Session 2009-10
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General Committee Debates
Delegated Legislation Committee Debates

Draft Jobseeker's Allowance (Work
for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010



The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: Ann Winterton 

Baron, Mr. John (Billericay) (Con) 

Beresford, Sir Paul (Mole Valley) (Con) 

Blackman, Liz (Erewash) (Lab) 

Carswell, Mr. Douglas (Harwich) (Con) 

Field, Mr. Mark (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con) 

George, Mr. Bruce (Walsall, South) (Lab) 

Goodman, Helen (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions)  

Hodgson, Mrs. Sharon (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab) 

Keen, Alan (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op) 

Mitchell, Mr. Austin (Great Grimsby) (Lab) 

Moffatt, Laura (Crawley) (Lab) 

Naysmith, Dr. Doug (Bristol, North-West) (Lab/Co-op) 

Rowen, Paul (Rochdale) (LD) 

Selous, Andrew (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con) 

Stringer, Graham (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab) 

Webb, Steve (Northavon) (LD) 

Mark Etherton, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

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Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee 

Tuesday 23 March 2010  

[Ann Winterton in the Chair] 

Draft Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010 

10.30 am 

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Helen Goodman):  I beg to move, 

That the Committee has considered the draft Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010. 

May I begin, Lady Winterton, by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship on such a nice sunny morning? The statutory instrument was laid in draft before the House on 24 February, and I can confirm that I consider that its provisions are compatible with the European convention on human rights. 

The Government strongly believe that work is the best form of welfare and we have already done a great deal to reduce barriers to work for the long-term unemployed. We are committed to helping all who are able back into work and to providing additional support for those who are currently unable to work or who face more challenging obstacles to employment. 

These regulations provide the legal framework for a pilot scheme in certain Jobcentre Plus districts to help long-term jobseekers to move closer to the labour market. External providers will deliver a programme of work experience for those customers who complete their flexible new deal programme without finding sustainable employment. The work experience will help them to gain or improve the skills and abilities necessary for their move into work. I will speak first about the specific provisions of the regulations before moving on to the Work for Your Benefit pilot itself. 

These regulations will provide a platform for us to establish pilots in four English Jobcentre Plus districts. They specify when a jobseeker in a participating district must take part in the scheme, and they define the sanctions regime that will apply should they fail to do so. Customers who fail to participate in the scheme without good cause may have their jobseeker's allowance stopped or reduced for up to 26 weeks. Similarly, those who lose their placement through misconduct will also face sanctions. 

We know that mandatory programmes engage greater numbers of people, and engagement is vital if support is to be successful. We therefore believe that sanctions are necessary to underpin the scheme and further encourage the minority of people who deliberately avoid taking up help. However, in line with other programmes, the regulations provide safeguards to ensure that the payment of hardship funds for our most vulnerable customers continues. They also ensure that benefits other than jobseeker’s allowance are not affected as a result of participation in the scheme. 

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The regulations also ensure that participating jobseekers continue to meet the entitlement conditions for JSA. Providers of the scheme will facilitate a full range of additional support for up to 10 hours a week, including job search. By the very nature of participating in the scheme, customers will therefore be carrying out job-search activity. We recognise that it might be difficult for jobseekers on work experience to leave their placement at the drop of a hat if they are offered a job or get an interview, so the regulations give jobseekers the flexibility of 48 hours to attend an interview and one week to start work. 

Of course, any flexibilities and easements that might form part of a customer’s jobseeker’s agreement will be carried across to the new scheme. For example, new regulations mean that qualifying lone parents may be expected to participate for only 16 hours a week within the time during which their children are at school. That ensures that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, will be able to take advantage of the support offered through the scheme. 

The Government intend to ensure that we continue to support those people who are not successful in finding sustained employment through the flexible new deal. Although few in number, these customers are likely to face complex and overlapping barriers to work, and they should benefit from intensive, hands-on experience of work that will equip them with the skills needed for employment—that is exactly what the pilot aims to test. 

