Government Employment Strategy

I welcome this opportunity to debate our report on the Government’s employment strategy and the Government response to it. I start by thanking all those who submitted written evidence to the Committee, the witnesses who gave oral evidence, our specialist advisers, and my hon. Friends and colleagues on the Committee. In particular, I should like to thank the staff and users of Rosemount lifelong learning centre in Glasgow, which is in the Speaker’s constituency. We had a tremendous experience when we visited the centre. In addition, the Committee visited New Zealand in the course of its inquiry. The scope of our inquiry was to look at the Government’s target of an 80 per cent. employment rate. We focused in particular on ethnic minorities, the over-50s and lone parents. Needless to say, I will not cover the entire report or the responses, not least because I want my hon. Friends and colleagues to get in. Sadly, I start by saying that all members of the Committee were disappointed by the Government response. That is in stark contrast to the Government response to our report on the Child Support Agency, which they published yesterday and which is a splendid document. An awful lot of the issues that we flagged up were downplayed in the Government’s response, so it was particularly discouraging when they were subsequently flagged up in the Freud report and positively welcomed by Ministers. In fact, I think that David Freud is guilty of plagiarism, because there were no original ideas in his report that were not in ours, but there we are. The city strategies initiative was launched by the Government last autumn. We know that if we can solve the problem of the employment rate in the UK’s major cities, we would easily meet the 80 per cent. target. Great store was set by the new localism and getting all the agencies together to act in concert on the massive pockets of deprivation. However, the submissions that have come in from cities have, frankly, been disappointing. The initiatives are not innovative and are not really focused on addressing the challenges. Although the city strategies seem a good way forward, further work needs to be done to educate those local partners on how they can make a difference in their communities. A particular concern was the employment rate among ethnic minorities. We need to be careful about that, because the employment rate among people of Indian or Chinese descent and in many other ethnic minorities is way up there, level with that of the indigenous population. However, the rate in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations is quite low, and extremely low among women in those communities. There was therefore concern about ending the ethnic minority outreach grant, which was merged with the deprived areas fund. There is no real evidence either way as to whether the transfer has been successful. However, we were concerned that a specific pot of money to address those low employment rates had been submerged into a general fund. To return to the city strategies, the large ethnic minority populations are in our big cities. If the city strategies are weak, our response to the needs of ethnic minority communities will also be weak. That is a real concern for us. We made great play in our report of the fact that one of the biggest contributors to a lower employment rate is the lack of skills and low skills. We welcomed the report by Lord Leitch, which was published during the course of our inquiry and which sent some challenging messages to the Government. The Government’s response was again a bit weak and slightly evasive, although perhaps because the Department for Work and Pensions is not totally in control of the situation. In particular, reference was made to the ““Train to Gain”” programme for those in employment. ““Train to Gain”” is fine, but it is for the under-25s. It does nothing for those who are over 50, which is a particular problem, nothing for most women or most lone parents, and very little for ethnic minorities. The message is mixed.