12 September 2007

Rt Hon Peter Hain MP

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), London

Wednesday, 12th September 2007

[Check against delivery]

I want to thank the IPPR for the invitation to be here at the launch of this important report.

And to congratulate Lisa and Carey as the new joint Directors of IPPR.

The IPPR always has a very positive and important contribution to make on all aspects of public policy and I welcome this opportunity to discuss how we will take forward the next crucial phase in what I make no apology for calling the crusade for full employment and against poverty. 

In one of the strongest economies in the world, I refuse to  accept that ‘the poor are always with us’.

I refuse to accept that I have to tell people who want to work that there is no room for them in one of the strongest labour markets in the world.

I refuse to accept that children born into poverty have to live in poverty.

We have to build on the foundations of ten years of unparalleled progress with the most sustained period of economic growth for over two hundred years.

the highest level of employment in our history.

2.6 million more people in work than just a decade ago.

the fastest falling child poverty in Europe. 

For the first time in a generation the number of people on incapacity benefit is falling compared to the three-fold increase between 1979 and 1997.

For the first time in our history more than half of working age lone parents are in employment.

Over 2 million pensioners are no longer living in absolute poverty.

For the first time we can talk about ‘full employment in our generation’ and full employment is at the heart of our anti-poverty strategy.

But let’s be honest about it. 

The challenge of taking 2.8 million children out of poverty to achieve our historic ambition to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate by 2020 ,

the challenge of helping many of the four million people of working age who are on an out of work benefit –mostly incapacity-- into a job,

the challenge of helping lone parents into work, will be greater than anything we have faced to date.

The hurdles that the long-term unemployed, the disabled, lone parents face are high and we have to help them over them.

The principles and values remain constant equality and opportunity, rights and responsibilities: work for those who can and support for those who can’t.

But how we do it needs a step change in reform and that is what ‘In Work, Better Off the next steps to full employment’ sets out.

It will mean building on the success of the New Deal with a more flexible, responsive and personally tailored programme for job seekers including fast tracked support for those who have previously struggled to find a stable pattern of work.

At the end of the day what we need and what we are striving for is a ‘whole customer approach’.

We want better customer insight and a more sophisticated understanding of their needs and through that the most effective ways to deliver for them through tailored and personalised intervention.

The key to it is working with the person and not defining them by their circumstances.

Less focus on what benefit they are on and how long they have been claiming and more on what their needs are.

That is what I want.

I know that that is what you want and I will be studying Carey and Lisa’s paper closely

To do that, we will strengthen Jobcentre Plus’ role at the heart of the system of help and support, particularly early in a benefit claim. 

I trust our fantastic staff, to have greater freedom and discretion to provide job seekers with the help and support they need to get and sustain a job – something I will be saying more about in the coming weeks and months.

It will mean an increased and intensified level of engagement both from us and the individual the longer a person is out of employment.

And we will make better use of specialist support for the disadvantaged who need it most and that will come in at the most appropriate point in their benefit claim.

What that will mean in practice is that after a specific period of time that person will get the specialist help of private and/or voluntary sector providers.

The handover period would generally be 12 months but if the individual’s circumstances or characteristics dictate that a shorter period is appropriate then it will be.

Let me take this opportunity to be absolutely clear about this point because frankly some mischief has been made about the role that I foresee the private and voluntary sectors playing as we go forward.

It is a fact that Government does not have all the answers to meet every challenge.

And so the private –and voluntary—sector must and in my plans will have an enhanced role to give individualised attention and support and to lever in new finance.

The old sterile battle for territory between public and private sectors is redundant.

No one has ‘gone cool’ on reform, no one has ‘gone cool’ on the role of the private sector.

I am interested in one thing and one thing only: What Works.

The reality is we will work with large providers.

They can bring scale and integration. 

Smaller providers already have great records in delivering very specialised, innovative and targeted help that is essential to overcome deep seated problems.

And we will continue to work with the voluntary sector which has produced extraordinary results with some of the hardest to reach people.

While, at the same time, Jobcentre Plus –which has shown what a transformed public service can really be like—will stay at the core of the system both providing direct help and ensuring that no one gets overlooked or lost in the system.

We will get no where if we revert to an argument about dogma that says either only the public sector can do this or only the private sector can do this. 

I think that those who seek to present policy in this way are living in a political Jurrassic Park fighting an old battle which has no relevance to where we are today at all. 

Sensible people should not collude with them in seeking to divert debate from what are important issues about how we best harness the expertise of public, private and third sectors for this crusade.

I met David Freud last week and it is clear that we are in the same place.

On the one hand we need to lever in up front private finance.

Equally neither of us wants to stifle smaller successful private and voluntary providers.

What I said at the time I published the green paper remains the position.

I have yet to be convinced that David’s specific proposal based around 11 regional contacts, thereby replacing a one-size-fits all state monopoly approach with a one-size-fits all private monopoly approach is the answer.

