Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
DEPARTMENT FOR
WORK AND
PENSIONS AND
JOBCENTRE PLUS
31 MARCH 2008
Q40 Mr Touhig: Yes, but I can understand
you saying: "There is a pilot scheme, it has not worked,
we will not roll it out", yet you had some success and then
told us you never intended to use it as a national scheme in the
first place. What it is point in spending £40 million on
it?
Sir Leigh Lewis: The point was
to learn some real lessons, which we did, and which we have incorporated
in our City Strategy and in our Deprived Areas Fund and now in
the Working Neighbourhoods Fund. Chris Hayes used the word "evolution",
so it was not a question of us starting something and then saying,
"Oh, gosh, this was a complete waste of time; let's just
abandon it".
Q41 Mr Touhig: It was not a waste
of time; it actually made some progress.
Sir Leigh Lewis: Indeed. They
varied in their success rate and cost per job and so on but each
one taught us some lessons, and we took those lessons, as we have
set out in various Green and White Papers that the Department
has produced, and very much incorporated them in focusing very
much on disadvantaged areas.
Q42 Mr Touhig: But there is still
a 40% gap between employment rates and the rest of the population,
and it seems to me that, having spent £40 million on some
small-scale schemes, as you describe them, which worked to some
degree, you have now abandoned them in favour of a one-size-fits-all
approach?
Sir Leigh Lewis: Absolutely not
a one-size-fits-all approach. That would be us sitting in our
office in London or wherever and simply saying: "This is
how we will do it". That is the very opposite of where we
have been going. A good example of where we have been going is
City Strategy Pathfinders, which is increasingly saying that the
problems of Manchester are not necessarily the problems of, say,
Heads of the Valleys, which are two of the Pathfinder areas. Interestingly,
City Strategy Pathfinders have only 7% of total wards and 10%
of the working age population, yet they include over 40% of the
total ethnic minority working population.
Q43 Mr Touhig: I assume you agree
with the Report which does tell us that since 2006 the Department
has shifted away from specific help to boost ethnic minority employment
rates towards more general methods to help disadvantaged groups,
so you are not now specific, you are more general. A one-size-fits-all
approach is how you are tackling this.
Sir Leigh Lewis: I do not think
so. Of course I agree with the Report but that is not, I think,
what the Report is saying.
Q44 Mr Touhig: Well, it does say
that. It clearly says that you have shifted away from specific
help to boost ethnic minority employment rates towards general
measures. It cannot be clearer than that.
Sir Leigh Lewis: No, but my point
is general measures do not equate to one-size-fits-all measures.
Q45 Mr Touhig: What do they equate
to, then?
Sir Leigh Lewis: What they equate
to is focusing on those areas where worklessness is concentrated
and where worklessness amongst a number of disadvantaged groups
is concentrated. If you take the City Strategy Pathfinders, the
Deprived Areas Fund and the Working Neighbourhoods Fund, they
are slightly different but all are targeted on areas of particularly
high concentrations of worklessness and other areas of disadvantage.
Q46 Mr Touhig: So if you are not
living in one of those large areas of concentration then you do
not get the focal support?
Sir Leigh Lewis: There is still
a lot of mainstream support in the system.
Q47 Mr Touhig: You are shaking your
head one way and Mr Hayes is shaking his head the other. I am
not clear.
Sir Leigh Lewis: I will let Mr
Hayes speak for himself in a moment, but there is still mainstream
support. In a sense, an 80:20 principle has to apply in government
as elsewhere, and if you target absolutely everything equally
then you get an equal response everywhere. We are deliberately,
as a conscious act of policy, focusing on those areas which have
the highest concentrations of both deprivation and worklessness,
because that is where we believe that we can get the best return
for each pound of the taxpayers' money.
Q48 Mr Touhig: You are looking for
quick hits, though, are you not?
Sir Leigh Lewis: No.
Q49 Mr Touhig: "Large concentrations,
large numbers of people, let's get a few ticks in the box, and
if you do not live in a large conurbation . . . ". We do
not have large numbers of people from ethnic communities in the
Welsh valleys so they would not get much support and help then.
Sir Leigh Lewis: But it is quite
interesting, is it not, that two of our City Strategy Pathfinders
are Heads of the Valleys and Rhyl.
Q50 Mr Touhig: I was involved in
those when I was a Welsh Minister, yes.
Sir Leigh Lewis: Absolutely, and
both of those, as you will know, have only around 1% of ethnic
minority people, but they have other significant concentrations.
Q51 Mr Touhig: But they do not have
the concentrations of places like Cardiff and Newport.
Sir Leigh Lewis: And that is why
we still have, just to be clear, very successful mainstream services
available everywhere to everyone which have consistently been
complimented by OECD and others.
Q52 Mr Touhig: It is just that this
Report does not say that this is exactly what is happening, and
I do come back to this one-size-fits-all approach because this
is surely one group in society where there are linguistic differences,
cultural differences, questions about women in employment and
reluctance in some communities for women to be in employment,
basic skills challenges and so on, so surely this is one area
where if we are to succeed in reducing the numbers of unemployed
we have to be much more focused?