From 22 November, in two pilot areas comprising four Jobcentre Plus districts, we want qualifying customers to move on to one of three options: the Work for Your Benefit scheme; an enhanced support period delivered by Jobcentre Plus; or the national model of support for jobseekers. Those who are selected to move on to the scheme will be required to undertake a mandatory work experience placement with a participating host organisation. For most, that will mean 30 hours a week, which will be backed up with up to 10 hours’ additional employment support a week provided by the employer. 

Participants in the scheme will be expected to be involved for six months. The new measures will allow customers to gain practical experience of full-time work while building their skills and employability. Furthermore, the measures will allow customers to develop their working habits and to establish a healthy and constructive pattern of work that they can bring to a new job in the future. 

Steve Webb (Northavon) (LD):  The Minister used the phrase “few in number”. Will she give us an idea of the scale that we are talking about, and of roughly how many people she thinks will go through the scheme in the pilot areas? If the pilots are successful, what will be the size of the total client group that ticks all the boxes? 

Helen Goodman:  The number of people who will go through the pilot schemes is expected to be about 5,000. The schemes are intended primarily for people who have been unemployed for 24 months. Within six months, three quarters of people have moved off the register. I will check for the hon. Gentleman what the figure for 24 months is, but plainly it will be much lower. 

We are building in safeguards to ensure that the scheme operates in the way in which we intend. The work experience placements, which our providers will source from public, private and voluntary sector

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organisations, will be over and above the staffing requirements of those organisations. Participants will undoubtedly provide valuable assistance to the organisations with which they are placed, but we do not expect their presence to threaten existing jobs in those companies, and nor will the placements be used by employers to fill vacancies for free, as they will have to sign a declaration stating that the placement is in addition to existing or expected job vacancies. 

We hope to run a two-and-a-half-year pilot in two areas: Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and Norfolk; and Greater Manchester central, and Greater Manchester east and west. The pilots will cost £15 million in total, and we expect around 5,000 people to take part. Almost 2,000 jobseekers will take part in the alternative Jobcentre Plus-delivered initiative that I mentioned—the enhanced support period. An evaluation of the findings of the pilot will be published in late 2013. 

The move to work is not easy for everyone, which is why we have implemented a programme of escalating conditionality for jobseekers to improve their employment prospects. Presently, that culminates in the flexible new deal, which provides intensive and bespoke back-to-work support that is tailored to an individual’s skills and needs. Our various new deal programmes have helped 2.25 million people into work over the past decade. Despite tough times, we are still seeing good off-flow rates. Some 50 per cent. of people have left JSA within 13 weeks, and 75 per cent. within six months. After 12 months, 90 per cent. of new claimants have moved off JSA, and those remaining move on to the flexible new deal stage. The system is helping people to find valuable and sustainable work, but the new scheme will provide an additional stage of support for jobseekers who face particularly complex barriers to work. 

Reducing the number of people on benefits by getting them back into the labour market is vital for our country’s economic recovery, the realisation of our goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020, and the improvement of our customers’ health, well-being and self-esteem. The regulations will provide a platform for pilots that could go a long way towards changing the way in which people receive benefits. To give our longer-term customers the help they deserve, we need to take radical steps to maximise the likelihood of their moving into work. Providing jobseekers with the opportunity to take part in good-quality work experience and giving them the necessary skills and capabilities to re-enter the world of work are important tasks that have the potential to affect positively the lives of many customers. 

10.39 am 

Andrew Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con):  May I echo the Minister’s comments in saying that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Lady Winterton? I thank the officials for the extremely comprehensive seven-page explanatory memorandum that I—and all Members, I am sure—have found useful in my study of the regulations. 

Why do we have yet another pilot in a Department that is already extremely full of pilots? My understanding is that there is considerable evidence from Australia and many US states that the proposals in the statutory instrument work and are effective. Has the Department looked at such evidence and could it move forward a

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little more quickly? Its response strikes me as somewhat timid and inadequate, given the scale of the jobs crisis facing the United Kingdom. The Minister remarked that the evaluation would be available in late 2013, which is quite a long way off, even though paragraph 12.7 of the explanatory memorandum says that that could be as late as early 2014. 

