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

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for explaining these regulations, which bring in four pilot schemes—two urban and two rural—for the controversial Work for your Benefit provisions starting in November this year for two years. It is important to be sure just what the pilots are intended to show. The Explanatory Memorandum states: ""The aim of the scheme is to test whether mandatory work experience, coupled with job search support, helps the long term unemployed find and sustain work"." By "work", I gather that we are talking about a minimum of three months, after which the provider will be paid for getting that person into work. We have heard the view of the Official Opposition again today. I do not know whether they think that we do not need this pilot at all. They certainly think that we do not need a two-year pilot but should just get on with the scheme. "Further and faster" seem to be their watchwords, but the evidence from other countries, as the Government have acknowledged, is mixed about whether a Work for your Benefit scheme increases the likelihood of a long-term unemployed person finding work. There is a view that such schemes can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and failing to provide the skills and experience that are valued by employers. One finding from DWP research report 533, A Comparative Review of Workfare Programmes in the United States, Canada and Australia, by Crisp and Fletcher, is not a surprise. It was that workfare, which is similar to Work for your Benefit, was least effective in getting people into jobs in weak labour markets where unemployment was high. We have had the argument endlessly about whether this is the time to be introducing the Work for your Benefit scheme. The Government have consistently said that this is exactly the time to give people more support in looking for employment. No one can possibly argue with providing more genuine support for jobseekers. However, if the jobs are not there, they are not there, and no amount of Jobcentre Plus smoke and mirrors can find them. I wonder what sort of work placements will be offered to Work for your Benefit claimants. We simply do not know. I understand that companies have to sign a declaration that the placement will be in addition to existing or expected job vacancies. We fear that there are likely to be cuts in the near future in public sector employment. Perhaps these work placements will be in that sector. The Minister in another place spoke about the strong recovery in places such as Cambridge, because of all the new technology there. Cambridgeshire is certainly one of the pilot areas for this scheme. The others are Suffolk, Norfolk and Greater Manchester. Has the department made any assessment of the likely strength of the jobs market in all the pilot areas? Perhaps one sign of a confusion of policy is that, as the Minister said, Jobcentre Plus officers are encouraged to identify for early access to the Work for your Benefit scheme some claimants who have been unemployed for less than two years, if they think that they will benefit from it. However, these people, who might think that they are being singled for preferment or extra help, will actually be in a sanctions regime, as though they were demotivated and work-shy. Another finding from the Crisp and Fletcher report is that workfare is least effective for individuals with multiple barriers to work. These are, of course, precisely the people who are likely to be unemployed for two years. Several employment providers, in responding to the No One Written Off consultation, were concerned about the inflexible six-month running period of the Work for your Benefit scheme, making the point that it should be individually tailored to suit the individual’s needs. WorkDirections, which is a well respected provider, suggested designing the length of the placement by asking the clients some simple questions at the action-planning stage. For example, what are the constraints that the clients are facing? What does the client need to gain? How long will it take to gain the relevant skills, knowledge or experience? How can progress be verified? In other words, a six-month one-size-fits-all placement is too inflexible. If it is clear after, say, three months that the particular placement is not suitable for a particular individual, and may even be counterproductive, what will happen to that individual? Will JCP monitor the progress that is being made by individual claimants throughout the 26 weeks? Will the claimant have any choice over the work experience that they undertake, or will they be left to do the whole six months, come what may? I know that the phrase "good cause" will be used by the Minister as a reason why a claimant could stop a placement, but I do not think that "good cause" encompasses unsuitability of the work placement. If the claimant knows that the particular placement that they have been allocated is not giving them the right sort of experience, for example, will they be able to take the matter up with the provider or should they take it up with Jobcentre Plus? The last thing that we want is for claimants just to default on a placement and, by doing that, to receive a sanction because the particular placement was totally unsuitable for them. I am all for the personalisation agenda and for work experience placements, especially their length, being designed to suit an individual, but this is not what we are getting with this pilot. Finally, I am disturbed that claimants will be allocated randomly to the pilots. This seems totally at odds with the whole tailored-to-the-individual approach that the Flexible New Deal was supposed to give people. My honourable friend Steve Webb in another place, who is a social scientist, makes the point that a Flexible New Deal provider should already have given the claimant work experience during the two years that the claimant was unemployed. It seems distinctly odd that such a claimant might be randomly assigned to a Work for your Benefit scheme when their only problem is that there is no suitable job available. I wonder whether part of the reason for this whole scheme is to clamp down on those who are suspected of moonlighting—claiming and working on the sly. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, mentioned this. This may be the last time that the Minister and I are sparring across the Chamber on DWP matters and I should like to end by thanking him for all his hard work in this rather unfashionable area of government activity. I also thank him very much for his unfailing courtesy in the way in which he has fulfilled those duties, particularly answering all our questions, however difficult. We are most grateful to him for all his work.