disregarded in work credits
and all these add-ons.
Q30 Harry Cohen: I should like to
raise with you a number of questions regarding employment policy
for ethnic minorities. I notice in the Green Paper there is a
splendid picture of an ethnic minority woman on the front cover,
several of black youths but not a particularly great deal of what
there is in there is about ethnic minorities. We heard from an
earlier report that there was a 15% gap in the employment rates
between BME communities and white individuals. Indeed in the report
on page 27 it says that overall many ethnic minorities "
... are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as white people
and one and a half times more likely than the overall working
age population to be economically inactive. The employment rates
for some groups are exceptionally low: the employment rates for
Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are only 27.6% and 26.4% respectively".
In that Green Paper you say that the Government " ... needs
to ensure that all programmes continue to deliver higher employment
outcomes irrespective of ethnicity". Is that not really masking
what has been a shift in policy? The DWP had a specific programme,
a successful one actually, the Ethnic Minority Outreach programme
but it has got rid of it and put it into these general programmes,
the Deprived Areas Fund and city strategies. It has gone from
a specific programme to a more general approach and there has
been research about New Deal, about the switch which says that
when you go for a general approach it is less successful than
when there is this specificity. So the switch to genuine employment
is unlikely to work unless the Government ensure that there is
something specific within these new programmes for BME. Are you
planning anything like that?
Caroline Flint: I hope I can reassure
you and the Committee that we have not lost sight by any means
of the particular difficulties ethnic minorities face in terms
of opportunities for employment and within ethnic minorities particular
groups, Pakistani men and women and Bangladeshi men and women.
It is quite stark in terms of how far behind they are in terms
of access to work. Two things. The Deprived Areas Fund, which
is a fund which does allow Jobcentre managers to have more flexibility
over the use of that fund in partnership with others, is a way
in which, at a much more local level, you can look at your employment
statistics and your unemployment statistics and see who is active
and who is not active and use that to target in a way we are not
nationally best placed to do. The City Strategy also allows flexibility
and the Deprived Areas Fund could be put into the pot for City
Strategies and because it is led by a consortium of partners it
has other pots of money which come together to use for specific
needs, for certain needs. For example, the Birmingham pathfinder
is developing a target to narrow the employment rate gap between
ethnic minorities and the city region average. In west London
they are developing plans to improve accessibility to services
and they have a particularly dedicated funding pot to improve
outreach towards ethnic minority women. In east London they are
focusing on child poverty, but within that child poverty group
those ethnic minority families are particularly present in terms
of where they are in terms of being in poverty. That is happening
there and the Liverpool pathfinder is also looking at their ability
to measure progress on ethnic minority employment. What we have
asked is that where City Strategy pathfinder areas have significant
ethnic minority populations, local ethnic minority targets be
developed. They may be different in one pathfinder area and another
but they will be particularly localised and looking at who has
the least access to the labour market and least support there.
The other side of what we have raised in the Green Paper too is
how we can better engage with couples and particularly by inviting
in the non-working partner or the person who is dependent on the
main benefit claimant on Jobseeker's Allowance. I believe in many
respects, not entirely, that that will allow us an opportunity
to reach women in particular from Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities,
to engage with them in a way we have not really had the vehicle
or the mechanism to do in the past. I was very pleased that in
my first week in this job we had an event which was part of our
contribution to the social exclusion agenda across Government,
a seminar where the people taking part were people who were receiving
benefits in one form or another. At that event were several women
from within the Asian community who spoke to me about wanting
there to be much closer links to them and routes for them to access
the sort of services they might want. On that level, whether it
is in DWP or across Government, we need to be very clear that
when we are dealing with ethnic minority organisations we make
sure we are reaching women as well as men. That is something we
have to think about across Government and create the sort of environment
where particularly women can come forward. Opportunities to learn
English are not something only our Department are looking at but
across Government because if we are talking about employability,
whatever form that employment takes, English language is obviously
important.
Q31 Harry Cohen: I agree with that;
there was a lot in there and I am grateful for that answer. Before
I come on to some of those point, may I come back to this specific
point? By getting rid of the Ethnic Minority Outreach programme
or absorbing it in the other programmes are you not spreading
the pot more thinly and why can we not just have that Birmingham
approach? If it is covering most of the wards where the ethnic
minorities are, why can we not have that Birmingham approach in
all of them, saying that they should have as a priority to close
the employment gap between ethnic minorities and the rest of the
community?
