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Jobseeker’s Allowance (Skills Training Conditionality Pilot) Regulations 2010

My Lords, we on these Benches very much welcome the policy direction of these regulations. It is absolutely right that every effort should be made to ensure that the welfare state is not a something-for-nothing concept, that its resources are protected for those who truly need them and that they are not used up by those who can work and contribute to society and the economy, but who choose not to. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, I have reservations about these regulations and a number of questions I should like to ask the Minister. First, the monitoring and review process referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum is rather vague and paragraphs 12.1 and 12.3 do not even mention job outcomes. In fact, job outcomes is the last of the four bullet points in paragraph 12.2. Can the Minister define what is meant by a successful job outcome? Are we talking about a permanent job or a temporary job? What exactly does it mean? Overall, does the Minister not agree that the evaluation should be clear and easy to understand? Paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum lists four bullet points on which training is to be modelled. They are ""Basic Skills and English language for speakers of other languages; … Employability skills; … Short, job focused training of up to eight weeks; and … Other job related provision"." This, too, is extraordinarily vague. I wonder how effective this will be as a direction; not very, I fear. Will the Minister give us a little more detail—I know he mentioned some on introducing the regulations in the first place—about the type of training that will be provided? How does he envisage that people will be in a better position to get jobs afterwards? Given there is already strong criticism about the standard and content of training that is given by jobcentres, where it is often described as "one size fits all", can the Minister assure us that training will be more intelligently tailored to meet individual participants’ needs? Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, I should like to ask about the qualifications of the people who assess the training needs. What qualifications or training do they have in personal development? What further action are the Government taking to ensure that the record number of young people, the NEETs—those not in employment, education or training—are being quickly placed on suitable training courses? Can the Minister tell us how involved businesses and employers will be in identifying the skills needed in the pilot areas? Can he provide assurances that customers will receive skills appropriate for the job market? However, where we are particularly worried is with regard to the time it will take to evaluate the pilot. We are in the middle of a severe recession. When do Her Majesty’s Government anticipate publishing the results of this pilot? Given that the Government closed a jobcentre every week in 2008, while unemployment was rising, can the Minister assure the House that the jobcentres involved will have the appropriate resources to implement the pilot? The UK still lags well behind most of our competitors regarding adult numeracy and literacy. The number of people who have taken up skills for life programmes is far less than the number of adults without basic literacy and numeracy skills and progress has been limited. Does the Minister accept that a new approach needs to be taken to ensure that we do not get left even further behind? What plans are in place to ensure that this does not happen? Lastly, paragraph 4.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum mentions data sharing. Given the various recent blunders with data going into the public domain, when such details should not have been released, will the Minister please explain what protections on data sharing are in place? At a time when long-term unemployment is still rising, when more than 1 million people who are fortunate enough to be in part-time work want a full-time job and when employment continues to fall to the lowest rate for 13 years, we need bold action to get Britain back on its feet and on the way to work. That means we cannot continue with a top-down, unpersonalised approach to policy. I repeat that we welcome the concept of these regulations, but we have concerns about the quality, the appropriateness and the lack of individualised and bespoke training that will lead to the outcomes we all want, which are sustainable jobs and progression in work. Frankly, I have to say that we do not believe that these regulations are up to the task, considering the scale of the problem this country faces. I look forward to the Minister’s response.