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Jobcentre Plus

I have long been an admirer of the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that he could have completed more than one task at a time. We came to the conclusion that each of the four projects was almost certainly worth while on its own, but the phasing of them was wrong; it was out of kilter. A Department that employs 130,000 people should be able to do more than one major project at a time, but the evidence is that it could not do four at a time. If it thought it could, it did not succeed, and the evidence is there for all to see. The next major consequence—sadly, the figures out yesterday provide further evidence of this—was on the job entry target. Apart from, I think, one month, since February 2005 the numbers on the claimant count have increased every month and the job entry target has not been met. I think that, even at the year end, the figure was about 97 per cent. of target. At one point, the figure was 93 per cent., so something had been clawed back. If the number of people on inactive benefits had also increased, that could be put down to the general economic situation, but, as we all know, the number of people in employment has gone up dramatically, and the number of lone parents and people on incapacity benefit moving in to work has also gone up. So, why is the jobseeker’s allowance sector the only one with adverse figures? The job entry target figures spell that out. I do not think that that was by design, but a result of the constant pressure on management time to achieve other things.