The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Allen,
Mr. Graham
(Nottingham, North)
(Lab)
Baron,
Mr. John
(Billericay)
(Con)
Barrett,
John
(Edinburgh, West)
(LD)
Beckett,
Margaret
(Derby, South)
(Lab)
Blackman,
Liz
(Erewash) (Lab)
Crausby,
Mr. David
(Bolton, North-East)
(Lab)
Gummer,
Mr. John
(Suffolk, Coastal)
(Con)
Hodgson,
Mrs. Sharon
(Gateshead, East and Washington, West)
(Lab)
Kelly,
Ruth
(Bolton, West)
(Lab)
Kilfoyle,
Mr. Peter
(Liverpool, Walton)
(Lab)
Knight,
Jim
(Minister for Employment and Welfare
Reform)
Moffatt,
Laura
(Crawley)
(Lab)
Selous,
Andrew
(South-West Bedfordshire)
(Con)
Shepherd,
Mr. Richard
(Aldridge-Brownhills)
(Con)
Stunell,
Andrew
(Hazel Grove)
(LD)
Yeo,
Mr. Tim
(South Suffolk)
(Con)
Ben Williams, Committee
Clerk
attended the
Committee
Seventh
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Wednesday 27
January
2010
[John
Cummings in the
Chair]
Draft
Jobseekers Allowance (Skills Training Conditionality Pilot)
Regulations
2010
2.30
pm
The
Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform (Jim Knight): I
beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Jobseekers Allowance
(Skills Training Conditionality Pilot) Regulations
2010.
The
Government seek powers to test, in 11 Jobcentre Plus districts in
England, making skills training a condition of receiving benefits. We
believe, and research has shown time and again, that having the right
skills is the best way to get a job. The Government want people to work
and to find jobs with opportunities to progress, and we want to support
them to get the skills they need to get such
jobs.
Under
the current system, people are given a skills assessment early in their
claim and can be referred voluntarily to a series of basic skills
courses, such as literacy and numeracy or interview skills and job
search techniques. More than 70 per cent. find work within six months,
but at that point they should widen their job search, and we carry out
a more comprehensive skills assessment focusing not only on basic
skills, but on the local labour market, the customers interests
and the courses available locally. Working with the customer, we make a
judgment about their best possible route into
work.
In
the pilots, after someone has accepted that they have a skills need and
has worked with their adviser to identify a suitable training course,
they will be expected to attend that course. If they miss a session,
money can be deducted from their benefits. The rationale behind the
pilots is simple: the benefits system is not a something-for-nothing
deal. It looks after the weak and vulnerable. There are no requirements
on those who genuinely cannot work, but those who can have
responsibilities.
The
global recession led to an increase in unemployment all over the world.
Lots of people are looking for work and doing their best to find a job.
People are looking at their own skills and proactively finding courses
to help them to learn the skills that they need to find work. The
pilots will not make a difference to the vast majority of people who
are motivated to find a job as quickly as possible. They will make a
difference to the people furthest from the labour marketpeople
who believe that training and even work are simply not for them.
Whether that is down to lack of confidence or complete unwillingness to
engage with the system, the possibility of losing some benefit is
enough to get most to attend. Once there, they should learn as much
about themselves as about the world of work while picking up skills
that will be useful in work.
This is new
territory for the Government. We know that skills training works, and
we know that applying benefit sanctions can work. For example, 73 per
cent. of people sanctioned are sanctioned only once. However, the
question is whether we can use that knowledge to encourage people to
improve their skills and subsequently find sustainable work, which I
hope everybody in the Committee agrees is a good thing. That is the
question the pilots hope to answer. I commend the regulations to the
Committee.
2.33
pm
Andrew
Selous (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con): Welcome to the
Chair, Mr. Cummings. It is a pleasure to serve under you. I
thank the officials in the Ministers Department for their
excellent explanatory notes. They are always much appreciated,
particularly by the Opposition. We always learn a great deal from them,
and they play an important part in helping us properly to scrutinise
legislation before
Parliament.
I
do not intend to go on at excessive length, but I shall speak for
slightly longer than did the Minister in introducing the regulations,
as there are important issues involved and I want clarity from him on a
number of
points.
