§ Mr. Ian TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a further statement on the progress of the new employment service.
§ Mr. LeeThe employment service now provides under a single management the full range of services formerly provided by the separate unemployment benefit and jobcentre services.
We are developing new approaches to helping unemployed people, and particularly long-term unemployed people, which take advantage of this single management. We are introducing a number of changes to ensure both that benefit claimants can be offered the most appropriate help available and to enable us to check more systematically that people claiming benefits continue to be available for work.
We are looking at ways of helping with job-finding and making benefit payments simpler, more accessible and more effective. A current management priority is to test a range of models which will bring together services currently delivered from separate premises.