Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
Department for Work & Pensions, Learning &
Skills Council and Jobcentre Plus
26 November 2007
Q40 Mr. Mitchell: From the facts
and figures in the Report, I get the impression that there is
a fringe of marginally unemployable people or people whom it would
be difficult to employ. It would be nice to have some sort of
estimate of its size—have you any figures on that?
Adam Sharples: It all depends
on how you define "difficult to employ". As you know,
there are nearly 4.5 million people of working age on benefits
or welfare, many of whom have been on welfare for quite a long
time. That is one measure of the difficulty of moving into work.
The whole thrust of Government policy at the moment is to try
to raise the overall rate of employment by reducing the level
of inactivity.
Q41 Mr. Mitchell: So, we cannot put
a figure on the fringe of people who would be difficult to place?
Adam Sharples: You would have
to define the fringe, or the difficulty. I would be happy to help
with information about particular benefit groups and on the numbers
of people who have been on benefits for lengthy periods.
Q42 Mr. Mitchell: Perhaps Mr. Marston
can tell us. Is there a substantial proportion of people not in
education, employment or training? Is the proportion high or low?
Are people under the school leaving age who are not in education,
training or employment more likely to be unemployable when they
are working-age?
Stephen Marston: "Unemployable"
is a stark word—such people may well be less likely to be
attractive to employers.
What you try to do—it can be done only
on an individual basis—is match the person to the job that
the employer offers. Certainly—it comes through in the Leitch
Report and in today's package—those with low skills and
no qualifications will find it harder to get jobs in the labour
market, which is why we strongly emphasise getting such people
to train and to acquire skills that are economically valuable,
so that employers would be more interested in employing them.
Q43 Mr. Mitchell: Does it not follow
that it will be more difficult to get such people into work if
they are in competition with a better-trained, better-educated
number of healthy immigrants?
Stephen Marston: Yes.
Q44 Mr. Mitchell: So is life becoming
more difficult for those people?
Stephen Marston: Life will become
easier for those people if we are successful in providing better
support.
Q45 Mr. Mitchell: That is the point—it
will be more difficult to get them into work.
Adam Sharples: It is worth saying
that unemployment is falling quite sharply at the moment—it
is down to 825,000 on the Jobseeker's Allowance unemployment register,
which is close to the lowest level for some decades. If your question
implicitly refers to migration, I should say that it is striking
that while a reasonably large number have joined the labour force
from outside the UK in recent years, the numbers on benefit and
unemployment benefit have been falling. That would seem to be
evidence that the indigenous population has not been seriously
disadvantaged.
Q46 Mr. Mitchell: That is good to
know. Does it follow from the same facts that if it is difficult
to get some people into work, there must be a class of employers—cheap-jack
chiselling employers—for whom nobody in their right mind
would want to work?
Adam Sharples: Sorry. Will you
ask that question again?
Q47 Mr. Mitchell: I am asking whether
there must be a fringe of undesirable employers as well as marginally
viable workers.
Adam Sharples: Indeed, one has
only to look around to see that employers are not equally attractive,
and it is true that some offer pretty duff jobs.
Q48 Mr. Mitchell: Do you exercise
any form of discrimination against, or encouragement for, such
employers? Do you encourage them to upgrade their offerings or
to behave better?
Adam Sharples: Obviously, the
whole thrust of Jobcentre Plus offices—Lesley may want to
expand on this—is to get people well matched to good jobs.
We want to see people moving into work, acquiring skills and progressing
in work. The discussions that personal advisers have with jobseekers
in Jobcentre Plus offices are about what skills a person has,
what they are looking for, what jobs are available, and how to
make a good match.
Q49 Mr. Mitchell: That task must
surely be more difficult now, given the proliferation of agencies.
I have been struck by the increasing number of job agencies in
Grimsby. People are often sent to those agencies, and they are
unsatisfactory because they provide only intermittent work, abuse
people by keeping them hanging around and by do nothing for people's
future prospects. How far are agencies making your job more difficult?
Adam Sharples: I do not think
that they are making my job more difficult. I am not sure that
the picture you paint is true of the economy as a whole.
Q50 Mr. Mitchell: Am I wrong to be
critical of agencies?
Adam Sharples: I cannot really
comment on agencies in general. I was making the point that the
economy as a whole is becoming more stable and jobs are becoming
longer-term—the average length of a job 10 years ago was
eight years; it is now around 8.9 years.
Q51 Mr. Mitchell: Would I be wrong
in saying that there is a tendency to send unemployable people
to agencies and count yourselves as successful in getting them
off your books?
Adam Sharples: No. We count them
as successful once they are in jobs, not when they get sent to
agencies.
Q52 Mr. Mitchell: But if they worked
for an agency on a fairly small scale—part-time, a few days
a week, or whatever—would that be a success?
Lesley Strathie: We would count
it a success when somebody entered the tax system and the P45
system and was above the tax threshold. I think it is fair to
say that Jobcentre Plus works in partnership with a number of
agencies, because we measure the success of Jobcentre Plus by
people being signposted to the right place, and by when they go
into work. In many cases, depending on the skill level and the
type of work people are looking for, working in partnership with
an agency may be the best route for them. We do not see ourselves
in competition. Jobcentre Plus wants to get people into employment,
and sustainable employment, through any route.
