Restart (Hansard, 26 July 1993)

§ Mr. Michael Forsyth

Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from M. E. G. Fogden to Ms Clare Short, dated 26 July 1993: As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency, the Secretary of State has asked me to write to you direct to respond to your Parliamentary Questions to him about how many people, for each region and for Great Britain as a whole, attended a Restart interview in 1992–93 and in the first 678W quarter of 1993–94; and what were the results of those interviews broken down in the same way as the reply given in the Official Report, column 148, on 18 December 1990. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency. The Restart interview programme provides a framework within which the Employment Service provides help for long-term unemployed people. It provides a gateway to the range of employment and training opportunities available as well as being a means of ensuring that claimants remain available for and are actively seeking work. During the 1992–93 operational year 2.8 million interviews were conducted and from these interviews 33,300 started work, 78,200 began training under Employment Training, 106,000 started in Jobclub, 112,100 started a Restart course and 6,900 started the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. The Employment Service has changed its performance monitoring at a national level for 1993–94 and the information for this year cannot be given in exactly the same format as that previously provided. Information is not yet available for the first quarter of this operational year, the figures quoted are for the first two months. During the first two months of 1993–94 54,500 interviews were conducted and from these interviews 5,800 people started work and 95,600 started an Employment Department programme, such as Jobclub, Restart Course, Jobplan Workshop and Training For Work. These figures reflect only the direct results of Restart. We do not know how many people subsequently take up a job or a place on an employment or training programme as a result of the guidance given to them at their interview. An indication of the scale of that effect is provided by the report "The Restart Effect" which was recently published by the independent Policy Studies Institute. It is based on an analysis of the largest survey of unemployed people in the United Kingdom since 1980. This showed conclusively that the programme had a major effect in reducing the time it takes people to leave unemployment, to get a job and to enter Employment Training, particularly for those people who were at a disadvantage within the labour market. I hope that this is helpful.

As decided by the Administration Committee of the House of Commons, Chief Executive replies to written Parliamentary Questions will now be published in the Official Report. I will also place a copy of this letter in the Library of the House.