13 January 2010
Rt Hon Jim Knight MP
Working and Skilled Convention
Indian Community Association Centre, Nottingham
Wednesday 13 January 2010
[Check against delivery]
I’m delighted to be here to speak to you today and to be back in the warm after being out this morning at St Ann’s Allotments – the largest allotments in Europe – I am told. I am also very pleased that the weather has held long enough for this event to go ahead.
My visit this morning was so I could meet some young people who have recently started work in roles funded by the Future Jobs Fund.
The great thing about these jobs is they don’t just give people a reason to get up in the morning, they also give people a chance to develop new skills and every single job has to benefit the local community – so like at the allotments – people are developing horticultural skills whilst looking after an excellent local resource, not to mention the obvious environmental benefits and kudos of working on such an important European site.
Government has invested £5 billion in helping people get back to work establishing projects like the Future Jobs Fund – which I have seen helping people in Nottingham today.
Indeed the action this Government has taken to cushion the effects of recession has meant that there are between 400,000 and 500,000 more people in jobs now than experts were predicting.
Measures we have put in place to help people stay in work, including pre-redundancy support for those who are going to lose their jobs, and additional help from Jobcentre Plus has kept unemployment below 10 per cent on the international labour market measure – compared to 13 per cent in the eighties and 12 per cent in the nineties.
I know local authorities and partnerships like the Employment and Skills Board have played their part too.
For example, here in Nottingham the City Council and One Nottingham have secured up to £6.5 million of Future Jobs Fund funding and by pulling together £4.2 million from the Working Neighbourhoods’ Fund are able to provide 2000 jobs and training places for long term unemployed people and those aged 18 to 24 who are out of work.
As we move into recovery it is important that we do not forget the lessons of the recession. The real successes we have had are, in part, due to our fantastic people on the ground, and the ability to tailor programmes to fit the needs of particular groups, for example for professionals and young people.
I should just pause for a moment to mention the excellent work of Jobcentre Plus. Not only has it coped with the recession and double the number of people claiming unemployment benefits it has also coped with the weather – taking three million phone calls in a single day and carrying out almost 15,000 home visits to vulnerable customers – in fact only 250 visits were cancelled because of the snow.
The experience of the recession has really highlighted the amazing resilience and flexibility of Jobcentre Plus – something I want to build on as we move into recovery.
But the biggest lesson of the last 12 months has been that the path we have started out on with City Strategies, and more recently through Total Place, is the right one. We need to deliver not just local services but personalised services.
This is not about big or small government – it’s about a totally new form of government that sits alongside people enabling them to get on but being there to help out when they need it.
And it’s not just about hiding the wiring - it’s about breaking down the barriers between organisations and delivering a coherent, flexible package of support.
It seems like such an easy premise – to get organisations providing similar services in a fairly small area to share knowledge, aligning resources and meeting needs efficiently but it can initially, at least, be quite challenging.
We’ve all spent a long time ploughing our own furrow, setting separate objectives, measuring success differently, working almost with blinkers on and as a result seeing our customers as one dimensional people.
It can be difficult to break down that thinking, to change the culture to make small changes to the way we work that allow funding streams to be aligned, objectives to be shared and ultimately greater successes to be had.
But I truly believe that if you start with the individual, if you recognise that people are in charge of their own destinies, are able to make their own choices and manage their own support then flexible service delivery is the only answer.
Over the last decade Government has been working to make the services we all use more flexible, more responsive and increasingly able to look at a person as a whole – not as part of a process or a number.
We have pushed power out from the centre giving hospitals and schools control over local budgets. We have introduced choice – people don’t just get what they are given from public services any more, in many areas they actively choose what’s best for them.
This Government’s vision has always been efficient, responsive public services built around the individual, with people supported to achieve their ambitions not told what their ambitions should be.
I want to make that vision a reality in every aspect of public services. For example, just before Christmas I made a speech outlining my vision for Jobcentre Plus. These ideas were fleshed out further in Chapter seven of the Building Britain’s Recovery White Paper.
Essentially, I want to empower district managers to do more of what the Employment and Skills Board does so well – build their service around local need.
One of the real strengths of the pathfinders is that you are able to respond to the needs of your local area. I welcome the strategy you have taken here in Nottingham, listening to local businesses and developing a demand led approach to improving employment opportunities.
I want Jobcentre Plus to have the power to do it more like you do, and more like our private providers, so that means giving district managers more control over the money spent in their area, greater freedoms to deliver the service their customers need and it means measuring their success on sustainable job outcomes.
This is still devolution to local level and will offer our managers the freedom to do more with local councils if that is what delivers the sustained employment outcomes we want.
The key thing is that the service we deliver is right for the individual. We are committed to further devolution only if it delivers the right outcomes for people, whether here in Nottingham or right down in my Dorset constituency.
What I want to leave you with today is this – there is a great opportunity for City Strategy Pathfinders to play a major role in shaping delivery of public services, and for you here in Nottingham to get a real piece of the action.
The challenge is for you to show us how you can deliver the vision of better public services for all. I hope you grab that challenge with both hands.
