Government Employment Strategy

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If the Government are really serious about adopting a work-first approach, it must apply from the initial interview—from someone’s initial contact with the Department for Work and Pensions. We heard examples such as that of a mother who had been widowed and who had young children at home, and it could of course be hurtful to talk to such people about better-off calculations when they have recently been bereaved. There will of course be exceptions, but individuals should be offered the calculations as soon as possible, because many people do not know their entitlement to in-work support or employment law support. Many people—particularly young women—are unaware of the excellent legislative changes that the Government have introduced on the work-life balance to give them all sorts of entitlements, such as time off when their children are ill, statutory holidays and new arrangements for maternity pay. The Government have a responsibility to advise people about such issues to ensure that they go into work, that that work is sustainable and, to pick up an earlier point, that there is the possibility of advancement. One problem that has been raised with me as a constituency MP is that when people are in fairly low-paid jobs and have little hope of advancement, the jobcentre does not give them advice, because they are already in employment and are expected to look in the newspapers and find things out for themselves. However, many people in the lowest-paid jobs lack skills, might not have educational attainments and, quite honestly, often do not know where to look for opportunities to re-skill so that they can get into jobs that offer them a lot more. Long-term sustainability means having promotion prospects and being able to move from basic, entry-level jobs to more interesting, better-paid jobs. I therefore urge the Minister to look again at our recommendations on the issue. As part of that, I want to repeat a recommendation that was made in earlier reports about the pilots to build on the new deal. In a report some time ago, our predecessor Committee pointed out that the original new deals worked well and put something new in place to support lone parents, people with disabilities, over-50s and the like, but many people might be over 50, a lone parent and disabled. The Committee recommended then, and recommends now, that personal advisers should not categorise individuals as belonging to one little group. People should be seen not just as lone parents, for example, and advisers should consider whether there are age, gender or disability issues. We were pleased when the Government set up the building on new deal pilots, but they did not go anywhere. In the present report, we ask what has happened to BoND. Can we have a rebirth please, if not of BoND, then of something very similar—[Interruption.] The Minister now has a whole series of recommendations on the matter, but I will refrain from making any. I simply say that we must not label people when they walk in through the door, but see them as individuals who need support for their particular needs. That in turn means that we need appropriately trained staff with the range of knowledge and experience necessary to deal with individuals in the round and the flexibility to do so. However, the Government have not only not given personal advisers more financial flexibility, but have reduced the financial flexibility that they currently have. The limited amount of money that advisers had to buy people a new suit to help them get into work, for example, has been reduced. However, we are constantly told in our inquiries that that small amount of money can make the difference between somebody going back into work or not going back into work. Will my hon. Friend the Minister look into that? That leads me on to two final points, one of which leads into the other. There are too many pilots. We keep reading of pilots, and they usually work. They do a good job, and somebody in a particular area will benefit, but nobody in other areas does. I am sorry, but I really am going to have to get a dictionary out when I leave to look up what starting a pilot actually means. To me, it means that if things work, we then look at extending them throughout the country. One such pilot, which was mentioned earlier, was the new deal plus for lone parents. We have been told that it is working well where it is in place and offering lone parents just that little extra. Similarly, the Committee’s report calls for the work-related activity premium to be extended to parents of secondary school-age children, because it has worked well where it has been implemented. There is a lot more that I could say about our report, but I will not, because colleagues want to get in. The Government have done so much good on this issue, but it is now time to build on that, to build on the pilots and to reconfigure services. In the Committee, my hon. Friend the Minister has a group of Members from all political parties who work hard and produce excellent reports with excellent suggestions. Will he please listen to us as much as he does to some of the external organisations and individuals that he commissions to produce very similar reports?