Caroline Flint: That is partly
why we are asking for them to develop these local delivery targets.
In a way those partnerships at a local level are both empowered
and also expected to take more responsibility for the delivery
outcome locally. This week I am going to be chairing the ethnic
minority task force and I am listening as well, coming into the
Department. I do think that part of what we really have to focus
on here, whether it is at a national level or a regional local
level, is having a much clearer sense of who is not active in
the job market, work out why that is and if there is no good reason
that they should not be active and other barriers of discrimination
are in the way, what the challenge is for us to bear down on and
do something different. It is also making sense often of lots
of different projects, lots of different programmes, which may
not be in and of themselves producing the outcomes we want. I
am interested in our contractual process now that we have moved
that to the centre in DWP. I am hoping that Adam and his team
of people are going to have a much closer look at what outcomes
we want. I am very keen that, where contracts are provided, which
already exists in one form or another at the moment, even when
they are to a prime contractor with sub-contracting under that,
we create the situation where we do not have a preferred situation
where the people who are easiest find employment, are the ones
who are the beneficiaries. What I want to look at is how we make
sure, whether it is people from ethnic minority communities, particularly
those who are most distant from the opportunities we think are
present, whether it is others, that we find a way that the contract
can have rigour and be paid on outcomes and is mindful of those
particular needs in those communities. I should say as well that
as part of the work with the Local Employment Partnerships I would
hope part of the scoping would include who within a community
from an ethnic minority is not currently getting access to the
job market locally and how the Local Employment Partnerships will
look at that alongside lone parents, alongside those with disabilities.
Let us not forget you could be a lone parent from an ethnic minority
and have a disability.
Q32 Harry Cohen: I hope that means
there will be monitoring to ensure that the outcomes come about.
May I move you on to page 51 of the Green Paper where it says
"Employer discrimination is a major factor in explaining
employment disadvantage for ethnic minorities"? What are
you going to do about employer discrimination?
Caroline Flint: As the next line
says " ... the Chancellor commissioned the Business Commission
on Race Equality in the Workplace ... to look at how best"
we move forward on this. I am taking different advice at the moment
about how we might move forward in this particular area. It is
not just the DWP. It is a cross-government responsibility to tackle,
whether it is in the private sector or the public sector, where
those from different ethnic groups are getting the chance to get
work and progress within work. Part of the move forward, the single
equalities agenda, again across Government, is how we can better
engage with employers on these issues. It does seem something
that most employers should be mindful of, that they could have
fantastic workplaces where the nearest local community does not
reflect the people who work in the building up the road or what
have you. That is something we need to work on.
Q33 Harry Cohen: Let me try to bowl
you a soft ball in relation to this aspect and ask you not to
rule out, to tell us that you will not rule out the Government
coming back after this consultation about employer discrimination.
Do not rule out perhaps legislating for a private duty not to
discriminate, as there is in the public sector and report about
that. You mentioned the new single equalities agenda, do not to
rule out the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights being
able to investigate employers who have a bad record on discrimination.
Caroline Flint: I am very happy
to look further into that and use the summer recess to make myself
assured about where we are on this and what more is possible.
I have to say again that it is an across-government issue which
we need to address because part of it is what happens in our schools
in terms of the opportunities for young boys and girls from different
ethnic backgrounds to get the most out of schools so they can
leave schools with the potential to take up training or education
or work opportunities.
Q34 Harry Cohen: You mentioned contracts
and I want to ask you about that. Page 61 of the Green Paper says
" ... there is real value to be gained by simplifying and
rationalising our existing set of contracts over time and by taking
a more strategic approach to the commissioning of employment programmes".
Later on the seventh point is "How do we ensure that the
outcome of our commissioning strategy is a narrowing of the gap
between individuals, groups and localities and the average?".
That only refers to the contracts you put out for employment programmes.
You said a lot of these things run across Government. What about
Government procurement contracts generally and indeed the sub-contracts
which flow from the Government contracts? Is there not a role
here at least for the Government to apply pressure through their
buying policy to close this gap and get more ethnic minority people
in?
