HM Government

Active Welfare and High Skills

As we face up to the global economic crisis, we must not leave anyone behind and we must prepare people for new opportunities. A tough labour market makes it even more important to have welfare and skills services that are resolutely focused on getting people close to the labour market, back into work, to build up their skills and able to progress their careers. And this means it is even more important that our benefits and skills systems expect and encourage people to play an active role in looking for work, but also provide them with opportunities to up skill and get on in their careers. Not doing this risks turning short-term job loss into longterm worklessness – damaging people’s lives and the economy in the longer term. Therefore we are introducing the most radical reforms to the welfare system for a generation, and making a major investment in our economy’s skills infrastructure. From basic qualifications to postgraduate degrees, a skilled workforce will be critical to ensure we can take advantage of future economic opportunities.

• Getting Back into Employment case study
• Making the Right Connexions case study

Building on progress

Compared to previous recessions, there is now a radically better system to support people back into jobs and ensure that no one who can work is simply left behind on benefits.

Jobcentre Plus is a world-leading welfare and employment service and the Government’s New Deals have helped over nine million people into work over the last ten years. This radical shift in approach to people out of work combines active, personal employment advice with benefit receipt to ensure people are not simply left on benefits. The service is being strengthened further to respond to the recession, with 6,000 more front-line staff to be put into Jobcentres across the UK in 2009/10.

At the same time as personalising the support offered to jobseekers, hundreds of millions of pounds has been released by making back office services, such as the payment of pensions and benefits, more efficient.

Our welfare reforms have also helped reduce child poverty. Having lifted some 600,000 children out of relative poverty between 1998 and 2007, and halving the number of children living in absolute poverty, we are planning to enshrine in law the Government’s promise to eradicate child poverty by 2020.

Immediate security and tackling poverty need to be matched with investment in the future economy. As the global economy expands in the future, a skilled workforce becomes our most valuable resource. Giving young people the skills they need to unlock their talents in a new economy will be necessary – including making available an apprenticeship place for all 16-18 year olds who want one and are suitably qualified by 2013. Alongside this, investing in skills for those already in the workplace helps individuals get on, re-train, and ensures employers have the skills they need in their businesses to compete globally.

We have improved the offer to people who are moving in and out of the job market to ensure that they have the skills they need. When people are under notice of redundancy or unemployed they can access short pre-employment support focused on helping people move back into work. We are offering around 75,000 high quality training places to help people who have been out of work for more than six months back into work. This is on top of funding for repeat qualifications through Train to Gain for people once they are back in work.

Training opportunities are increasing rapidly. Apprenticeships have been saved and re-built and are now more popular than ever with employers across the economy. 225,000 people started apprenticeships last year, an increase of 40,000 on the previous year. In addition, the number of people starting Train to Gain programmes rose by over 60% last year to a new high of over 300,000 people. The performance of further education has improved: the qualification success rates for further education colleges has risen ten percentage points in five years to nearly four out of five learners in 2007. In higher education we have had rising student numbers – we have increased the number of students by 287,000 since 1997. We have invested in Aimhigher and other schemes to raise aspirations and now over 50% of young people from all social classes say they aspire to go to university.

We have also created new opportunities for those leaving the Armed Forces to pursue Higher Education. This is part of ensuring that members of the Armed Forces and their families have the support they need and are never disadvantaged in any way by service. As well as opportunities to learn and move into Higher Education after leaving the Forces we have doubled the maximum lump-sum payment in our compensation scheme for those injured in the service of the country. The unusual mobility of our personnel must not disadvantage them in getting proper access to schooling, housing or healthcare. More widely, we are determined to ensure that the men and women of our Armed Forces enjoy the place in the community that they deserve. They are risking their lives in the most difficult environments to defend and improve our security.

Responding to the recession

As with many other services, there are significant benefits to be generated from central government taking a more strategic role in relation to the benefits and skills system. Welfare and training services are on the front line of providing support for people affected by the recession. Having the flexibility, as a government, to offer real security to families in tough times becomes indispensable.

Government is investing £1.3 billion in maintaining and extending the current Jobcentre Plus regime, so that anyone who loses their job can access help and support from the first day they become unemployed. On top of this, we are investing half a billion pounds to provide additional support to people out of work for six months, which will include access to:

• employers’ Golden Hellos – incentives of up to £2,500 paid to employers to recruit and train unemployed people;
• new training places – extra funding for training places to help unemployed people to gain new skills to maximise their chances of a job from the 500,000 vacancies in the economy;
• work-focused volunteering options – opportunities to volunteer to help people back into work habits in England and Wales;
• support and cash to set up a business – advice on creating a business plan, plus funding for the first months of trading in England and Wales.

For those people who are looking to update their skills or retrain for a new job we are providing 30,000 Professional and Career Development Loans in the financial year 2009/10 and 45,000 in 2010/11. Loans of up to £10,000 at lower interest rates than before will help many people to gain the new postgraduate and technical qualifications which our future economy will need.

