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We might need assurance from my noble friend that the regime of progress to work and the amount of activity it engenders is such that it can be perfectly reasonably done within that sort of part-time care provided by nursery schools, kindergartens and so on from the age of three, of which every parent I know is delighted to take advantage. It becomes oppressive or unreasonable only when you have to find additional care beyond that, with which the parent is uncomfortable because they feel that it is inappropriate for their child. That does not seem to be necessarily the situation with progress to work.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: That is an interesting point. I disagree for the reasons in the Gregg report. Gregg says that the categories, or the arbitrary ages of seven, 10, two or three, do not matter. It is about the family circumstances. Through my work with the Wise Group, I have seen parents who, having given birth, want to go straight back to work. In their circumstances, it is right for them. There is an idea that you should categorise people and set up circumstances depending on what kind of client group they are in or what box they tick. We should be moving towards, which we will come to in the next amendment, a system so professionally supported that people will want it. The noble Baroness made the point about giving bonuses. It is about all of that.
I am blind to age and I do not care so much about it. I listened carefully to the debate earlier and I understand the points that were made and why they were made. People are frightened of the system at the moment. In future, however, we should be able to say “Come on down” to anyone in any circumstances. Age does not matter.
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Baroness Hollis of Heigham: It is not reasonable to go from the Gregg report to this legislation because a lot of the philosophy behind the Gregg report is to some degree misconceived; it is certainly not being taken as a straightforward transposition from the one to the other. I think the noble Lord would accept that. From my experience, every lone parent who is anxious to go back to work, as has been said and as Gregg would encourage—I absolutely agree with that—has nearly always got their childcare sorted, or, if not, they are up to the last point of getting it. Once you have got to that point, it really is easy.
The problem is those parents who, often because of misdiagnosed ill-health, moderate depression, lack of skills, lack of self-confidence, feeling battered or low self-esteem, cannot even get the energy going to get into the progress-to-work activity. That, over and beyond poverty, overshadows, very often to awful effect, the quality of life of their children. That is why I asked my noble friend much earlier on for examples of what this would look like. This progress-to-work activity must be a comfortable fit for what the parent with care for fairly small children can manage in the hours during which the child is likely to go to school. Beyond that, it becomes oppressive. A lot of the Gregg report is not terribly relevant because the Bill has gone beyond that; it has gone in different directions from that.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I will pick up on a couple of points that have been made. My noble friend is absolutely right to draw a distinction between the progress-to-work group of provisions and the nature and length of engagement that they are likely to require at any point. The expectation is that that could generally, as I think I said earlier, be accomplished under the arrangements that a parent already had. There is a distinction to be drawn between them and the “work for your benefit” group of provisions in Clause 1 because there is typically a requirement to engage for possibly 40 hours a week, 10 of which are focused on job search and employment support, although if someone’s jobseeker’s agreement has already established that they should not be available for work or seek to work for more than, say, 20 hours, that would be carried through into the “work for your benefit” rules.
I shall now get back to the very reasonable point on which the noble Lord pressed me earlier. The best way in which to approach it is to say that the parent is in the driving seat and will decide what is suitable for their child. Ultimately, however, when it comes to deciding whether a direction was reasonable or whether a person had good cause not to follow it, clearly the decision-makers in Jobcentre Plus have to take a view on what was reasonable in those circumstances. Nothing in all this requires parents to be directed to place their child with any particular provision, although consequences may flow from that. I hope that that helps. I have forgotten where we are and whose amendment this is.
The Countess of Mar: A sudden thought has come to me. We keep talking about one child. A lot of women have three or four children under the age of seven. What is childcare going to cost them? What is transport going to cost them? Has that been taken into consideration?
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Lord McKenzie of Luton: Yes. The support is at the tax-credit level. There is a rate for one child and a rate for two or more children. That is the rate that we would use. If there is more than one child, they are not necessarily at the same school, so again issues such as the timing of the arrangements and transport costs would have to reflect the circumstances of the family as a whole.
6.15 pm
Lord Northbourne: I would be grateful if the noble Lord would tell me whether I am out of order in raising an issue. It flows from what the noble Countess has just said. If the cost of childcare for four children plus transport is more than the net amount which will be derived from the employment, can a parent still be forced to take that option?
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I can be very clear on that. If the proportion of a person's income which might have to be deployed in childcare costs were excessive, that would be deemed to be good cause for not following a direction.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I seem to have a figure of £175 for the first child and £300 thereafter. I think that comes through the tax credit system. I come from rural Scotland where that would be adequate for the purpose, but I do not know whether it would be adequate in other parts of the United Kingdom.
