My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this order and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who should not have worried about going on too long. I should apologise because I intend to go on for a great deal longer than that, I fear. My speech will be composed mostly of questions to which—like the noble Lord—I struggled to find the answers. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, and I have been together wandering around the Palace hunting. I was so much driven by desperation that I even went to watch the House of Commons Delegated Legislation Committee debate these regulations yesterday. I have to admit that that the exercise was slightly more entertaining than it was informative—and it was not actually that entertaining, in truth. It was an attempt to try to find out what was behind it. Yesterday, the Minister did not manage to answer many of the questions, but I have confidence in our Minister who I know will answer them. If he cannot, I ask him to write on any questions that may be outstanding at the end.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned the report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It was interesting reading. It might be worth reading a bit into the record. It commented rather drily:
“While the Committee has in the past commended well-structured pilot exercises as a means of informing policy development, it is unable to do so on this occasion due to a lack of information on how the scheme will work in practice. The Explanatory Memorandum provides minimal information on the pilot scheme and none at all on the cost of the exercise. We found virtually no material in the public domain about this proposal. No evidence is offered on why DWP expects the format and 13 week duration to be more successful than the existing interventions or why a shorter intervention might not be more cost-effective. We understand that the pilots will cost more than the existing programmes to run but not how they are expected to provide value for money, particularly when the candidates selected will be those who have failed to engage with the Work Programme”.
Apart from that, it loved it. It goes on:
“We therefore suggest that, before the House is asked to approve these Regulations, DWP offers … a revised Explanatory Memorandum”.
I discovered this morning that DWP had produced a revised Explanatory Memorandum which was put on the website last Thursday. Will the Minister take back a thought, which is one for all sides to consider? In circumstances such as this, where a department revises an Explanatory Memorandum very late in the day, he might reflect on the best way to bring that matter to the attention of Members of the House who might be interested—which I say, for the purposes of the avoidance of any doubt, would include Her Majesty’s Opposition on occasions such as this. I wonder whether he might consider whether there is any way we could make the communication process work better.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked about context. These pilots were first announced by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, at the 2013 Conservative Party conference. Their aim was made clear when he said that,
“alongside the Mandatory Work Programme and our tough sanctions regime, this marks the end of the something for nothing culture”.
That is the context. To understand what this is about, it is worth looking at those two other bits of the package because what is happening here is connected directly to the Work Programme.
Its record, as noble Lords will know, is not hugely encouraging. Its performance is inconsistent and it has helped primarily those who are already closest to the Labour market. In another place the Minister of State, Esther McVey, responded on this point by talking about unemployment levels. Thankfully, I know that we have in the noble Lord a Minister who is better able to distinguish between the level of employment and the contribution made to it by the Work Programme, which is carefully evaluated.
While it is good news when anyone gets a job, there are significant gaps in the Work Programme. Over 1.5 million referrals have been made to it but fewer than 300,000 job outcome payments have been made. The success among disabled people is particularly bad, and not much more than one in 20 people on ESA are getting a sustained job outcome. However, the key point is that that means that 477,480 people have gone back to Jobcentre Plus after two years on the scheme. This is over two-thirds of participants who have completed their allotted time. Can the Minister tell the Committee if it is the intention to roll out this scheme, should it be deemed successful, to all of those 477,000 people?
It may be the case—given the piece of paper he handed to us at the start—that once those 11 categories of people who will be excluded are taken out, the number is smaller. If so, by how much? What is the size of the population who would potentially experience this, should it be rolled out? If so, what would that cost? My back-of-envelope maths suggests that at £5,000 a head, the cost will be about £2.4 billion. Are the Government really considering spending that on rolling out this programme to 477,000 people? If not, why are they piloting it?
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, is of a more generous spirit than me—which I confess is not always hard—but I am ever so slightly suspicious
that it was announced that the Work Programme was not doing well but there was nothing to say what you do to people who get to the end of it. Labour had suggested all kinds of things such as compulsory job guarantees. This scheme is not a good thing, but it is a thing. I will wait for the Minister to correct me, as he often does.
In relation to sanctions, the other part of the package, we have heard a lot of complaints repeatedly from people concerned that jobcentres are being pushed to sanction too many people, or inappropriately. As regards communication, the Minister has a job to do in reassuring the Committee about how the Government will make sure that anyone who is sanctioned is sanctioned appropriately.
There is, however, a serious issue behind this, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, pointed out. We need to do something to redress the position of those who are still struggling, even after having received considerable amounts of help. The Government could usefully look at a more effective process of assessing jobseekers right at the beginning. Also, the Government’s proposals are not ambitious enough for the long-term unemployed. The Minister knows the Labour approach. We would offer a compulsory job guarantee to any young person out of work for a year, and to anyone else who was out of work for more than two years; basic skills tests; a more devolved model of commissioning; and different support for young people. However, these regulations are what the Government have produced, so I should be grateful if the Minister would tell us why their proposal will make a difference that our kind of schemes will not.
I have some specific questions, and I apologise for their number. As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked, can the Minister tell us what people will do for 35 hours a week for three months? Will they all be doing the same thing as one another? Yesterday in the House of Commons, Esther McVey said that the Government were refining and tailor-making support for individuals. How individualised will the programme be? Will all the participants from any one provider be doing the same thing or different things? What range of things will they be doing?
The Minister there also suggested that they would vary according to client need and provider inclination. How then will the Government ensure that provision and supervision will be of good quality? If a provider bids low and does only what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, suggested and keeps claimants in a room with a computer screen and Universal Jobmatch for 35 hours a week, will that pass? It might be value for money because it would not be very expensive, but would it pass the quality threshold? The noble Lord is wrong to think that he would go completely mad; he could probably read the adverts for careers at CosaNostra Holdings several times to amuse himself before he became too bored with Universal Jobmatch; so he need not do it down too much.
