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Work and Skills

If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me about the specifics, I will certainly have a look, but he will know that the Green Paper contains proposals to increase the flexibility of job centre personnel advisers, allowing them to take better account of the specific needs of each and every customer early in the process. I take his broader point about things being done as early as possible. There are some pilots under way that deal with hon. Members' suggestions about bringing employment and skills together more readily. We are looking at developing further all aspects of the integrated employment and skills service for people including skills screening—I almost said silk screening; that is obviously a subset of skills screening—for new claimants, skills health checks and skills accounts, and hopefully we will be able to implement those further to bring the needs of individuals and employers and that backdrop of analysis of a local area together far more readily. Whatever the shortages, even in areas as relatively affluent as Henley, the industries described by the hon. Member for Henley are important, and we need them to be performing as expertly as possible, and with as much capacity as possible, for the wider economy.