What is happening about Northern Ireland? The regulations apply to Great Britain, but if they are good enough for England, Scotland and Wales—meaning that they cover devolved Administrations—I am slightly puzzled about why Northern Ireland seems to be left out and needs a separate process, even though it is an integral part of the United Kingdom. If the measures are to work and be successful, they need to apply there as well. 

I am curious as to what is meant on page 4 of the explanatory memorandum by the mention of exemptions for people with religious or conscientious objections to being enrolled in the programme. Probably because of a slightly Calvinist background, I have tended to look on work as something useful and worthwhile, so I am curious about what is envisaged. I cannot imagine that any of the work proposed by the Department for people on the scheme will be of a particularly unpleasant nature. I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate on what is envisaged when she replies. 

Will the Minister say a little about the hardship amounts to be paid when people are sanctioned? The explanatory memorandum mentions the example of lone parents with children. What sums are we talking about? Given that benefits are low anyway, how will we ensure that the amounts paid provide properly for the children concerned and, at the same time, form part of an effective sanction? That is a difficult consideration when achieving effectiveness. 

There is mention in paragraph 8.9 on page 5 of the explanatory memorandum of entering people into the scheme at an earlier point than the envisaged 26-week period. How widespread will that approach be? If it is effective, will there be scope for moving people on to the scheme earlier? 

Unless I missed it, the Minister did not elaborate on the type of work that we shall be asking those on the scheme to undertake, so it would be helpful if she could tell the Committee a little more. Will it be similar to some of the work that we see undertaken by the probation service in our communities, or will it be completely different? The explanatory memorandum mentions the voluntary sector as a possible provider of such work. Have early conversations been held? If so, with which voluntary organisations, and what discussions have taken place? 

The Minister mentioned allowing people on the scheme to attend interviews. I would like a cast-iron assurance that sanctions will not be imposed if people have a genuine interview to go to as that would be perverse. 

Helen Goodman:  I am terribly sorry, but I momentarily lost my concentration. Will the hon. Gentleman repeat that final point? 

Andrew Selous:  Of course—I appreciate that I have bowled the Minister a number of questions. My last point was about interviews, which she touched on in her remarks. I understood that she was saying that sanctions would not be imposed on someone who had to leave the

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scheme to attend an interview. What she said seemed to be a little prescriptive, so I seek an assurance that a participant on the scheme will not be sanctioned for leaving the programme temporarily to go to a genuine interview that could enable them to get proper work. I hope and believe that the she will be able to reassure me and the Committee on that point. 

Finally, I note that the Minister said that the total cost of the scheme would be around £15 million. Paragraph 10.2 of the explanatory memorandum states that the cost will be £5 million a year. Is there any expectation that the net cost to the Exchequer will be less than that, if we take into account the stream of benefits that will not be paid if people get into work? The objective of the scheme is to get people into work, so surely there will be a saving on benefits that could be offset against that £15 million. It would be useful to share any calculations that the Department has made with the Committee. 

We support the principle behind the regulations. However, we would just like the Department to go a bit further and faster, given the scale of the jobs crisis that we face. 

10.46 am 

Steve Webb:  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Lady Winterton. We have a paradox with the Department for Work and Pensions and pilots. I am all in favour of trying things out to see if they work and learning lessons. On the other hand, the Department has a knack of not learning the lessons from research it has already funded and undertaken. 

In 2008, the Department published a report entitled, “A Comparative Review of Workfare Programmes in the United States, Canada and Australia” by Crisp and Fletcher, to which the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire may have been referring. It was quite sceptical about workfare-type schemes. Two or three points from the research evidence in that report are relevant to the regulations. First, it says: 

“There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.” 

