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

I shall move on quickly but I have made the point. Conditionality is now an important part of the regime that we are working with and everyone understands that. My noble friend made that quite clear and I concur with that view. However, conditionality has to be applied very carefully if it is to work. Against that background, my second point is that the balance of power—if I may put it in that rather dramatic way—that exists between the client and the personal adviser is crucial here as well. We have had many happy debates on this subject during the Committee and other stages of welfare-to-work Bills in the past, and if it is true in most other circumstances, it is absolutely true here. If this is to be a tailored, personalised service, which is what the Government lauds it and argues it to be, then at the point where the client comes into the integrated employment service, he or she needs to feel that there is an element of control—that they can make suggestions—in order to get to a better place. If that kind of approach is taken rather than telling them what they need to do, they start the journey back to work in a much better and more positive way. If we are to have a personalised system under these regulations, the personal advisers need to be sympathetic to that question overall. I want to come back to the training points that my noble friend raised, but a key point for me is that, when clients have left the interview, they should feel that they have had some control over the training requirements being offered to them. Thirdly, this issue is often talked about in terms of an integrated employment service and a skill, but there are different changes in the different constituent parts of the United Kingdom. That is not an insignificant point because things are done differently in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. However, within the skills approach it must not be forgotten that a lot of clients need biopsychosocial support before they can be shown how to be a plumber. They come from very disadvantaged places and their psychological situation needs to be recognised holistically. You cannot simply sign them up to a further education college course and expect them to survive. Steps need to be taken before they reach the position where they can go into a further education college and survive. All that is important. I think that such progression is properly understood in most cases, but there will be people in this stage 3 Flexible New Deal client group who need holistic support before they go on to what everyone else would understand as proper skills training. If that is not properly observed by these regulations and by the personal advisers who implement them, the policy will not succeed. Distance travelled is just as important for those clients who are furthest away from the labour market as are job outcomes. In the evaluation—and I have some doubts about the suggestions for the evaluation of these pilot schemes—the distance travelled from where people are when they come into the integrated employment service towards a position where they have any hope of competing in the labour market is equally important. If we do not recognise that people need to make that journey and that those who make the transition get much closer to the labour market than they were when they started, we are not being fair to the efforts that they are making. The system needs to recognise that. Against that background, staff training is important, as my noble friend said, but the amount of time that clients have available with the staff after they have been properly trained is equally important. I am told various things about how often and how long clients get with personal advisers. I am assuming that the 3,000 new people whom we have taken on are all now properly trained. They have not been around for very long and I hear stories about the training being cut. However, if the training is inadequate and people are only getting 10 or 20 minutes at a time, the transformation that is necessary to get some of these clients in stage 3 of Flexible New Deal into anything approaching a trade or an apprenticeship scheme is a long, long journey and it will not start properly unless the personal advisers are both well trained and able to give the help when it is really needed. In my experience—and any provider will tell you this—in a journey to work, people suddenly get it. Invariably, if the process works, a light bulb goes on in people’s heads and they say, "Okay, if that is what I need to do, I understand that now and I am ready to really put myself into this". If they are not into it, if they are resistant or recalcitrant, or if they are conscripts, you are not engaging with them at all. However, when the light bulb goes on, the system needs to recognise that and move quickly so that support follows and there is a successful outcome. Personal advisers need to be alive to that moment happening and make sure that they do not miss it. Lack of staff training and lack of access by individuals to their personal advisers are a roadblock to that. I want to make a point about baseline evaluations, which I just do not understand. I am reading from the fifth Merits Committee report, at page 9. There is a statement from the department, but it is not explained anywhere. I have never heard anything like it before. It claims that the, ""DWP anticipate a ‘projected 5% increase in attendance rates’ and assume that ‘for every 10 additional individuals who complete provision because of conditionality, an additional year of employment will be generated’"." Where does that come from? Is that a guess? Is there some research? Is there any international experience that justifies that? It seems to me to be completely unsubstantiated. It is an example of how the evaluation of these regulations and the basis on which they are set up leaves a lot to be desired. I agree with my noble friend that the timing of these pilots is too soon. I would have been much happier if they had been at least later in the year. The autumn would have been better, because, once we have the Comprehensive Spending Review, when the new Government are in place—whosoever they are—we will see some changes that will affect the public sector workforce substantially. That will dramatically affect, I fear, the number of cases that the integrated employment service will have to cope with. Who will be the people who suffer most? It will be the stage 3 Flexible New Deal people, because they are the most disadvantaged. Therefore, I think that these pilots are premature. They are not only premature, but I am not convinced that there are sufficient resources in play to be confident that they will do the job that they seek to do. As I said, it is hard to feel confident about the methodology. I am in favour of trying this. As my noble friend said, upskilling people and getting them closer to the labour market is something that we all have an interest in. If my colleagues and I on this side sound critical, it is not because we do not will the end; it is because we just do not think that these regulations will do what they set out to do. If that is the case, it is matter of great concern and I hope that the Minister will respond as best he can to some of the legitimate complaints that people have made about these regulations.