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My Lords, we are on track to merge the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus in England from 1 October 2026. The current annual cost to outsource the National Careers Service community-based contracts is £40 million. The cost of delivering the new service will depend on the number of employees who join the DWP in October and on decisions about transforming the service as part of the wider jobs and careers service programme.
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My Lords, Sense has released a report this morning which states that 68% of disabled people say that the welfare system does not have high aspirations for them. Two-thirds said that Jobcentre Plus did not help them overcome the barriers they face and 72% found it difficult to look for work because there were few jobs that met their needs as disabled people. Can the Minister tell the House how the merger of Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service will ensure that disabled people get the help that they need to move to meaningful employment?
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I can indeed. I am very glad that the noble Baroness has asked this question, because it is really important. The whole point of merging the jobs and careers service is to bring these together in one place to make it easier for individuals who come in to get the help they need. The jobs and careers service will provide more personalised support and help people overcome their barriers, whatever they are. We have launched a jobs and careers service pilot in the north-east which is testing how people with health or disability problems can be helped into work. If they are in the same place, rather than people having to go somewhere else or to a different organisation, this will have to make a difference.
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My Lords, I take what the Minister has said about the trials they are doing, but will the merger result in any closure or consolidation of offices? What assessment has been made of the impact of this on rural and disadvantaged communities?
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My Lords, one of the great things about making sure that these services come into the jobcentres is that jobcentre services are right across the country. At the moment, the Department for Education contracts this careers service support out to prime contractors, which then contract regionally to community contractors. We are merging them, so they will be working alongside their colleagues in the jobcentre. Alongside jobcentres, we have increased the number of vans that go out into the community. Some of these careers services will be asked to locate themselves in youth hubs or community settings such as libraries. The aim of this is to get the support to where people need it, not just to make them come to us.
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My Lords, does the Minister remember when the Conservative Government closed all the Remploy sites? When they closed them, they told the people they would find them alternative jobs. That did not happen. Should they not apologise before they ask a Question on this subject?
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My Lords, I will leave the Opposition to account for their own record. Let me talk about what this Government are doing. Our Connect to Work programme is one of the most exciting things we have seen. We are working with people who face real challenges in getting into work, often because of a particularly strong health condition or complex disabilities. Our individual advisers will work with them, find out what their skills and ambitions are, and then find an employer with an opportunity to match them with. They can help them work together. It is about getting people into jobs but also supporting them to stay in them once they are there. It is that kind of personalised support that people need. Everybody has an opportunity and everybody has potential; our job is to find it and help them fulfil it.
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This is very encouraging. Has the Minister had any conversations with organisations such as Feeding Britain, which I have been the chair of for a long time? We have almost 300 outlets and we supply all sorts of information. Maybe there is a way we could link up, as well as linking up with food banks, where a lot of people go who do not have jobs.
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I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that suggestion. I now lead on poverty in my department, so it would be useful for me to have a conversation with her about some of these questions. When the new service is up and running from 1 October, we want to make sure that everybody knows what help is out there, so any ways in which we can get information out are very much welcome.
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My Lords, the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility produced a report in which we looked at the careers service. In the words of our report, we found it very patchy across the country. We also looked at the careers service in schools and found it to be enormously varied and fragmented. To what extent will this new structure deal with those issues of uneven quality of service across the country?
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The merger does not affect provision in schools—that remains the responsibility of the Department for Education—but I will make sure my colleagues have seen the report from the House of Lords committee and are addressing it. The merged service will be in a single place, so, for example, a work coach who meets somebody coming into a jobcentre who needs help then has the capacity to refer them directly, if that is what they most need, because the colleagues providing those services will also be working for DWP. That will make a difference. We will also be in a position to set clear performance standards and expectations across the whole of our network, so I hope that will address some of the issues the noble Lord has described.
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My Lords, regardless of whether the two services merge, evidence shows that people who are providing the service for people with learning disabilities lack knowledge and training. What specific requirements will be in the new contract and service to ensure that staff are fully aware of the requirements of people with learning disabilities and are trained to meet individual needs?
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The noble Lord raises a very important point. I think there are two different questions. The careers advisers will continue to be careers advisers, who are appropriately qualified, and they will work closely with work coaches. The DWP has a range of support and learning for our staff to make sure they understand the range of customers and disabilities, including learning disabilities. I am quite confident that the relationship between the two will address those points, but I will look specifically at this and make sure we embed it in the guidance and training.
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My Lords, the Minister will understand why I ask her this question, because we have discussed it many times before. When this new regime comes in, will there be any restriction or criteria at all that would prevent any disabled person of working age walking into a Jobcentre Plus and not being turned away at the door because they do not meet the criteria? Can they just walk in and get help?
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My Lords, I hope people would not just be turned away. We will always prioritise resources for those who need them most. One of the great things about the new service is that there are lots of different ways to get help. For example, those who are already in touch with the DWP because they are on benefits will have a work coach, but the work coach will now find it easier and more seamless in the journey for them to be referred on to help. We have also created the work hub, a brilliant new set of digital tools which allows people to use all kind of things—not only CV builders but AI tools to enable them to find a job, putting in their particular skills and challenges. But there are categories of people who at the moment are not covered by any of these things, and we will make sure they get the support they need. The aim is to make sure you can phone up a helpline or get help online. If you need particular kinds of help, you will get the help you need.
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My Lords, could the Minister address the part of the Question relating to the costs of completing this merger?
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I said in opening that the outsourced part of the current service, which is merging into the DWP, costs £40 million. As I explained, the final cost of that will depend on two things. We are in the middle of the process, where the staff who work for the various contractors at the moment are going through the TUPE process to work out whether they come over to us. The final cost will depend on how many of them do. It will also ultimately depend on how we choose to shape that service; we are not simply going to replicate what is there now. At the moment, for example, some careers advisers spend a lot of time helping customers to build up a CV. We have lots of tools available now which can do the CV building for you, so we really want people to use those skills to work more directly with people to find out what they need and what their aspirations and skills are, and to develop them. There should be savings in some aspects of efficiencies, but the aim in the end is a better service. What we need now is to get people into work, whatever their challenges are. This is part of that enterprise and we are going to do it.
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My Lords, the Prime Minister has made very clear his desire that more and more services should be focused regionally, on mayoral areas and so on, and in particular that the educational offer should be linked clearly to what is needed in those areas. To what extent are the DWP, jobcentres and all of this area working together with mayoral authorities to ensure that the opportunities made available to people are entirely geared into local and regional priorities?
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That is a really important question. We have already been working very closely with them. For example, at a simple level, we reshaped Jobcentre Plus boundaries to align with mayoral authority boundaries. We are also working very closely with local authority and mayoral authority partners and with local community groups. In the end, labour markets are intrinsically local or regional and we need to find ways of making sure the service reflects that. We will carry on doing that. In broader terms, there will be a White Paper in the autumn on broader devolution, which will include our areas, and more information will come out then.