That touches on two issues including, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire mentioned, the nature of the work. One can imagine that if an employer is offered entirely free no-strings-attached labour, the temptation is to make that labour do the coffee run and the photocopying—the mindless stuff. In an organisation that pays people, somebody who comes along for six months and has to be there, because the Government have threatened to take the money off them if they do not turn up, will be given the rubbish to do. That is commercial life, I suspect. Is there a risk that that de-motivates people and does not give them any worthwhile skills? We need an assurance from the Minister about the quality of placements. 

My sense is that the Government will be desperate to find places, particularly in areas of high unemployment. The public sector may well end up with quite a lot of this labour in practice, I suspect, but can we be confident about the measure? Will the Government, through Jobcentre Plus looking for placements, apply any kind of quality threshold, or essentially will any employer who comes

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along and says, “Yes, I’ll take someone” be received with open arms? Will they have to provide any minimum standard or guarantee about what the person will do? I hope that the Minister will tell us a bit about that. If the scheme does not do that, and if it is demoralising work and takes up the time that people would have spent looking for work, it could be counter-productive. 

Secondly, the report that the Department has published states: 

“Workfare is least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment is high.” 

I do not know the detailed local labour market situation in the four pilot areas, but I imagine that there are parts of Greater Manchester where the local labour market is pretty weak. If we already know that workfare does not really work very well in that kind of area, how much will we learn from conducting a pilot there? How much have the Government learned from what we already know? 

The third point from the research that is germane to our deliberations today is the finding that 

“Workfare is least effective for individuals with multiple barriers to work. Welfare recipients with multiple barriers often find it difficult to meet obligations to take part in unpaid work.” 

In other words, someone would be put on the programme because they had been unemployed for two years, had been through the normal processes and what the Minister called the bespoke flexible new deal tailored to their individual needs, and was still in the scheme. We would then plonk them into a job placement under threat of taking their money away, perhaps failing to address the multiple underlying factors that stop them getting a job in the first place. One of my concerns about this process and the regulations is that they are not terribly tailored; it is either 26 weeks, or nothing. They deal only with the group of people who reach that point. There is no sense that the vacancy, experience or length of placement will be tailored to their needs. One can almost see what will happen: the pilot will be done and one conclusion will be that some people needed a longer period and some a shorter period. Why not build that in at the start? Three months of getting out of bed, having a shave and getting washed will be all that some people need, whereas other people will need longer to build up the work routine. Such things should be tailored and that is not provided for in the regulations. 

I have never been a fan of sanctions. Most people can be made to do something if they are hit hard enough, but that does not necessarily achieve anything. It is all very well to say that perhaps people who have been stuck for two years need a shove. The early-access people in the regulations are not moral degenerates, but people whom the system thinks could benefit from work experience early on. However, my concern is that they too are subject to the sanctions regime. It is inequitable that those who are put on the programme will be sanctioned if they fail to stick to it, whereas other people who have been unemployed for the same length of time will not be sanctioned for not doing what the Department wants. If sanctions are to be a last resort for people who are stuck in the system, where perhaps there is evidence that they have not tried as hard as they should, applying sanctions to the early-access people does not seem to be fair. I am interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts. 

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The Minister mentioned flexibility. We are talking about the best part of 40 hours a week, including 30 hours of work experience and up to 10 hours of job search. There is not much flexibility in the 40 hours. She said that lone parents’ placements could be a maximum of 16 hours a week in term time only to fit in with school hours. I am intrigued to know where the employers are coming from to provide such placements. It is one thing to say that we will not make lone parents do 40 hours a week, but I am not sure whether the mythical jobs that involve working from 10 to 3, five days a week only when the kids are at school, with a long gap in the summer, exist. If they do not exist, how flexible will the scheme be for such people? Will we just say that we cannot find jobs for lone parents in those circumstances? 