The
Conservatives welcome the direction of policy in the regulations and
the principle is absolutely right. As the Minister said, the welfare
state is not a something-for-nothing concept; it involves a two-way
responsibility. If the state is there, quite properly, to help people
when they fall on tough times, there is an onus on the people being
helped to do the right thing to help themselves. We have no problem
with the conceptindeed, we welcome it.
I am somewhat
disappointed, however, by the regulations. Frankly, they are not up to
the task that is facing the country, considering the number of people
out of work. They represent a top-down, unpersonalised approach.
I do not understand, as this is essentially a pilot in a
Department stuffed full of pilots, why there has not been an attempt to
model different ways of proceeding. Would not that have provided a
better evaluation at the end of the two years? To my mind, it would be
better to have a number of providers trying out different concepts
around the country. The evaluation would then show which ones worked
better than
others.
Jim
Knight: It would help me if the hon. Gentleman gave a
little more detail about those concepts. He talks about different
providers, but what are the different concepts that he thinks we could
usefully
pilot?
Andrew
Selous: I will come on to that as I develop my
remarks.
People
around the country and in my constituency are telling me that much of
the training provided by Jobcentre Plusthe courses that JSA
claimants are sent onare one-size-fits-all courses. They are
often not appropriate for the people being sent on them. I shall give
three brief examples of that. I am worried that the regulations may not
provide the specific help that individuals
need.
I
think of a young man in my constituency with severe literacy problems
who was greatly helped by an adult education course, on which he was
making great progress. He was ordered to come off that course and
attend a Jobcentre Plus course. I intervened on his behalf, and the
district manager of Jobcentre Plus later agreed that he could stay on
the original course as that was where he was making progress with his
literacyhe was about to receive a qualification. Had I not
intervened, he would have been sent on an inappropriate course and
would not have progressed with his
literacy.
I
think of the young engineering graduate in my constituency who
contacted me a couple of weeks ago. He is a highly motivated graduate
who searched all day for jobs using the internet at homehe had
access to his own computer. He wrote to me very discouraged because he
was put in a room with 26 other people and only three computers. His
job search was more difficult during that time and he did not learn
anything.
If
you will forgive me, Mr. Cummings, I shall briefly read one
paragraph from an e-mail that I received from a constituent only two
days agothe e-mail is relevant to the regulations. It is from a
20-year-old lady who has been on JSA for the past six months and has
spent the past three years in college. It
reads:
I
was told by my adviser that I would have to attend a Gateway to Work
programme in Luton town centre for 2 weeks. I was given no
other option than this, I was told I had to attend this or I would be
sanctioned. I did some research on this and found that
most of what is taught on the G2W is things I am already familiar with,
like writing a CV and accessing the internet. Apparently there are also
team-building exercises like rock-climbing or ten-pin bowling, which
seems somewhat farcical to someone who has been in college for the past
3
years.
I
think the Minister would agree that that is not appropriate for a
highly motivated person who has been in college for three
years.
We
have before us regulations that proceed along similar lines. I am
concerned that those courses will again not be entirely appropriate as
they are not sufficiently directed at the people who will attend them.
We may have highly motivated graduates in the same room as people with
basic literacy skillswhere is the differentiation? What
reassurance can the Minister give me that people who are literate,
numerate and motivated will be put on appropriate courses and not on
inappropriate courses such as that on which the young lady believes she
is being
sent?
I
am extremely worried about the time it will take to evaluate the pilot.
We are in the middle of a severe recession. Unemployment is much higher
than any of us wantsin my constituency, 50 per cent. higher
than when the Government came to poweryet we are about to have
an 18-month pilot, the evaluation of which will take two years. We
shall not receive the results of the evaluation until 25 October 2013
at the earliest. That is too long. We need to learn lessons more
quickly than that. In response to the Ministers intervention, I
say that we want a model whereby welfare-to-work providers are allowed
to trial various ways to do things in different areas, so that we can
see which approach is the most
effective.