Regulation 3(a) states that the scheme is to provide support,
“for up to 35 hours per week over a period of up to 13 weeks”.
Is it the intention to test varying periods and durations, or will everyone be expected to be there for 35 hours a week for 13 weeks?
5 pm
Next, who will be delivering the provision? The revised memorandum told us something: there will be a procurement process involving suppliers on the employment-related support services framework. How many such suppliers are on that framework? Are they the suppliers that are already delivering the Work Programme? If they are, and they failed to deliver the Work Programme, why are the Government confident that they will be more successful in dealing with people who have gone through two years on the Work Programme without getting a job? Can the Minister also tell us how many of those suppliers are in the voluntary sector?
The revised memorandum also says that providers will be responsible for travel, childcare, replacement adult care and other additional support costs in line with guidance. Has that guidance been published? Can the Minister assure us that no claimant will be sanctioned for failing to engage as a result of adequate support not being provided to meet those costs? Specifically, could the Minister confirm that that funding will be provided in advance? After all, if someone has been unemployed for two years, it is very unlikely that they will have sufficient savings to allow them to finance the cash flow needed to pay for childcare upfront or possibly even travel costs. Will that money be made available before the costs have to be incurred?
Yesterday, the Minister in the Commons said that people would get four days’ notice of the need to attend the programme, although that would include the time taken for the letter to travel in the post. What happens if a client cannot arrange childcare or replacement adult care in time to turn up—potentially two days after getting a letter? Can the Minister also tell us whether some of the clients on the programme in the test bed had children, childcare needs or other additional support needs? If so, were they given help with travel costs, and was that funded upfront?
The next question is who will be going on this scheme. I listened quite carefully to what the Minister said, which I think was that the pre-Work Programme people would include anybody who was three months off mandatory referral into the Work Programme. Does that mean everybody who was at that point? Will everyone who gets to within three months of referral to the Work Programme be in the pool?
Yesterday, Esther McVey said that people will be chosen who would particularly benefit from this kind of support; as I think she put it, “The sort of people who need motivation and intensive support”. She said that advisers would decide who would benefit from it. The revised Explanatory Memorandum says:
“All potentially eligible claimants will be put into a selection pool”,
and that a randomised control trial will then be run. How can claimants both be carefully selected and be sampled on a randomised control-trial basis? Could the Minister explain how that will work?
Secondly, according to the revised memorandum, claimants who are referred to the pilot will apparently be able to make representations if they feel it would not be suitable for them. Their work coach can then take those into account before deciding whether to refer them. If the work coach ignores those representations, what recourse does the claimant have, if any?
Regulation 5 is very interesting. It provides for claimants to be taken from a group where,
“the Secretary of State is satisfied that the claimant (“C”) is not taking sufficiently effective steps to secure employment (for example, because C is failing to secure job interviews)”.
Could the Minister unpack this a bit? Two different things could be going on. Are these people who are not putting in sufficient effort and are therefore being brought into the scheme or are they people who are not getting results—for example, failing to get job interviews? It is perfectly possible that somebody could be doing all the right things, but not get a job, through no fault of his or her own. Perhaps there are no jobs in their area or no jobs for which they have the right skills. This matters quite a bit. If the Government intend simply to target people who are not doing enough, rather than people who are not getting results, they should say so.
If this is about people who are not getting the results, even though they are doing all the right things for jobsearch, can the Minister explain how the programme is appropriate? The memorandum says that the aim of the pilot is specifically to deliver,
“support and supervision to look for work and improve … jobsearching and application skills”.
If someone is doing all the right things but not getting a job, what is the point of bringing them in to teach them to do the things that they may already be doing well? In those circumstances, will those claimants be brought into the scheme? If they are, will they be given some support other than jobsearch skills? In that case, why are they in the jobsearch pilot?
On selection, are the 11 categories listed here out in the public domain? The Minister may not want to read them into the record, but could he just tell anyone reading Hansard where they might find the list of the 11 categories of people who will be excluded?
On evidence and evaluation, what evidence is there, from the test bed or elsewhere, to suggest that the activities covered by this pilot scheme are likely to be successful in helping its target audiences to move into work? That is one of the questions from the Scrutiny Committee. Pilots will last for 13 weeks, rather than the six months that were mentioned when it was announced at a Conservative Party conference. What evidence did the Government use to determine that 13 weeks was the appropriate period?
In following up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on this, can the Minister assure the Committee that the evaluation will be independent—that is, done by somebody from outside the department? Will its findings be published before any further rollout?
On communication, can the Minister confirm that the letters that will be sent to claimants will specify the time and date for all appointments but also tell the claimant precisely over what hours they will be expected
to attend? That is particularly important for those who have to make childcare or other care arrangements. Could the Minister clarify that, as there have been issues with that in other programmes in the past?
Finally, could the Minister comment on one other thing? The Child Poverty Action Group suggested that a regulation should be added that provides that the requirement to participate in the scheme will be relaxed if the claimant can demonstrate that they are undertaking an activity that will make it more likely that they will obtain employment than they would under the scheme. Does the Minister find that attractive? I noticed that on the list of people to be excluded that was handed to us were claimants who are participating in voluntary work. In those circumstances, if a claimant was participating in voluntary work, does that mean that any claimant who is doing such work would be excluded from the scheme? Could the Minister clarify that?
It must be right that claimants are given the help and support that they need to get a job, especially after a long period out of work. But if the Government are going to spend some £30 million of public money on a scheme and allow providers to sanction claimants for not engaging with it, Parliament has a right to rather more information than I think has been forthcoming so far. I look forward to the Minister’s answers.