§ Mr. CohenTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what consideration she has given to making payments to job applicants for travelling expenses when they travel distances across London, within the M25 area, to attend job interviews; and if she will make a statement. [4680]
§ Mr. ForthResponsibility 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 Mr. Harry Cohen, dated 8 December 1995:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question about travelling expenses for job applicants travelling to attend job interviews within the M25 area.I know it can be very difficult for unemployed people to cope with the expense of getting to interviews and the Employment Service (ES) has been running a travel to interview scheme (TIS) for a number of years now to help with this. The scheme's main aim is to encourage people who have been unemployed for four or more weeks to widen their job search. It does this by helping them with travelling costs and, if necessary, overnight accommodation costs to attend job interviews outside their usual travel to work area. A few basic conditions must be met before assistance can be granted, to ensue the scheme is properly and fairly administered and gives good value for money. In the last year the ES has used TIS to help over 51,000 applicants with travelling costs totalling £1.8 m.One of the eligibility rules is that the job interview must be beyond normal daily travelling distance of the applicant's home area. We appreciate that it is very difficult to draw the line around what constitutes "normal" daily travelling distance but we try to be fair about this. My jobcentre managers, working to broad guidelines supplied by my Head Office are authorised to decide for this purpose, what their local labour market is. The guidance given in respect of journeys around London is either 40 miles or a journey taking more than 1 hour 20 minutes. However, each application is considered individually. Factors such as distance, costs, availability of public transport and the length of time the journey takes are all checked and where any doubt exists, discretion is advised in favour of the applicant.The scheme has recently been reviewed and my people were aware of the problem of the high transport costs around the London area. One of the changes suggested was that special consideration should be given where particularly high transport costs were involved, and that such considerations should be left to the discretion of my District or Regional offices for the reasons given earlier. The results of the review are currently under considerationI hope this is helpful.