Caroline Flint: It is worthwhile
looking across Government at what we can do. As a health minister
I knew that in the NHS we were very keen, as part of the corporate
responsibility of NHS organisations, that as well as sustainability
in the way they ran their organisations they look at sustainability
in drawing from the local community for its workforce, which was
an area I led on at the Department of Health. Yes, I am interested
in looking at this area and what more we can do. We are certainly
discussing where we can go on this. I did in another job work
for the contract compliance unit at GLC many years ago so I have
a little bit of background in that particular area.
Q35 Harry Cohen: That is very good
to bring those skills to bear.
Mr Sharples: The Government are
consulting at the moment on the basis for the single equality
legislation and issues about procurement are being considered
as part of that consultation.
Q36 Harry Cohen: May I raise the
point about the Bangladeshi and the Pakistani women, which you
were absolutely right to raise, and focus on the need for action?
The EOC report pointed out that they were ahead of their cohort
of the younger age coming out of school in terms of qualifications
and eagerness to work and it all fell back from the mid-20s onwards.
I mentioned this to a Bangladeshi organisation and they said it
was about husbands and babies at that point. There is an argument
to be had about what stage a woman wants to have husbands and
babies but if they are going to go at that stage then there need
to be routes back into work when they are ready to come into work.
Indeed a lot of these communities have quite traditional family
cultures, so if we want to get them into work surely the incentives
have to be much greater to encourage them into work in that way.
My last point on this is that we still have a very macho work
culture with the longest working hours in Europe. It is surely
not easy for a woman after having a family to get back into the
workplace. Is this something you are thinking of working on?
Caroline Flint: First of all we
need to make sure that, for example—I am not saying this
is not happening but we just need to reassure ourselves that it
is happening—where Jobcentres Plus are working in partnership
with local authorities and others that they are in touch and not
just in touch but they develop a relationship with some of the
organisations in which a number of these women are often very
well represented just to make sure on that. We are mindful that
engagement with community organisations is about reaching women
as well as men and they are not always the same organisations.
Certainly when I have had the opportunity to meet with groups
which represent Pakistani or Bangladeshi women and others for
that matter, what I have always found is a real interest in services
which are available locally and some very valid questions about
why they have problems accessing some of these services. It is
fair to say—I would not say it was exclusively this issue—that
often within some groups there are concerns about what form child
care will take. What values are being espoused? Does it fit in
culturally with expectations? I have to say that often in groups
there is a sense that child care is something you do within the
family; you do not go outside the family. There are some real
issues to address there. I was struck the other week, watching
something on television about SureStart and children's centres.
The very best SureStart and children's centres are the ones which
have an active outreach policy in terms of what they do. There
was one example of a SureStart centre where they had actively
gone to recruit from within the local community and a young Muslim
woman came as a volunteer and ended up working in SureStart. She
was able then to provide part of the bridge to other women in
that community. I am not saying it is that easy but I do think
that those are some of the things we should be thinking about.
It is not that there is no desire for the sort of services that
are offered to everyone else. It is just that some people are
not sure about them, are worried whether they are in tune with
their sense of family and cultural belief and it is a better way
to have a conversation. What you cannot do is develop those services
unless you are actually talking directly to the women concerned
in those communities and finding a way to do that. It is not because
people do not want; sometimes it is quite intimidating, you are
not quite sure and also there are other possible barriers there
that women in all sorts of family situations might face in terms
of being active. The other side of it as well is that we have
high rates of women in this country doing part-time work. It is
not about full time as the exclusive model for working. Given
the work we have been doing on flexible working arrangements and
what have you and some of the flexible working arrangements which
do exist more than they have done before, it would be very sad
if the problem was that people did not know it existed and therefore
were not able to take advantage. Some of this is a real work in
progress and we just have to be bold about being willing to engage
in a much more proactive way.
Q37 Harry Cohen: That was a very
thoughtful answer and I appreciate it. You again mentioned English.
Earlier this year the Government got itself into a bit of a muddle
when on the one hand your predecessors were talking about benefit
penalties for ethnic minorities who did not learn English when
they were given the opportunity and then the Government started
to mess around a little bit with another department with ESOL
packages and cutting back on them a bit. I think the subsequent
package after representations was certainly better. May I ask
you where we are with the idea of benefit penalties in relation
to ethnic minorities who do not take up English? I note for example
that there is going to be a consultation generally on the Bangladeshi
and Pakistani women issue later in the year. Is this something
you would expect to fall into that?