Sir Leigh Lewis: Nahid Majid might
want to say something about this, because this is absolutely her
bread and butter, in her job every day.
Ms Majid: What you have highlighted
is exactly right: the complexity and magnitude of the problems.
It is certainly not about one size fitting all, but actually having
a strategic overview of the issues around concentrated deprivation.
One of the big factors around the city strategy is not just to
look at the small-scale programmes but to align funds so that
you can have maximum impact. For example, we are very pleased
to say that the Manchester pathfinders are co-ordinating very
well with the Regional Development Agency, where they have got
an extra £4 million towards their city strategy.
Q53 Don Touhig: You talk about city
strategies, but the report states in paragraph 2.24: "There
is a risk that city strategies will not adequately address the
needs of ethnic minorities." I recall very often you launched
action areas in Jobcentre Plus in the past; you focused them;
you empowered the people and gave them budgets to control, and
they actually took individuals into work; it was very focused
and it worked. It seems to me now, with this particular case,
that you are moving away to a general approach. You will not accept
my comment, but that is how it appears to me.
Ms Majid: We have been very successful
in negotiating local targets with the city strategy pathfinders,
and we can say quite proudly that out of the 15 pathfinders, 13
have all agreed to signing up to ethnic minority targets, and
we are now securing figures around that. Obviously, the Rhyl and
the Heads of the Valley pathfinders which—we are not requiring
them to have a local ethnic minority target. I think the city
strategy offers a huge opportunity, and, quite rightly, the National
Audit Office has noted that there are some difficulties associated
with that.
Q54 Don Touhig: I appreciate the
point you are making. I just want to come back to the point I
made a moment ago: the report tells us you are shifting away from
specific help to general help. Sir Leigh, I am astonished to see
in paragraph 1.7 that the Department will no longer have specific
PSA targets. Have they gone out of fashion; are they too tough
to meet, or what?
Sir Leigh Lewis: I just think
that this is much more appearance than real. Can I say exactly
what the position is?
Q55 Don Touhig: It was all candyfloss
in the first place, was it?
Sir Leigh Lewis: No, it was most
certainly not candyfloss in the first place. We are proud of the
fact that we hit both our SR02 target and we look like hitting
our SR04 target for reducing the gap as it affects people from
ethnic minorities. In relation to SR07, we lead on two PSAs right
across Government, and only two in DWP. One of those is to maximise
employment opportunity for all. It has four indicators that sit
behind it under which progress against that target will be judged,
and the second of those four is a narrowing of the gap between
the employment rate for ethnic minorities people and the overall
rate. Actually, it is a wider, different PSA structure within
Government. The practical effect is that we have exactly the same
concentration on this issue as before.
Q56 Don Touhig: The report tells
us you will not have specific PSA targets for employment rates
among ethnic minorities.
Sir Leigh Lewis: That is because
the Government has reduced from having more than a hundred PSAs
to thirty—that is across Government. It is the intention
to have fewer but broader PSA targets, but within one of the only
two PSA targets on which the Department leads, we have a very
specific indicator, which is precisely the same as we had in 2002
and 2004.
Don Touhig: All down to fashion, I think,
Sir Leigh!
Q57 Chairman: I just wonder, Sir
Leigh, whether we are being honest with ourselves! Following on
the question put to you by my colleague, I have always been a
huge admirer of the Jewish community in this country, and you
mentioned the desire for education, but also, be honest, it is
a desire for assimilation, is it not, on behalf of the Jewish
community here, an absolute determination to assimilate here.
We see in this Report a huge difference between success in the
Indian and Bangladeshi community. It may be that the Bangladeshi
communities come more from rural areas and the Indian community
is more middle-class, but surely there is a question of a desire
for assimilation here; and what are you doing to promote it; or
do you disagree with what I have just said to you?
Sir Leigh Lewis: It is a line
of questioning that I did not quite expect to focus on the Jewish
community; but in one sense—
Q58 Chairman: Pass it to your colleague
if it embarrasses you.
Sir Leigh Lewis: It does not embarrass
me at all, Chairman. I will just speak for myself, and then Nahid.
I do not think one should see assimilation or retaining a cultural
identity as opposites. You can have a very proud identity with
your community and be part of the wider community.
Q59 Chairman: We all accept that,
but we do not want people to be stuck in ghettos, do we?
Sir Leigh Lewis: No, I agree with
that—absolutely.
Ms Majid: If I can refer it back
to what the city strategy is about, the whole nature of communities
has changed quite substantially. For example, when we had the
pleasure to see the children's centre in Stockwell the other day,
it was quite clear to us that the nature of the communities has
changed so much that by focusing just on ethnic minorities we
would emulate those communities; so it was quite good that we
were focusing on a range of disadvantaged communities. One of
the big things that came out of that discussion was that it enabled
them to assimilate with other communities that were in the same
position.
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