On the structure of the pilots, I understand that to test the effectiveness of different strategies, there will be random allocation. People will be given one of three options: go on Work for Your Benefit, have enhanced support from Jobcentre Plus or be dealt with in the usual way. I have two questions about that. First, if over the course of two years’ unemployment it becomes apparent that one of the three options will be better for the person, is it right that the options are randomly assigned? Would it not teach us more to have a pilot that used what had been learned from the first two years of unemployment to say whether Work for Your Benefit, enhanced support from Jobcentre Plus or going back through the jobcentre process was best, rather than randomly sticking on something that might not fit? My worry is that one of the conclusions in 2013 will be that there is a set of people whom we could have predicted would have done really well on Work for Your Benefit, but who were randomly allocated to something else. We would then have to do another pilot to see whether it works to work out what is the best option for people. Surely the pilot should try to take us as far as possible as fast as possible, rather than put people on schemes randomly. 

Secondly, there is something odd about the process. The explanatory memorandum states that the intention of the pilots is 

“to test whether advance notification of future activity influences behaviour” 

during the flexible new deal. The idea is that at the start of the flexible new deal, people are told that if they are still on it in a year’s time, they will be sent down one of three paths. They are told a year ahead whether they will go on to Work for Your Benefit, get enhanced support or be sent back around the system. That means that there is no control group because everybody in the pilots will be told at the beginning what will happen to them at the end. Surely there should be a fourth group of people who are told that something will happen in 12 months, without being told specifically what it will be. If the point of telling people at the start is to see how they respond, the control group should be people who are not told, rather than people who are told in a different way. I am curious about that. 

On the monitoring during the 26 weeks, to what extent will Jobcentre Plus have the resources to go out to placements, see what is going on and be confident that it is a worthwhile experience for the jobseeker? I am slightly puzzled because I thought that the whole point of a flexible new deal was, as the Minister said, bespoke support for the jobseeker. Surely, if work experience is

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what an unemployed person needs over the course of a year, flexible new deal providers will provide it. 

It seems odd, after two years, that a flexible new deal provider has presumably been given thousands of pounds per head to give someone a place and has either tried work experience with them—if they are worth their salt—but that has not helped, or has not tried it, because it did not think that that was the issue. Either way, to return after two years and say, “What you need is work experience,” does not make a lot of sense. If someone needs work experience, why would the flexible new deal provider not give it, and if they do not need it, why is it suddenly the answer after two years? It is puzzling that that is the big, brave answer after two years. Given the multiple factors that lead people to become long-term unemployed, it seems unlikely that, after two years, we should discover that work experience is the answer. There is a host of other factors that we all know are barriers to work, to which a pilot should give greater focus. 

I am a social scientist—I love pilots, research and evaluations, which are my former colleagues’ business—but I wonder how much we are going to learn that we did not already know, and am also concerned that the measure should not be the priority for the long-term unemployed. It is not the first thing that I would necessarily do. 

10.56 am 

Helen Goodman:  There was considerable overlap between the questions asked by the hon. Members for South-West Bedfordshire and for Northavon, although they each gave them a slightly different spin. They both asked why we need another pilot. The reason is that evidence from other countries is mixed and we seek to see how the matter operates in a UK context. I understand the impatience of the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire, but I do not think that it would be wise to spend large sums of public money unless we were confident that we had an effective scheme. 

The hon. Gentleman asked what is happening in Northern Ireland. This is a Great Britain scheme. Northern Ireland has responsibility for its own employment policies and will take its own decision on whether it wishes to go ahead with the scheme. He also asked how anyone could possibly have a religious or conscientious objection to the scheme. He needs to bear in mind that we are not talking about an objection to work in principle, but about an objection to the particular kind of work. For example, the most obvious thing that springs to mind is that it would not be appropriate to send a Jewish person to work for a pork butcher. I am sure that hon. Members can think of plenty of other similar issues. 

Both hon. Gentlemen asked about hardship payments. They are unfortunate in not having been served on the delegated legislation Committee which, a few weeks ago, discussed hardship payments all afternoon and to whom they would, or would not, apply. Only customers in vulnerable groups will be eligible for hardship payments. That includes pregnant women, lone parents, members of couples responsible for children, customers with disability premiums, customers with certain long-term medical conditions, customers who provide care for disabled people and some customers under 21. Most hardship payments are at 60 per cent. of the rate of

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benefit, but for people with medical conditions or pregnant women, they are at 80 per cent. The sanctioning regime applies only to the personal element of the JSA, not to payments for children, housing benefit, council tax benefit or disability living allowance. 