I do not care how we get there, but this policy is dependent on the decision made between the parent and the personal adviser. If the Minister is saying that the parent is in the driving seat, I am prepared to settle for that. I do not think that the wording of the policy in cold print makes that clear and I do not know whether there is any scope for trying to clarify it. It might be difficult. People may think I am naïve, but I am reassured by what I have been told. Later we shall be able to look at this very carefully on other amendments tabled by colleagues which will give us time to reflect, which I will appreciate. I believe that the Minister is trying to get to the right place, but I am not sure we are there yet. The question is what is reasonable about the circumstances applying factually in each case? I shall settle for what I have, regroup and get ready to fight another day, unless further inspiration is appearing over the Minister's left shoulder.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I have two points. When we look at what is included in good cause, which we shall debate later, that is building on what is already in the system in relation to regulations. You can see what is written at the moment and how it is employed in practice. Perhaps I can ensure I have this absolutely right. For the progression-to-work group, Jobcentre Plus will pay for childcare and not the tax credit system. The tax credit system sets the parameters of the amount and we are tapping into those limits. I hope that is sufficient comfort, although I accept that the noble Lord will wish to reflect on the matter.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I think we have made progress. As always, I am grateful. I think the Minister
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester: Amendment 4 simply takes out the word “designed” and replaces it with “personally tailored” so that new Section 17A(1) would read:
“Regulations may make provision for or in connection with imposing on claimants in prescribed circumstances a requirement to participate in schemes of any prescribed description that are personally tailored to assist them to obtain employment”.
The purpose of the amendment is simple. It is to ensure that claimants would be required only to undertake “work for your benefit” schemes that were personally tailored to assist them to obtain employment, and would not be expected to take part in any old scheme, however unsuitable. The Minister will, I am sure, say that the word “designed” does the same thing, but it is in reality a long way from “personally tailored”.
In the other place, the then Minister—various Ministers have gone in the other place—stated that appropriate safeguards would be incorporated, presumably in regulations, to ensure that the work experience offered was suitable and relevant to an individual’s circumstances. In which case, why not put this undertaking in the Bill to allay the fears of many people that claimants will be placed in inappropriate, one-size-fits-all “work for your benefit” schemes? If we are to have this approach, we need to make sure that it will really help someone find a suitable job, and is not going to be looked on as some kind of punishment. I beg to move.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I have been asked to join the Committee at this stage by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale. One brief look at the wording of the amendment will tell you why he considers it appropriate, if you know his wicked sense of humour.
The noble Baroness has tabled an amendment which could have sparked off a very large debate, but the amendment seems to be more of a probe. I expect that this is a theme to which we will return more than once in our deliberations. The amendment seeks to ensure that claimants would be required only to undertake “work for your benefit” schemes that are personally tailored to their needs, rather than, as the noble Baroness said, one-size-fits-all schemes, which may not be suitable or effective. She is concerned that the Government’s claims for providing high-quality, personally tailored employment and skills to support claimants is not backed up by any precise wording in the Bill.
The noble Baroness is worried that, as currently worded, the Bill would allow for claimants to be required to participate in “work for your benefit” schemes that are simply “designed”, but not apparently designed for anything much in particular. This raises
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I expect that the Minister will have full responses to all our concerns, as and when they are raised in the coming days. It will be through careful examination of all the Government’s proposals, rather than hearing a warm assurance of good intentions from the Minister—welcome though that may be—that Members of the Committee will be able to determine whether the service that has been “designed” really has been personally tailored.
Lord Rix: Why could we not split the difference and shove in “personally” before “designed”?
Baroness Afshar: The difficulty between the words “designed” and “tailored” is that “designed” assumes that all mothers are exactly in the same boat and that one design works. We need to have a cost-benefit analysis of tailoring. How much does it cost to prepare a home-based woman from a minority, who is not familiar with the English language, and who has not had an English education to become available for work? What kind of work does she get that would pay for the care of two or three children? Unless and until we have sensitivity to different cultures and minorities we will be unable to cope with this problem in, for example, Bradford. Unfortunately, with the notable exception of this House, I have not seen Muslim women in positions of decision-making in sufficient numbers. I am interested in finding out how much it costs to train culturally sensitive people who are not on the scene now as far as we can see, and what the cost benefits would be in getting a woman who is providing good care of her children to become a lowly paid charlady and then paying for her children to be cared for. I am sure that it would be very good for her children, but what would it do for the family and for the woman?
The Countess of Mar: The Minister may be amused to know that almost exactly 50 years ago I started to work for what was known as the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. In those days, we had designed benefits. Everything was two pounds and 10 shillings a week. We only had five benefits and we did not deal with unemployment benefit. The progress that has been made since then is admirable, but we need to take care with how we deal with the people for whom we are trying to find employment. Every individual is different and they all have different needs. I am thinking of people who may not be very well but who want to work just the same. I am thinking of people who do not have the language but want to work just the same. We need staff who are trained to be able to cope with those sorts of things. The difficulty again arises with how we can split those staff, because different people
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Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope: I was provoked by those two powerful contributions because one of my spies in the department gave me the staff survey appraisal that has just been published. It goes to the heart of whether the department is in a position to get this significant change of policy across. In the 2009 staff survey, which enjoyed the attention of 73,000 people in the department who responded, only a minority of the staff think that the department is well managed and that its executive team has a clear vision for the future. There are a lot of interesting statistics here, one or two of which I will offer the Committee for consideration because they feed into the capacity and morale of the department that will take forward the rollout of this programme.
Only 28 per cent agreed with the statement:
“I believe the DWP Executive Team has a clear vision for the future of DWP”.
