§ Mr. Derek FosterTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many of the New Deal personal advisers to be trained by April 1998 will be recruited(a) from within the Employment Service and (b) externally. [32292]
§ Mr. Alan HowarthResponsibility 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 Leigh Lewis to Mr. Derek Foster, dated 19 March 1998:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your question about the recruitment and training of New Deal Personal Advisers. This is an operational issue which falls within my responsibility as Chief Executive of the Employment Service.The Employment Service has recruited, through internal means, almost 2,000 New Deal Personal Advisers who will be fully trained by April 1998. We have not ourselves recruited externally. 719W However, we will in all cases be working with partner organisations in the delivery of the Gateway, all of whom will be deploying their own staff on these programmes.Within the Employment Service, New Deal Personal Advisers have been carefully selected from amongst the most experienced members of our current advisory teams. All of them either hold an NVQ III in guidance or will be working towards this qualification.I hope this is helpful.