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked how many people we expect to be moved through the early-entry scheme to the pilots after six months. We have provided for that to be about 5 per cent. of the total placement, so we expect the figure to be about 250 people. Both hon. Gentlemen asked about the type of work that will be done. We are in the process of looking at the contracts for which contractors will tender. It will be up to them to find suitable placements, whether in the public, private or voluntary sector. They must ensure that the work placement will be suitable for the person. We are looking for variety and diversity, which are obviously necessary. 

We shall pay the contractors in two chunks. There will be an up-front fee and a further fee if the contractor succeeds in placing the person in a job, and the person holds it down for 13 weeks subsequent to the work experience. In a way, that will be the best test of whether anything productive and effective has happened. We shall measure the number of job outcomes—I apologise to the Committee for all the jargon—on that scheme, as opposed to other schemes. 

Steve Webb:  I do not think that I have grasped the issue, as I had imagined that the scheme involved 26 weeks’ work experience after which the person would get a job elsewhere. Will the Minister provide clarification? Is she saying that the person does 26 weeks with an employer and is then paid if they stay with the employer, or is there no connection between the two? 

Helen Goodman:  The hon. Gentleman is confusing the payments to different people. Individuals who are unemployed receive their benefit. The contractor who has to find the work-experience person receives an up-front payment, then gets another payment if the person subsequently takes a job and holds it down for 13 weeks. That is how the system should work. 

Our overriding objective is to get people into sustainable work. They will obviously be allowed to go to interviews from their work experience, and will not be sanctioned for doing so. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said that, in the round, the costs might not be as high as we have suggested. He is fond of spend to save, but we need to be cautious with public finances and not over-estimate to the Treasury what we can achieve through the measures. 

The hon. Member for Northavon asked whether a person on a pilot work experience scheme would in any way be hindered from finding another job. That will not be the case. In general, we anticipate that there will be 30 hours’ work experience, with another 10 hours on top for job search, so I do not accept the criticism that was made. 

The hon. Gentleman also pointed out something that is obviously true: such schemes are more effective in a strong labour market than a weak one. That might be the case, but we are trying to test the scheme in a

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realistic way. I am trying to think of an area of the country that is absolutely flourishing. Cambridge is flourishing, because of all the new technology that is whizzing on, and so is Sunderland because of the new investment in the Nissan plant. There would be no point testing something in an absolutely flourishing area and then expecting to get the same results in an area facing greater labour market difficulties. We have chosen Manchester and East Anglia because we tried to select two contrasting areas so that we could test the scheme in urban and rural contexts. 

Graham Stringer (Manchester, Blackley) (Lab):  I do not expect the hon. Member for Northavon to know Greater Manchester well. The issue there is that although there are plenty of jobs—the number of jobs has increased recently—unemployment rates are two or three times the national average next to Manchester city centre, where the bulk of the jobs appear. The state of the job market, which we are trying to test, is not obvious. Will my hon. Friend tell me what her measures of success for the pilot scheme will be? 

Helen Goodman:  I defer to my hon. Friend’s knowledge of the situation in Manchester. The measure of success is whether giving people work experience, as opposed to enhanced support through the jobcentre, for example, enables a higher proportion of them to find sustainable work—that is the objective. We are extremely keen to ensure that we do not use the recession as an excuse for parking people on inactive benefits and leaving them in unsatisfactory situations, as happened in the recessions of the ’80s and ’90s. We know that the people who have been out of work the longest face the greatest difficulties, so they need the most intensive support, and that is what we are endeavouring to provide. 