The survey went on to talk about resources, with 43 per cent of respondents agreeing that there are usually sufficient people in their units, so there are some staff capacity issues there. Finally—and this is only one of a selection with which I could entertain the Committee with song and dance for some time—33 per cent of staff disagreed or strongly disagreed that their part of the DWP is committed to delivering a quality customer service and less than half agreed that it acted on feedback received from customers.
That is a very comprehensive survey and I selected those statistics rather carefully, but I wanted to add to what has been said. Unless the department is really up to the mark, and professional training, resources, capacity and morale are clearly in place for 2010, we risk this policy failing. The Government have a lot of work to do in trying to make sure that this can be delivered properly and with confidence.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: The more I have listened to this relatively short debate, the more I have become convinced that the proposed amendment strikes the right note. I find it difficult to understand the line of the Conservative Bench, because they do not seem to be in favour of the amendment, which describes entirely what we are trying to achieve and puts it very clearly. I am taking no account of those criticisms which were produced by a spy, apparently, in the department. This is a sensible way of outlining the care that will be needed in working out these plans, which I would have thought the whole Bill was trying to achieve. I support the amendment.
6.30 pm
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I will start by responding to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and his comments about the staff survey. Jobcentre Plus in particular is under enormous pressure, given the volumes that it copes with, and in my view is doing fantastically well. It is still meeting the targets that were set for its operations in an environment that was much more
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The amendment seeks to enshrine in legislation that the support offered by “work for your benefit” must be “personally tailored”. I agree that this is the type of support that we want providers to offer customers, but I do not think it appropriate to specify that in primary legislation in the way that the noble Baroness suggests. All welfare-to-work programmes are designed to help people obtain work, irrespective of their personal circumstances. I readily accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, that some individuals’ circumstances are very challenging and a lot of support should quite properly go to meet their needs. It is the nature of the support offered that is personally tailored to an individual, not the principle of the programme. What should be tailored is the personal support to an individual, whereas the programme itself may in some circumstances be a more general programme.
As drafted, the amendment would require us to design separate programmes for each customer, rather than provide tailored support in a single programme. In “work for your benefit” we plan to have an overarching design that specifies the broad level of work experience required of customers and the level of employment support we expect them to receive. We will then ask providers to source individually tailored work experience placements and deliver additional support that is specific to each jobseeker’s barriers to work. The procurement approach we will take will be similar to that taken with the Flexible New Deal where we specified that:
“Suppliers will deliver work-focused support, tailored to each individual’s needs and consistent with local labour market requirements”.
“Every customer, including those with more substantial needs, will receive a level of support appropriate to their level of need”.
Using contracting rather than the legislative approach gives us the flexibility we require to respond to changing market and economic conditions without resorting to further primary legislation. I hope the noble Baroness will be convinced that that is the right approach and one that we have used successfully up to now.
In terms of resources and capacity, before we undertake any new programme, the department examines its operational readiness to implement it and we plan to pilot the programme to see if it is successful in helping people find work. Through our evaluation, we will also be able to ascertain the experience of Jobcentre Plus in referring customers to the programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, asked whether it would cost too much to support some people as they need to
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Baroness Afshar: It was earlier stated that for every £1 spent, £1.50 is saved. Adding all those 50-pences together hardly pays for even one person to be trained. I am therefore a little worried about the optimism that it will be possible.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: I think that the ratio of £1 invested to £1.50 returned is saying that you can recover all your costs and, in a sense, be in profit, although I do not like to use that terminology in this context. That is a broad issue around the spectrum of our programmes.
Perhaps I may deal with a couple of other points. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said that “work for your benefit” schemes should not be seen as a punishment. It is not about punishment but about ensuring that the long-term unemployed have opportunities to develop work habits and experience that will stand them in good stead as they move closer to work.
The noble Countess, Lady Mar, referred to the cost-benefit of helping the harder to help. I stress that we do not want to write anyone off, and it would be wrong to tell someone that they cannot participate because their circumstances are deemed to be too difficult. That is an absolutely fundamental part of our approach.
I hope the noble Baroness will accept that framing the amendment in this way is not particularly appropriate, although I do not think that we are apart on what we want to achieve, which is an individually supported approach.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I suppose that there are limits to the analogy of tailoring, but I can see circumstances in which someone’s situation is sufficiently of a regular fit for there to be an off-the-peg solution to their problem. There are dangers in that, however. I am thinking of the Paul Whitehouse character in the television programme who convinces the person in the ill-fitting suit that it “Suits you, sir”. I hope the Minister will understand that while it is understandable that there will be patterns that are capable of being resolved by reciprocal patterns, there are also individual cases that are extremely complex and will require considerable focus and invention to get the right solution for that individual. I hope that nothing that the noble Lord is proposing in this legislation removes that from the facility that will be available for people.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: I suggest to the noble Lord that in a way we are trying to square an impossible circle, because some people—the noble Baroness gave some examples—are a long, long way away from employment. Imagine a ladder, if you like. The person who is anxious to get back into work is on, say, step nine of a 10-rung ladder. Some people are only on step one or two, and in no cost-benefit analysis can it ever be worth us investing in them to get back to work.
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