Q53 Mr. Mitchell: A useful way of
achieving a placement. I am not quite clear how the benefit system
works. Is there something inherent in the benefit system, or Jobseeker's
Allowance, that encourages people to take a job for a short period
and then leave and move on to something else—back on to
Jobseeker's?
Lesley Strathie: There is a variety
of reasons why people move. People sometimes go into work and
do not stay in that job but move on to another. That is part of
the labour market. There are other people who go into a job—particularly
young people finding their feet in the labour market—who
come back when a job does not really suit them. There are also
quite often people who have a temporary job as a stepping stone.
It may be the first job that they have had, or the first that
they have had in that sector. Often they will start with any job—their
aspiration is just to work.
Q54 Mr. Mitchell: If they are coming
to the end of Jobseeker's Allowance, is there a tendency to get
a job briefly and then go back on to it?
Lesley Strathie: No. That is not
something I recognise.
Q55 Geraldine Smith: There appears
to me to be a group of people for whom it is very hard to find
employment. They may just have come out of prison; they may have
drug-related or alcohol-related problems; they may not have basic
literacy and numeracy skills. Employers probably do not want them
and the employment they can find is probably with unscrupulous
employers; therefore it may not last long, and they will be in
and out of jobs. What can you do about this group of people, who
are very hard to place in employment, and the people—let
us be honest—who sometimes do not want to be in employment?
Adam Sharples: Perhaps I can start
to answer that, and Lesley may want to elaborate. Obviously, within
the range of employment programmes, which the Chairman was suggesting
earlier might be too wide and complicated, we have specialist
employment programmes designed to help people with particularly
serious problems with alcohol or drugs. Progress2work and Progress2work-Link
Up are two.
Q56 Geraldine Smith: How do you do
that? How do you find an employer that wants to take on an alcoholic?
Adam Sharples: Obviously the individual
needs a lot of support, and those programmes are able to give
quite intensive personal support to people in overcoming problems,
linking up to health and other forms of support.
You asked how to get an employer to take on
those people. I think that is exactly where the local employment
partnership concept is so powerful. There the discussion with
employers, at national level, is, "Are you prepared to sign
up to work with us—Jobcentre Plus?" At local level
it is, "Are you prepared to take and consider seriously people
who have been on benefit, maybe for some time? Are you prepared
to consider them seriously for your vacancies?" The commitment
from employers is that they will. The deal from us is that we
will help to get those people ready.
It seems to me that within the framework of
local employment partnerships, with specific vacancies targeted
at the end, there is a real opportunity to see what steps you
need to take with an individual to get them ready for that type
of job. We have got the general programmes, which try to help
people who are hard to help; but increasingly local employment
partnerships provide a framework for channelling people towards
specific vacancies.
Q57 Geraldine Smith: Does the public
sector not need to do a lot more in this area? If an employer
is faced with someone with a host of problems who has been in
and out of work or even on benefits for a long time, and a young,
highly qualified Polish person, which one will they choose? Let
us be honest. There is an issue here, and immigration has an impact.
Lesley Strathie: It is important
that by the time a customer—a jobseeker—is put in
front of an employer for a job opportunity interview, they are
not labelled with any of the barriers to employment they might
have had. If we are all doing our job properly in our organisations,
we put people forward only when they are ready, because we have
been working with them. We work on a global level with employers
in a partnership agreement, and we ask for things in return. When
we submit jobseekers, we do not say that this person has been
unemployed for five years, or that that person has a drug and
alcohol problem; we say that we believe that they match the employer's
need in the vacancy and that they will be able to perform, and
to manage their health condition or whatever other barriers they
have had.
Q58 Geraldine Smith: So what happens
to the other people whom you do not put forward?
Lesley Strathie: We need to keep
working with them. You have seen from the Report just how many
different programmes there are. Jobcentre Plus is part of an integrated
system. We have various programmes for various people, but we
work in a broad partnership with others, whether the health service,
the probation service, local authorities, or small niche providers
who help people. Over the years, the numbers have shown the success
that we have had, but of course there is much more to do.
Q59 Geraldine Smith: Do you think
an element of compulsion is necessary with benefits?
Lesley Strathie: That strays into
policy areas that Jobcentre Plus delivers. I do not make those
decisions.
Adam Sharples: Well, there is
an element of compulsion at the moment in the sense that someone
who wants to apply for Jobseeker's Allowance must show that they
are actively seeking work, and are available for work. To go on
receiving it, they must comply with the conditions: sign on fortnightly,
and attend work-focused interviews. That is mandatory within the
system, and there are similar mandatory requirements in each of
the other benefit regimes.
An interesting debate at the moment concerns
the balance, and how much should be mandatory. For example, should
people be required to attend training if the employment adviser
identifies a training need that is an obstacle to finding work?
The statements today show that we have taken some small steps
in the direction of greater requirements. If someone is still
out of work, having been on Jobseeker's Allowance, after six months,
we propose that we should be able to require them to have a thorough
health check on their skills, and in the light of that perhaps
to require them to attend training to address any skills needs.
There is a genuine debate about where the balance should be struck,
and the statements today show that it is being adjusted a little
in the direction of requiring a bit more.
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