The Government and business are working more actively together to give people looking for work the help they need to take up the more than half a million vacancies employers are looking to fill at any one time. In the first meeting of the new National Employment Partnership, which covers England and Wales, more employers committed to advertise their non-specialist vacancies through Jobcentre Plus, to fill more of the jobs they create locally through the Local Employment Partnerships and take advantage of the skills support available, including through Train to Gain.

The Government is also investing a further £140 million to support an additional 35,000 apprenticeship places from April this year in a drive towards more than a quarter of a million for the first time ever. This will improve opportunities for employers to access high quality training in difficult economic times. Over 20,000 of these places will be offered in the public sector, the majority in frontline public services. We are also making greater use of the Government’s £175 billion annual procurement expenditure to promote skills and apprenticeship opportunities. All government departments and their key agencies are committed to considering the inclusion of relevant apprenticeship requirements when they let new construction contracts.

In addition, government has established a deal with businesses to ensure they offer advice to help people facing redundancy and the newly unemployed back into work and promote the development of the skills Britain needs for the recovery. This includes increasing the availability of apprenticeships, taking up government subsidies for the lower skilled and sustaining employer investment in workforce skills.

Building for tomorrow – integrating employment and skills

Coming through the economic downturn stronger will also require government investment in services that continually respond to a changing global economy. Having integrated benefits with active employment support for all groups out of work in Jobcentre Plus, we are now going further, to connect employment support more closely with skills support. We know that having a system which can better respond both to employer demand for skilled workers and to adults’ skills gaps is crucial to boosting and sustaining employment.

To deliver a service that is fully effective in getting people back to work and helping them stay there and progress, we need to ensure that employment services recognise the importance of skills in helping people achieve sustainable employment by focusing on improving individuals’ employability and transition into work. We are trialling integrated service delivery in 10 Jobcentre Plus districts, rising to 12 by the end of March 2009.

This includes new skills health checks, providing tailored advice to benefit claimants with skills needs. These checks will identify each individual’s strengths and any gaps in their skills, and provide an action plan to help them tackle barriers to employability. Skills health checks will form a core part of the nationally integrated employment and skills system that will be in place by 2010/11.

Our goal is that in 2010/11 over 100,000 people will be helped to gain sustainable employment and to achieve a recognised qualification through an integrated sustainable employment and skills system; a goal that stands despite the economic downturn. ²⁹

Personalised support and clear expectations of those receiving benefits

Tough economic times only make it more important that services provide the support and increased responsibilities that ensure everyone out of work gets a job – including those who face the biggest barriers to work. Welfare reform proposals seek to match clearer expectations on those receiving benefits with more personalised support to help recipients achieve their goals. For example, from October 2010, lone parents with children aged seven or over who are claiming benefit but able to work will be required to actively seek work. This change will apply to the 280,000 lone parents on Income Support with a youngest child aged seven or over. ³⁰ As recommended by the Gregg Review, tougher conditionality will help reduce welfare dependency, tackle poverty and improve the long-term prospects of those in receipt of benefits, but it demands a more individualised approach – tailored to individual claimants. ³¹ To support these more personalised services, we are changing and simplifying the benefits system so it better provides the challenge all groups need to move into work.

The development of Employment and Support Allowance, which came in in the autumn, will change the benefits system so that it focuses on what long-term sick or disabled people can do, rather than what they cannot, and ensure they get the more personalised, specialist support they need to find work. Going further, our Welfare Reform Bill will increase the support given to more groups on benefits. This includes piloting a new approach for people still on Jobseeker’s Allowance after two years who will participate in the ‘Work for Your Benefit’ programme in order to move them closer to paid work. To ensure no one on benefits is written off, services will work hardest for those out of work the longest.

We have also been piloting a new better off in work credit since October 2008, to ensure all long-term benefit claimants see a rise in their incomes when they return to work. We will roll this out nationally in 2009 if successful.

A professional skills service and greater autonomy for Jobcentre Plus advisers

We will give more flexibility to local areas and providers, including the private sector and to professional advisers to focus on getting people back to work.

Greater decentralisation to job centres and local employment partnerships is giving local areas greater power to work with local businesses and respond to different needs. Local Employment Partnerships continue to be a success. Despite the economic downturn and ahead of schedule, over 100,000 people have been helped back into work since the scheme was created in March 2007. We’re aiming to help a further 200,000 jobless people back into work through the local partnerships in the next financial year.

The system needs to go further to empower professionals to address the barriers that keep people from work. ³² We know that personal advisers working closely with people out of work is crucial to ensuring they get the right services for their client and help them meet their responsibilities to get back to work. And frontline advisers are at the forefront of responding to different and changing needs of people looking for work.

Having created over 9,000 personal advisers, we are now looking at giving them greater powers and flexibilities to respond to their client. And, having embedded the world leading Jobcentre Plus, which integrates services for people out of work, across local areas, the Government’s focus is now on building a professional, modern skills service that offers a better service to both employers and learners.

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Notes

29. Work Skills, Department of Work and Pensions and Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, June 2008
30. Lone parents affected by this change will still be able to access the wide range of support to seek, obtain, then remain and progress in work.
31. Gregg, P., Realising potential: a vision for personalised conditionality and support - an independent report to the Department of Work and Pensions, December 2008
32. ibid.