Caroline Flint: My immediate reaction
to it is first of all whether we do accept that there is a need
for someone in receipt of Jobseeker's Allowance who is actively
looking for work to be able to speak English. Probably most of
us would agree; yes. That is the first premise. If we agree that
then that is good. Secondly then is what to do to support someone
to acquire that skill to speak English. The third thing is if
someone says they are just not going to learn that skill. These
are really difficult questions but they need answers. If you start
with the first question and we all accept that you are then faced
with someone who turns round and says they are going to make themselves
unemployable by not learning English, I would hope that where
we need to get this right first and foremost is in how we support
the person to learn English. This is one of the areas I am hoping
to have a more detailed look at in terms of what we are offering
at the point where someone needs to learn English or improve their
English and how that fits with our colleagues in the Department
for Innovation, Universities and Skills to make sure we have got
that right. Certainly it would be something I would be interested
to look at through our City Strategy areas, how they are looking
at this and prioritising this in their consortium of work. To
be honest, I think there is a crunch point if, all things being
equal, support is given and it is available. If someone chooses
not to learn English they are effectively putting themselves in
a situation where it is very hard to imagine that in most jobs
they would be able to get employment. That is something we have
to deal with as best as possible in a proactive engagement way.
We need to think about someone who excludes themselves from the
labour market by doing that and we do not apply some sanctions
and at the same time someone does something else to exclude themselves
from the labour market and we do apply some sanctions. It is a
complex area but it is about people's ability to be employed and
take part. I have to say that if you cannot speak English—and
I am not getting into the level at which that should be—it
is not just about employment it is all sorts of other things which
affect your ability to take part in your community: conversations
with the teacher at your child's school; using your GP; accessing
health services. This is something where it is very important
for people to achieve equality and to be liberated.
Q38 Chairman: That was a perfect
answer. I want to move on quickly to Leitch as it impacts on the
Department, because we had the statement on the same day. One
thing which was announced was this universal careers service which
apparently is going to link closely with the employment service.
How will that link in with and add value to the personal adviser
service or is it too early to say?
Caroline Flint: At the moment
the idea is that where it is still practicable the adult careers
service will be co-located in Jobcentre Plus offices. Jobcentre
Plus then identify jobseekers who have basic skills or employability
needs and the adult careers service will be able to be on hand
to provide a more in-depth assessment of their skill needs. One
of the things we are looking at as part of the flexible New Deal
is having some sort of skills check early on to identify some
obvious gaps that that engagement hopefully can address and then,
later down the road at about six months, at the gateway process,
when there is a more intensive, refreshed skills analysis, the
careers service might play a role in that. I met with David Lammy
last week just to have an initial talk-through of some of the
work which could be better aligned between Jobcentre Plus and
the Learning and Skills Council in terms of pulling some of these
issues together and trying to see where we can, across our two
departments, be on the same page in relation to pre-work skills
training, what is appropriate, in-work skills training, where
qualifications fit into that and where other skills training,
which may not have a paper qualification but is just as important
at that point, can be better aligned and we can all be singing
from the same hymn sheet.
Q39 Chairman: That neatly takes me
onto the next question. The Green Paper had this wonderful phrase
"no wrong door approach" to careers advice. Given the
different priorities of learning providers as against employment
providers, there is a conflict there depending on which door the
individual actually knocks on. They might get some good advice
but it might not be the best advice. The Department is particularly
interested in getting jobseekers into work so how are you going
to manage that?
Mr Sharples: If you have access
to the report that was published by DIUS, the Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills, on the same day as our report, on page
34 of that report there is a diagram which shows the flow through
the system for a typical benefit claimant. It explains the sequence
which we envisage here which is that the benefit claimant would
come in and as part of their first work-focused interview would
have a very light touch assessment made by the employment adviser
on their skills needs. Some would then be referred to the specialist
skills assessment undertaken by the careers service, but they
would then come back for a discussion with the employment adviser
about how best to build their skills needs and their training
into their back-to-work plan. At the heart of this approach is
the idea that skills cannot be separated from the employment advice
and the steer back into work. It has been a bit of a problem with
skills provision in the past that sometimes people have been diverted
away from job search into perhaps lengthy training courses which
had not actually helped them get back into work. This approach,
which really knits together almost for the first time the employment
side and the skills side is really designed to address that issue
and make sure the skills provision for jobseekers is very much
focused on helping them to get skills which will allow them to
fill vacancies which we know exist in the local labour market.
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