But if a regional or sub regional private contractor is the answer we will go for it.

If it isn’t we won’t.

But there will be an increasing role for private contractors, about that let there be no doubts whatsoever.

I will work with every business that will deliver for me, big and small.

And, of course as you all know, since 1997 we have been working in partnership with private and voluntary sector providers on programmes like Employment Zones and the New Deal for Disabled people.

They are part of the roll out across the country of our Pathways to Work pilots which have been hugely successful in getting the inactive—many of whom had given up on ever working—into jobs which transform their life opportunities.

There are tens of thousands of success stories and independent research shows that Pathways has a real and lasting effect on people’s ability to fulfill their employment aspirations.

Getting work not only lifts people out of poverty, it improves their health, their self-esteem, their quality of life.

That is why I have committed to extending the Pathways to Work programme to every part of Great Britain by April 2008.

Today I can announce that we have appointed a mix of private and voluntary sector providers, including Action for Employment, TNG and the Shaw Trust, to deliver Pathways to Work in 15 areas of Great Britain

A second phase of contracts will be announced later this year ensuring that anyone on Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance in the future will have access to a local Pathways service.

Providers will offer personalised training and support tailored to individual needs, including equipping them with the skills they need to manage their health condition on a day to day basis so that it won’t hold them back.

No where is the partnership between government and business more ground breaking and, I am convinced, more central to the task of getting the disadvantaged into work than in the Local Employment Partnerships that the Prime Minister spoke so powerfully about at the TUC Congress this week.

It builds on the ‘something for something’ principle that underpins the Welfare State: individuals taking advantage of the help that is available to be ready for work including the ground-breaking Pathways to Work.

And employers considering them for vacancies within their businesses.

People will get help through Jobcentre Plus working with the Learning and Skills Council to ensure that they get the right type of training to get them to the point of being ‘job-ready’, following through on the Leitch recommendation for greater integration between employment and skills delivery.

In exchange for that they will have help and support in finding work –for example a guaranteed job interview or a work trial with an employer.

And employers will provide mentoring schemes to help people make the transition into a working environment, as Marks and Spencer have already done very successfully within their Marks and Start scheme.

Allied to this there is a new ‘Jobs Pledge’ which will see at least 250,000 people who are at disadvantage in the labour market finding work through the LEPs by the end of 2010.

We have to break through the old barriers that have prevented people from getting work.

And  because our motivation in pushing forward with our crusade is based around our commitment to social justice and our passion to raise families out of poverty, I want every person in our country to aspire and achieve not just a job, but a career. 

So there will be a new focus on sustainable work and making work pay. 

I have no interest in compelling lone parents or anyone else for that matter into jobs in which they and their families will be worse off. 

Because that will not tackle poverty.

That is why the Prime Minister’s announcement at the TUC on Monday on the expansion of In Work Credit is so welcome.

It is also why ‘better off calculations’ are playing an increasing role in our dialogue with our customers and why from March next year job seekers will be able undertake ‘better off calculations’ themselves on-line at our improved website.

We will also be doing more to ensure that particularly lone parents know that Housing and Council Tax benefit are ‘in-work’ benefits too and I think that this should encourage lone parents to get connected to the labour market as their children get older. 

We must ensure that poor information is not a barrier to people considering a return to work. 

When the Green Paper was launched, I wanted the title ‘In Work Better Off’ because that is where I think the emphasis should be.

Too often the terms of the discussion on welfare reform are exclusively on benefits.

Of course the benefit system and how it functions –or doesn’t-- is a central part of the debate.

We said last year in ‘A New Deal for Welfare: Empowering people to work’ that there may be advantages in moving to a single system of working age benefits and I welcome Roy and Kate’s contribution to the discussion.

Though I think they would agree that moving to a single benefit would be a huge change, involving some difficult issues about the way we provide support for people with additional needs, for example.

Clearly we want to maximise employment opportunities for everyone on benefit.

And it follows that it is in everyone’s interest that the problems caused by an over complex benefits structure that are a disincentive to getting into work must be addressed.

And that is what we are doing:

Through the Employment and Support Allowance which will provide a single integrated benefit to people with an illness or disability and a new regime to ensure they can take advantage of the support we can provide.

Through a much more practical approach to child maintenance

Through a simpler form of housing support

And crucially, through a modern and more generous provision for pensioners.

But whether on the need to simplify our frankly mind boggling benefit system; or the need to make our welfare to work programmes more flexible and personalised, you always push us to go further, faster. 

It is right that you do that.

But I think that we are agreed that we are all going in the same direction and that it is a destination worth arriving at.

There will be those who will say that seeking full employment and an end to child poverty is impossibly naïve and too ambitious.

I don’t accept that.

If we are ambitious, we are right to be ambitious and we must be ambitious.

The dispossessed and the disadvantaged deserve no less.

Edited speeches

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