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Jobseeker’s Allowance (Work Experience) (Amendment) Regulations 2011

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate and, as usual, some snappy questions. One of the things that this short debate has clearly demonstrated is the concern that we all share for the plight of young unemployed people. Their plight is why it is so important to develop this scheme and other schemes like it. I shall try to work through some of the questions. I start by making the point that we have effectively built something of a Catch-22 for young people in that employers require work experience, or are much more comfortable with people who have demonstrated an ability to hold down some good work experience, whereas the support system for poorer youngsters on JSA has been loath to let them do it. The previous Administration carried out some experiments and programmes on this, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, and I fully and absolutely acknowledge that we are building on previous experience. The noble Lord referred to the contract with Reed. I was interested to read the report on the Reed work experience and some of the interesting lessons there. One of the most interesting lessons was that the switch from going off JSA, which was a kind of bureaucratic requirement, on to a training allowance led to the loss of many youngsters, some simply because they could not transfer smoothly. The other factor that made that programme improvable—I will express it like that in the interest of consensus—is that the youngsters lost the link with jobseeking in that period. It was called a training allowance but they did not feel that they were still linked in. They lost the link with their Jobcentre Plus adviser. This is a very different approach, which we incorporate within the mainstream JSA offer. The question ““Why mandation?”” was asked. I think that this is one of the things that starts to pull it together. We are saying to people, ““You remain on the conditionality that JSA requires—you have to go on job searching. We will be more flexible about how you do that, working with the employers, but mandation remains in your JSA requirement and that carries forward into your work experience. Also””—as the noble Lord, Lord German, pointed out—““we have balanced it so that you have a week to work out whether this is really completely intolerable, and you can get out without a sanction. But once you have committed, you are like any other employee and you cannot bunk off without some repercussions””. In that way, the JCP regime is replicating what an ordinary employer would do to an ordinary employee where there is a set of mutual obligations. We cannot have a situation where employers, for whom we will want to make a lot of effort to ensure that this work experience is of great value, feel that they waste those resources because somebody can just stop turning up. That is the reasoning behind that. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked why we selected eight weeks. That is an interesting question. There has to be a balance. Two weeks is too short. It was interesting to see in the Reed research that people felt that two weeks did not allow them to get stuck in and feel part of a team. It is not an adequate work experience. It is also hard for someone to be put to some useful work experience from the employer’s point of view. Eight weeks gives the employer a solid period in which to assess that person, which means that there is a much better chance of someone going on to a job, whether at that employer or another one. In that period, the employer is able give a meaningful reference to that youngster, which is a tradeable commodity. On the other side, the risk is that you go too far and that it starts to become an organised displacement of real, fully paid labour. At what level do you experience that risk? The judgment that we made is that at around eight weeks you minimise that risk and it does not cause displacement, although you can never rule these things out entirely. That is why we have got to eight weeks. The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord German, asked about how JCP behaves. Just as we have introduced the work programme, which is designed to individualise and get payment by results, so we have also given much more freedom to JCP to work with the individuals. JCP now has a suite of programmes that it can match to people as it thinks appropriate. It is important that we do not have targets for this programme for JCP. The reason for that is precisely that we do not want just to help the easiest. We want to have this programme as part of the armoury to help those where the help is going to be most useful. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, asked about the age group. We have a work pairings provision for 16 and 17 year-olds, which is done through the Department for Education. We have developed that in parallel with this programme. This programme is currently designed for 18 to 21 year-olds, but we will look at whether that age range should be extended. At the moment, however, it is confined to 18 to 21 year-olds. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about guarantees for youngsters. We retain the guarantee with the Community Task Force. We are, however, going to move youngsters into the work programme at either three months for those who need it most or nine months for the rest. There is a major programme to take up youngsters. Like the noble Lord, I think that the hospitality industry is one of the most responsive sectors to the social needs that we have in this area. The hospitality industry remains supportive in this. One of the most important areas is our development of the service academies, albeit that they are developing slightly more slowly than some of the others. The hospitality industry is fully behind those. The last question was whether I should take on an intern. I have hardly had time to find my desk but, as soon as I have, I shall think very hard about that piece of advice. With that, I commend the Motion. Motion agreed.