The
monitoring and review process referred to in the explanatory memorandum
is rather vague, and paragraphs 12.1 and 12.3 do not even mention job
outcomes. In fact, job outcomes is the last of the four bullet points
in paragraph 12.2. Should not the evaluation be done simply and
clearly? It is about getting people into work, ensuring that they stay
at work for at least a year and
seeing whether they make progress in that work. We should
concentrate on people being in work for a sustainable period and on
their
progression.
Jim
Knight: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for
giving way a second time. I do not disagree that sustainable job
outcomes is an important measure of success, but I refer him back to
the previous point about the time taken for evaluation. If we were to
evaluate on the basis of, say, a person still being in work 12 months
after he had come off the training programme, and we intended to run
the pilot for more than a minimum, which would be six months, we would
be approaching the period referred to for evaluation in the
regulations.
Andrew
Selous: If the Government ran the pilot for a year and did
the evaluation after one year, we would find out whether it was working
a little more quickly. The urgency of the current situation is not
reflected sufficiently in the pilot. In contrast, we want the
Department and the welfare-to-work providers to stay with people for
three years and to check that there is sustainability in work, as well
as
progression.
I
draw the Ministers attention to paragraph 7.2 of the
explanatory memorandum. I read the four bullet points yesterday when I
was preparing for our debate, and really wondered about the meaning of
these
words:
Basic
Skills and English language for speakers of other
languages;
Employability
skills;
Short,
job focused training of up to eight weeks;
and
Other
job related
provision.
It
is all vague
stuff.
I
asked myself whether the person would come out of the pilot with a
skill, trade or technical qualification that would put them in a better
position in the labour market. It is unclear exactly what is involved.
Will the Minister give us a little more detail about the type of
training that will be provided? How does he envisage people being in a
better position to get jobs
afterwards?
Paragraph
4.3 of the explanatory memorandum mentions data sharing. Given the
various recent blunders with data going into the public domain when
such details should not have been released, will the Minister please
explain what level of security such data sharing has cleared within the
Department?
The
regulations also refer to the Learning and Skills Council, and Ufi Ltd,
which trades as learndirect. I understand that the LSC is to be
abolished on 1 April and that, in its place, we will have the Young
Peoples Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency.
[Interruption.] The Minister speaks from a
sedentary position, but will he let the Committee know whether the
successor bodies are to take over the role given to the LSC in England?
Will he explain why Ufi Ltd has been selected as the only other named
training provider, alongside the LSC, which anyway will not exist after
April
1?
Will
the Minister also explain why the regulations apply only to England and
not to Wales and Scotland? The regulations have been introduced by the
Department for Work and Pensions, whose responsibilities have not been
devolved to the Scottish Government or to the Welsh Assembly. I am
aware that the Department deals with skills training, which is a
devolved matter, but is there a new principle that some DWP areas of
responsibility may be devolved in certain circumstances?
Regulation 5
says that if a claimant moves out of one of the pilot areas, the
sanction will no longer apply, which is reasonable, but can we at least
have an assurance that the training will still be open if someone has
to move halfway through a course? They may have to move for a host of
reasonsa family member might get a job elsewhereand it
would be a great pity if they were unable to continue
training.
I
would be grateful if the Minister responded to those points. My
concerns focus on quality, appropriateness, individualised and bespoke
training, and outcomes, as well as ensuring that those lead to
sustainable jobs and progression in work. Progression is important if
we are to deal with poverty, inequality and social mobility, which, as
we learned from this mornings news, have sadly got much worse
in recent
years.
2.47
pm
Andrew
Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD): It is a pleasure to serve
under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr.
Cummings.
From
the Liberal Democrat perspective, the regulations are well intentioned.
As the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire said, they go in the
right direction, but we have finished up with something poorly designed
and with very few friends. I want to pick out the points that at least
require amplification from the Minister before we can allow the
regulations to proceed beyond the
Committee.
I
said that the regulations are poorly designed. The Minister might like
to comment on the provision made for control groups, as explained in
paragraph 7.4 of the explanatory notes. One would not have known it
from what has been said in Committee so far, but perhaps half the
people who are eligible for the scheme in the pilot areas will not be
allocated to the compulsory sanction regime. They will be directed into
what is described as a control group, which will have access to
training but not to the
sanctions.
