Jim Murphy seminar: The New Deal at Ten – the next decade challenges

Jim Murphy, Minister of State for Work and Pensions, led the discussion, with David Coats of The Work Foundation and Janette Faherty of Avanta responding. The session was chaired by Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society.

There was a general agreement across participants that since its inception in 1997, the New Deal has made genuine progress in helping 1.7 million unemployed people into work, and an acknowledgement that international opinion has now shifted to recognise the positive impact that such models of state interventionism in labour markets by centre-left governments has had. However, participants accepted that new challenges now presented themselves, with debates around disability, for example, having moved on, for which a more flexible and nuanced approach would be necessary.

As one participant noted, the closer a government comes to reaching full employment, the harder it is to help those out of work to access work opportunities. There was a recognition in this light of the multiple problems that can affect people out of work, requiring joined-up solutions across government, and of the increased costs that this entails. The discussion also established sustained employment and progression within employment as key future challenges. Ensuring better congruence with the government's skills agenda and maintaining contact between Jobcentres and other providers and clients during employment would be central to this approach, as part of what one participant called a shift from 'welfare to work' to 'welfare to workforce development'.

However, concerns were raised by a number of participants about the mechanisms to provide employment support as proposed in the Freud review, indeed it was suggested that provision risked being too far removed from clients and less personalised not more. The role and importance of niche and specialist providers, particularly at a local level, was however broadly accepted, and it was suggested that while no official response to the Freud review had yet been given, such organisations should continue to operate as sub-contractors to the primary contractors in the new system. Further concerns were expressed over funding arrangements for providers from both the voluntary and private sectors, with the length of contracts offered a particular issue.

There were also specific points raised about the potential for the recruitment industry to play a more significant role in helping so-called 'hard to reach' groups into work, making better use of their professional skills, and around the experience of carers. It was noted that the significantly growing numbers of carers in the UK are often forced to leave work through external factors not under their control, leaving often high-skilled roles to undertake jobs that society is unable or unwilling to pay for. A plea was made for recognition of the complexity and significance of their situations to these debates.

An important area for future reform was raised around the setting and meeting of targets. One suggestion for overcoming the disjuncture between, for example, DWP and DfES targets, was not only to focus on fewer targets, but also to make future targets shared between all relevant stakeholders, rather than exclusive to individual departments. One significant example of such an approach, it was suggested, might be the establishment of a child poverty target, shared across the five most relevant departments, with each piece of new regulation tested against its capacity to help or hinder progress towards that target.

It was recognised that continuing to make inroads into persistent unemployment among the hardest to reach groups would require increased resources, and that the levels of funding currently available would need to be increased (though not, it was generally accepted, to the levels suggested in the Freud review.) However, as a number of participants pointed out, the true costs, both socially and to the Treasury, of people being out of work go well beyond those of Job Seekers' Allowance, so that the true benefits of success in helping people into work are often underestimated. There were calls for further good, qualitative research to both better represent these costs and savings, and to indicate areas of best practice, around for example mentoring programmes, self-employment and basic skills, areas that are easily otherwise overlooked.

There was a general agreement that, given the economic stability of the last ten years including record numbers of people in work and a changing recognition of disability, we now have an opportunity to deliver on the priorities under discussion which is simply unparalleled in the history of the welfare state. In ten years the judgement as to whether we have realised this opportunity or not will be telling.

Event Report: Tim Gore

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