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Jobcentre Plus

First, Mr. Taylor, may I say how pleasant it is to appear yet again under your chairmanship, and to do so on the occasion of an excellent Select Committee Report, which was well introduced by the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney)? The debate has been thoroughly constructive and all the speakers have added value, from my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), through the hon. Members for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), and on to the hon. Gentleman who has the magnificent title of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander)—I think, for the first time in recorded history, I got that right. That is only a moment of levity in a serious subject. Everybody has had serious points to make and I am sure that the Minister will wish to respond appropriately. With the exception perhaps of the defence of the realm, the prime duty of Government is to administer their business properly. I have a feeling—I will not dilate on it long this afternoon—that when the Government are finally laid to rest that will reflect a high degree of public resentment and even hatred at all the failures that have built up on their watch. There is no single, exciting event. There is no winter of discontent at the moment, no photo opportunity to draw people’s attention to, but the reality of administrative failure is beginning to hit MPs in their postbags, and is no less real for being dispersed rather than concentrated. It is all the more distressing, as certain members of the Committee have already acknowledged, when that failure impacts most heavily on those who are in some difficulty already, such as those who are out of work and looking for another job. Perhaps some of them are a bit less fluent, able, pushy or inclined to make a fuss than some of us might be in such circumstances, but the way that jobseekers of all kinds were let down in the summer of last year by what the Select Committee described as a ““catastrophic failure””, to return to that phrase, was indefensible. I do not think that the Minister or his officials would seek to justify it. One of the less appealing features of the present Government, in my view, is that Ministers invariably tend to blame someone else for failures within their Departments. It is perfectly true that Jobcentre Plus is an agency, and that Ministers should not be tearing it up by the roots and seeking to manage it themselves. However, responsibility for its conduct and the outcomes of its work must remain with Ministers and cannot be shuffled off on to officials who are doing their best in difficult circumstances. The figures and the scale of the problem are not really in dispute, and they have already been touched on this afternoon. They were set out in a letter from the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus to my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) earlier this week. She points out that in 2005-06, performance by Jobcentre Plus contact centres dipped to 62.4 per cent. against a target of 81.2 per cent. That was, she concedes, a result of the difficulties experienced in responding to customer calls during the summer months of 2005. Meanwhile, almost on the same day, I received a helpful response from the chief executive, in which she gives details of action being taken to stabilise the performance of Jobcentre Plus including, interestingly—we have heard this phrase before—the launch of a national action plan on 30 January. I need add only that stabilisation is a concept drawn from the agency’s own words in its planning document. It is its word, not mine, and yet stabilisation is required only when something is manifestly out of control and needs stabilising. My next point has already been referred to, but I make no apology for returning to it. I have personally awarded the Nobel prize for understatement and the Sir Humphrey prize for economy of language to the Government’s acceptance in their response to the Select Committee report that"““not everything has gone perfectly in Jobcentre Plus over the last year and that there were, and remain, some areas of difficulty.””" I can assure the Minister, having said that, that I do not intend to go along taking cheap shots this afternoon. We need to look forward as well as back and to use the example and the lessons of what took place better to inform administration for the future.