Graham Stringer:  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; she is being generous with her time. Obviously, I agree with the philosophy behind the endeavour, but I would like to push her a bit harder about what will constitute the success or failure of the scheme. Will it be a success if one more person takes up employment than under the previous scheme, or is the figure 5, 10 or 15 per cent.? When we come back in 18 months’ or two years’ time, I would like to be able to declare, on behalf of a Labour Government, that the scheme has been a success, but in order to do so, we will need greater quantification of the measure of success. 

Helen Goodman:  We do not have a target, and it would be wrong of me to give my hon. Friend the impression that we did. That is more a question for 2012 and 2013, when we will consider what the differences have been to see whether we wish to continue down the same path. 

The hon. Member for Northavon asked a number of questions about lone parents, including whether the jobs for lone parents would exist. I remind him that the flexibilities for lone parents are with respect to hours and the time of day, and that school holidays are included only if no child care or play schemes are available during those holidays. We know that we have been successful in getting many more lone parents back into work in the past 12 years. Some 57 per cent. of lone parents are now in work, which is up 12 per cent. on the

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1997 figure. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that we are also doing a great deal of work with employers to encourage an expansion of part-time work. It would be excessively negative, therefore, to embark on the task with the misconceived assumption that there are simply no part-time jobs and that we cannot make provision for lone parents. 

I also think that the hon. Gentleman is being slightly contradictory. If we said that, irrespective of a lone parent’s child care responsibilities, we were going to push them down that path, I am sure that he would be the first member of the Committee to jump up and protest. Such responsibilities are obviously good cause for a person to refuse work or work experience, and there would not be sanctions in those circumstances. The hon. Member for Rochdale, who is not in the room, raised a number of issues about lone parents during our consideration of the Bill that became the Welfare Reform Act 2009. The Government have listened to those concerns, and the complexity of the situations that lone parents face is one reason why they will not be fast-tracked on to the early entry part of the scheme. 

The hon. Member for Northavon was being slightly over-pernickety in his criticism of the technique. Randomly selecting people gives us better data on the effectiveness of the schemes rather than the nature of the people. For example, there could be some people who would get more benefit from any of the schemes, so if we were to say, “Well, these are the people who we judge will be the most receptive, so we’re going to shove them all into one scheme and not put them into the other schemes,” we would not have a level playing field for measuring the schemes’ effectiveness—we would actually be measuring something about the people. Additionally, it would not be right to have a group of people for whom no support was offered, because the ultimate objective is not to embark on scientific experiments about human behaviour but to help more people to get into work. We want, therefore, to offer everybody something at this stage. 

Finally, the hon. Member for Northavon felt that there was a paradox regarding whether lone parents should already have had the relevant experience on the flexible new deal, but however effective the flexible new deal is, some people will still be unemployed by the end

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of the deal period, so we need a regime that offers more intensive support. I hope that I have dealt—[ Interruption. ] Ah, evidently not. 

Andrew Selous:  The Minister is being extremely generous not only by giving way, but by giving the Committee very comprehensive replies, which I—like others, I am sure—greatly appreciate. 

I have one last question. In the course of her response to the hon. Member for Northavon, the Minister said that the definition of success would be putting someone in work for 13 weeks. I had been under the impression that the Government were moving towards a 26-week definition of sustained work. There is not a person in the room who could plan their future finances on the basis of only 13 weeks’ future employment, so I do not think that that is long enough. 

Graham Stringer:  Some Members might have only five weeks’ job security. 

Andrew Selous:  Notwithstanding what might happen to all of us, does the 13-week duration apply to this scheme, as opposed to 26 weeks, which I believe is the case for other schemes? Is there any possibility of extending that period, as it is not that long? 

Helen Goodman:  In the great scheme of things, 13 weeks might not seem long to the hon. Gentleman. However, for people who have had long spells of unemployment, that would mark quite a considerable success, so I think the measure is appropriate. 

I have explained the rationale for the regulations, and I hope that the Committee will support them. 

Question put and agreed to.  

Resolved,  

That the Committee has considered the draft Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work for Your Benefit Pilot Scheme) Regulations 2010. 

11.16 am 

Committee rose.  


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Prepared 12:50 on 24th March 2010