One
can see that that will provide a way to measure whether the sanctions
are the key feature in pilot areas, but I notice that the Merits
Committee of the House of Lords quickly put its finger on the point: it
is one thing to have a control group that has training and sanctions
and one that has training but no sanctions, but we need a third group
with no training and no sanctions. The Government might save an awful
lot of money if they found it was providing inappropriate training,
never mind whether sanctions were applied in those
cases.
I
want to hear more about the control group and the measuring and
evaluation that will flow from it. I do not share the concern expressed
by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire about the time it will
take to complete the evaluation, but I have concerns that the wrong
thing will be evaluated or it will be difficult to establish that what
has been evaluated is connected to the resources that were put
in.
Interestingly,
when the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon.
Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), gave evidence to the Merits
Committee of the House of Lords, she was interrogatedperhaps
that is the way to put itabout the sanctions. She said that the
pilots will give an opportunity to prove or disprove once and
for all that sanctions work. If that
is an intention of the pilot study, let us arrange a control group so
that we can achieve that aim, rather than be left still uncertain and
confused at the end about whether we have a working model for getting
more people back into work
sooner.
Looking
at the statistics, we see that well over 900,000 young
peoplethose not in education, employment or training, the
so-called NEETSare seeking work, and from our point of view,
anything that we can do that is effective and constructive for that
group, let alone for those further up the age demographic, is to the
good.
My
first question is, can the Government produce any evidence that
sanctions are effective in getting people back to work? One can say
that not many people come back for a second dose of sanctions, but that
does not tell us that those sanctions got them back into work.
Secondly, has the Minister taken account of his own Departments
research reports? Research report No. 511, The
effect of benefit sanctions on lone parents employment
decisions and moves into employment, shows clearly that the
people who incurred sanctions were those who had greater levels of ill
health and were more likely to be in debt. We do not know the cause and
effect, but clearly there is a connection between the difficulties that
individuals face and the likelihood that they will incur sanctions.
Incurring sanctions may not have anything to do with willingness or
unwillingness to work. Those are serious
issues.
Something
else that emerged from the research report produced by the
Ministers own Department was the fact that a high percentage of
people who had sanctions applied against them did not have the foggiest
idea why. They were not expecting it and did not understand the
explanations, and as far as they were concerned, it was yet another
thing that dropped on their heads from a great heightwithout
explanation and to their serious detriment. How do the Government plan
to ensure real awareness among those taking part in the pilot
project?
I
made the point that perhaps the Minister needs two different control
groups, and in a pilot area where not everybody will be under a direct
sanction regime, it will be important to make those who are under it
aware of that fact. If they were not fully aware that they were subject
to such a regime, the whole enterprise would be
invalidated.
My
queries about that point are, in some ways, counter-intuitive. It seems
obvious that if we gave somebody a good clip round the ear, they would
amend their behaviour and not do it again, but they would have to know
what the clip round the ear was for. We also have to consider the
carrot, as well as the stick. When the Social Security Advisory
Commission looked at the pilot scheme, one if its comments to the
Department was, Youve tried it twice before, in 2001
and 2004, and it produced less good outcomes as far as people getting
jobs was concerned. What reassurance can the Minister offer the
Committee on that
point?
On
the application of sanctions, never mind whether people know that they
will get a clip round the ear. Will they know why they have got a clip
round the ear? Citizens Advice, in evidence to the SSAC and the
Department,
said:
Case
evidence reported by bureaux to Citizens Advice highlights that many
claimants are sanctioned apparently inappropriately; others, it is
clear, do not know why they have been sanctioned, and get no
explanation or warning in advance of the sanction being
applied.
It goes on to say
that
they
do not get the help with training that they would like, often because
either they, or the course they want to do, does not fit particular
criteria.
The
second point is the one that the hon. Member for South-West
Bedfordshire made. All those things certainly resonate with me and my
casework. I do not wish to quote specific examples, but I hope the
Minister will acknowledge that, no doubt even in his own casework, he
has examples that illustrate the same
problems.