Efficiency Scrutiny (Hansard, 25 July 1990)

§ Mr. Howard

I have today placed copies of the report on the scrutiny of take-up of Employment Department programmes in the Libraries of this House and of another place. Copies of the report have also been sent to members of the Select Committee on Employment. Further copies are available on request from my Department.

My predecessor set up the scrutiny because of his concern—which was shared by the Select Committee on Employment and other hon. Members—about the failure of a significant number of long-term unemployed people to take up places on our progammes after they had expressed an interest in doing so and the tendency of others to leave programmes prematurely after very brief participation. The scrutiny team was asked to recommend cost-effective methods of substantially increasing both levels of take-up and length of participation on the programmes most affected.

We welcome the scrutiny team's report, which we believe contains some practical suggestions to deal with the problem. Overall, we have accepted the great majority of the scrutiny report's 22 main recommendations in full or in part. Most people who enter our programmes for the long-term unemployed are referred by the employment service, in particular as a result of restart interviews. The majority of the recommendations in the scrutiny report are therefore addressed to the employment service. Since receiving the report, we have already taken a number of important steps to implement the main recommendations.

First, we announced a package of measure to improve the employment service's claimant advice functions. These include particularly the introduction of "back to work" plans recording specific agreed action at the end of advisory interviews which can be followed up on a regular basis; the adoption of a caseload approach to claimant advice, so that unemployed people are, where possible, seen and followed up by the same person; and systematic follow-up of everyone who agrees at a restart interview to go to a place on one of the Department's programmes but fails to attend.

Secondly, we have introduced an intensive programme of guidance and advice over a six-week period for the minority of unemployed people who are still unemployed after two years, designed to put them back on the road to a job.

Thirdly, we have announced that we plan to require attendance at a restart course for those who have been unemployed for two years or more and who at subsequent restart interviews refuse to participate in any of my Department's employment and training programmes. Our experience suggests that many people who are initially reluctant to go on these courses find that in fact the courses give them positive support and help in getting back into work. We shall continue to keep the situation in this area under review.

Other recommendations in the report are directed to the Training Agency and TECs or more generally at the way the Department organises its programmes. We are taking steps to implement these, including the following action: in response to the report's recommendation that we should reorganise the way in which we deliver assessment services for long-term unemployed people, we have decided that TECs should be encouraged to develop the services that they are offering, in close co-operation with the employment service. 278W We shall be asking them to explore ways of improving and making more widely available the kind of assessment and action planning which now takes place within ET; encouraging TECs and the employment service to use the new programme flexibilities which are available to TECs and other programme development funds to adjust our programmes to meet the needs of as wide a range of long-term unemployed people as possible. This is in response to the report's recommendation that Ministers should consider whether the present range of programmes is adequate to meet the needs of all long-term unemployed people; drawing to the attention of TECs those recommendations which are aimed at them, and encouraging the closest possible co-operation between TECs and the employment service to ensure that we maximise the contribution that each can make to helping long-term unemployed people.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will be taking similar action in Scotland in respect of local enterprise companies.

This series of measures should have a significant impact on improving take-up of our programmes and reducing drop-out. We shall monitor this closely. But it is important to keep the problem in perspective. Existing levels of take up on employment training, for example, are already an improvement on previous programmes and, on the scrutiny's own findings, well ahead of performance in those other countries on which the scrutiny could obtain information. The measures that we are now putting in place will enable us to do even better.