New Deal for the Young Unemployed (Hansard, 9 December 1998)

§ The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Baroness Blackstone)
My Lords, the New Deal for young unemployed people is making encouraging progress. More than 185,000 young people have started the programme. This includes the whole stock of young people who had been unemployed for more than six months when the New Deal was launched nationally in April. Young people have welcomed the advice, guidance and support offered by New Deal personal advisers. More than 38,000 young people had been helped into jobs by the end of October. A further 31,000 were benefiting from training and work experience. Nearly 33,000 employers have signed up to the New Deal.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the success of the New Deal over the past 18 months which she has just very properly enunciated is to be not only warmly welcomed but further developed? Can she say what percentage of the companies that have signed up to the scheme have recruited young people? Secondly, what is the percentage of participants who have dropped out, having exercised an option?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, I cannot answer my noble friend's first question but I shall certainly write to him. I am grateful to him for welcoming the programme. It is a very important scheme in terms of supporting unemployed young people, getting them back into jobs and providing them with further education and training. There are drop-out rates from the New Deal. Again, I shall have to give my noble friend the precise statistics by writing to him. The Government are monitoring 933 those drop-out rates. We are not always told the reasons when a young person decides to leave the scheme, but we assume that in most cases it is because the young person has either gone into full-time education and training outside the New Deal or that he or she has got a job. But of course it could be that the young person has married a millionaire.

§ Lord Higgins
My Lords, what percentage of those invited to interview under the New Deal scheme have failed to turn up and what sanctions do the Government impose on those who do not appear?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, when a young person does not turn up for a New Deal interview, he or she is re-invited and given a second chance. The sanctions for refusing to participate in the New Deal when a young person has been unemployed for six months is that they lose their benefit. However, I shall have to write to the noble Lord with the precise percentage.

§ Lord Mason of Barnsley
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the option for self-employment is now an extra dimension within the New Deal and that that aspect of its activities is linked to the Prince's Youth Business Trust, of which I am chairman in South Yorkshire? Applications are now starting to come through, enabling the Prince's Youth Business Trust to take more people off the dole and launch them into their new businesses. Can she expand a little on that activity within the New Deal?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, the Government are enormously grateful to the Prince's Youth Business Trust for its involvement in the New Deal. We are all very much aware of the work that my noble friend has put in. The New Deal for young unemployed people, and indeed those over 25, is fully operational in Barnsley and the South Yorkshire area. The Government want to hear more about particular good practice in relation to the self-employed and would want to disseminate information that can be provided about what is happening in South Yorkshire, and in Barnsley in particular, in respect of the self-employed.

§ Lord Tope
My Lords, can the Minister tell us the average cost of the three main options other than subsidised employment? Is she aware that on 18th May one of my honourable friends in another place was told that the average cost was about £4,000 and that on 17th November my honourable friend Don Foster was told that it was £2,600? Can she explain this apparent 35 per cent. cut?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, the latest figure I have been given is rather different from either of those given by the noble Lord. Contrary to the rather, if I may say so, cynical fabrication and distortion in the CPS pamphlet, where the costs quoted were very far from 934 reality, the true cost of the 30,000 jobs that have been secured with the help of the New Deal by the end of September was about £1,000 per job.

§ Lord Rowallan
My Lords, I welcome the number of people taken off the street by the New Deal, but is the Minister aware that, in yesterday's Daily Mail, Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, informed us that paedophiles are getting jobs working with children through the New Deal despite the fact that the staff of the New Deal knew of that? Will she assure the House that action will be taken to stop this happening again?

§ Baroness Blackstone
My Lords, I am aware of the press coverage in yesterday's newspapers of concerns about former sex offenders obtaining jobs through the New Deal. The Employment Service is doing all it can to play its part in preventing unsuitable people obtaining jobs with young people. It would never knowingly submit a serious sex offender for a job working with young children. The Employment Service requires employers, when signing up to the New Deal, to sign a declaration form confirming that they will carry out all the necessary checks with the police and others if the job includes unsupervised contact with children. The primary responsibility for checking on the suitability of people must rest with employers.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the British chambers of commerce have complained about the lack of communication with the Employment Service? That is a serious accusation. Do the Government accept that criticism?

§ Baroness Blackstone
No, my Lords. The Employment Service is working closely with all employers and employers' organisations in the delivery of the New Deal. The fact that more than 30,000 employers have signed up to take part in it is a manifestation of the success of the Government, and of the Employment Service in particular, in making good contacts with those in the private and the public sectors who may be able to offer young people such opportunities.