“This is why I love jobcentres: because they’re intensely hopeful places.” The employment minister, Alison McGovern, has just spent half an hour perched on the edge of a desk in a drab office block in Hoxton, east London, hearing from a group of job coaches.
“Intensely hopeful” is not the stereotypical view of jobcentres, whose staff have the role of checking up on benefits claims, as well as pointing the way to jobs. Jobcentres have faced repeated criticism, not least by McGovern’s boss, Liz Kendall, who says they are not fit for purpose.
McGovern is here to make the point that an overhauled jobcentre network will play a central role in the government’s plans to “Get Britain Working”, as a white paper published this week put it.
Since the UK emerged from its Covid lockdowns, policymakers have fretted about the many thousands of people who have fallen out of the jobs market.
“The big question, I think that everybody’s been thinking about, post-pandemic in the country, is how we can deal with the fact that we seem to have a nation that is less well than it was before, and as a consequence, partly of that, partly of other things, seems to be working less,” McGovern says.
To tackle the problem, the government is targeting an 80% employment rate, up from just under 75% – which would require getting up to 2 million people back into work.
At this bustling jobcentre, there is a careers fair, where local employers and training providers have set up shop. Hundreds of local jobseekers are queueing to meet them or chatting to advisers.
After touring the crowded room, McGovern asked the coaches to tell her about their work trying to help a caseload of benefits claimants back into jobs – and what would make it easier.
The white paper includes plans to “transform” the UK’s 650 jobcentres into “a genuine public employment service” with £55m set aside over the next year to help implement the changes.
The job coaches talk enthusiastically about their successes – as well as the challenge of dealing with the bureaucratic benefits system and out-of-date IT.
Shohel Ahmed told McGovern he often sees claimants who have language barriers that have prevented them from finding work. He can direct them towards language classes, but also tries to give them the confidence to move forward.
“The main factor I found with work coaching is about motivation, more than anything,” he says. “It’s about me, building that relationship with you, building that rapport.”
Cansu Orhan works specifically with 18 to 24-year-olds. She says many of them have mental health challenges. “I also think with young people, they all, preferably, would want to work remotely,” she adds.
Oladele Woye tells the minister he works with young people at risk of serious youth violence, many of whom have served time in prison or young offender institutions. “My bugbear, really, if you can help me, is to source employers that are friendly towards ex-offenders,” he tells her.
McGovern said she has been discussing this issue with the justice minister, James Timpson, and urged Woye to email her with more details.
“The problem is, by and large, not work coaches,” says McGovern. “The problem is time. So if you are spending your time dealing with old technology and inadequate systems that are laborious, the person in front of you is just sat there.”
She says she wants to cut down box-ticking bureaucracy, and upgrade the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) technology, to “release time” for what she calls: “the thing that only another person can do, which is help build confidence and give that person the tools that they need”.
As the shadow employment minister, McGovern repeatedly complained about a lack of detailed evidence on the performance of the government’s back-to-work schemes.
Now in government, her department has published a slew of employment data alongside the white paper.
McGovern points to one aspect of the analysis she is particularly concerned about: less than 8% of universal credit claimants who are searching for work find their way into a job each month, and the rate has been declining for the past couple of years.
“The ‘into work rate’ is poor and falling,” she says. “So whilse there’s lots of jobcentres doing the right thing, the system is not helping.”
For those clients who do not need the intensive help the job coaches provide and can be straightforwardly matched to local jobs, McGovern says it will match “the ease of contact you have with your bank”.
“We need people to have a jobcentre in their pocket, if that’s what’s best for them, and that frees up time for people who really need it.”
The DWP has also published regional analyses of job markets and McGovern says that will be important as the role of jobcentres is different in different areas.
“Devolution is really important for its own sake, and also because our labour markets are just like a postcode lottery. Your chances and opportunities are so heavily dictated by where you happen to be.”
