WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL 1998

RT HON HARRIET HARMAN, MS ANN BAILEY AND MR MARC CAVEY

  140. Thank you. I would be very interested to hear. On the New Deal for Lone Parents specifically, in the pilot areas what percentage of those people who were originally approached actually found work?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) The figures break down like this. In the eight areas there are 40,000 lone parents with children over five. By the end of March the Personal Advisers had contacted by letter something like 25,000. Of those 25,000, by the 31st, one in five had come in for interview, which is about 5,000, and of those who had come in for interview—and I think the critical thing to look at is once they have come in for an interview, how far do they get once they have come in to be interviewed? What I think is very striking is that of those who come in for interview—and this is consistent across the eight areas—about one in three are getting jobs, except for the 9 per cent of the one in three who are doing training.

  141. So that is about 6.5 per cent of the total?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Certainly out of 40,000 who are in the catchment area, 1,500 have got jobs and out of 25,000 who have been contacted 1,500 have got jobs. But it is a rolling programme, which is how we set it up. If you had looked in the first month, hardly any would have got jobs and probably quite a large percentage would have been contacted, so it is basically a phased programme. That is why I think the figures to look at are the ones of the percentage who, having been interviewed, got jobs and that is higher than we might have expected, that one in three of those interviewed—and we are talking about interviewing people who are on Income Support; as Ms Bailey said, some of them have been on Income Support for 15 years—I think that is a remarkable indication of the motivation of lone mothers to work and also a remarkable tribute to the Personal Advisers that they are providing the right kind of help and motivation. I do not know whether Ms Bailey thought whether or not when she started there would be more or less getting jobs or more or less coming in?
  (Ms Bailey) I do not think I had any preconceptions at all.
  (Mr Cavey) I think it is very interesting, coming from my point of view because I have worked in the Employment Service before, but of course it was a situation where people had to come to their interviews because they were claiming Job Seeker's Allowance in that case. So at first it maybe was a little bit striking in that response, but as the Secretary of State said, the momentum is building up. What is also encouraging is that we are getting people coming in who are saying: "I know somebody who came in to see you" and that includes people who are not in the target group; people with children under five are coming in to see us. From that point of view it definitely seems it is building up.

  142. I am sure the Advisers are finding they have plenty of work to do with those who are coming forward, but Secretary of State what I would like to press you on is whether you are happy? I think you are telling me that, to date, you are happy that only 6 per cent of those who have been approached have found work?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I am very encouraged by how the programme is going and I really do want to refute suggestions that somehow it is not a good idea to be doing this. I think the previous situation of simply leaving lone parents on Income Support was indefensible and wrong and it simply left a growing benefit bill, more and more children in workless households, more and more lone mothers existing on Income Support and I think that the progress from a zero base of one in three of those interviewed getting work is very encouraging, so I would put back to you, do you not think that one in three is quite remarkable and if we could sustain that then that would be quite remarkable?

  143. Apart from obviously the way in which Select Committees work, I do not think I am in a position to answer your questions. I would like to press you further on this though because I am not for a moment suggesting that it is not worth doing something to get lone parents into work and helping them to do so; I encourage that. What I am seeking to do is to establish whether the Government's programme is working as well as it could be, whether you are satisfied with the progress which is being made at the moment and specifically whether you are satisfied with the 6 per cent getting into work at the moment?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Firstly I am satisfied and secondly we are going to be evaluating it. We are evaluating all the numbers. We are working out whether this way of doing it makes a difference. It is a pioneering, innovative programme, so we have spent the best part of a million pounds on academic evaluation and so I am satisfied. I am more than satisfied; I am very proud of how it is going.

  144. From your early findings and given the amount of money which is being spent on evaluation, which I am pleased to hear—as colleagues know, I have been pressing for this on the wider new deal front, the need to evaluate properly—what early findings do you have, or what impressions from the evaluation do you have, of how many of these people, of the 6 per cent who are getting jobs, would have got jobs anyway without the scheme?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) My answer to that is that that is one of the critical things for the academic research to evaluate, the added value basically, the additionality point. I can give you anecdotal examples of lone parents who have said: "I have been wanting to work for years, but I just did not know where to start and the New Deal made all the difference". But that will not satisfy you, quite rightly. You want to see how the numbers work and therefore how you can show it. Perhaps Ms Bailey and Mr Cavey can give their impressions on that. But the other thing, I think, about the New Deal for Lone Parents, as Mr Cavey hinted at, is that there is a climate change going on. We are actually saying that the Government recognises that many parents want to work and we are out there to help them and in a way that is moving the system forward and it is showing that we recognise their desire to work and that we are prepared to help them. I do not know what you think anecdotally; how many or what percentage of the parents that you see would have got jobs anyway or how critical have you been?
  (Ms Bailey) I think a very small percentage would have got jobs anyway because I think the majority of single parents who come in to see us really do lack that confidence to take the first step. I am not saying that we hold their hand, we go to the interview with them, but we do do things like mock interviews. We will invite them in to see us and we will formally sit down with them and do a pretend interview, for example, and the feedback we have got from that has been very, very helpful.
  (Mr Cavey) Coming down to small things like doing a CV for somebody. That person may have been looking for work anyway, but the old CV they had may not have been very good. They may have got a job with that CV, but hopefully we have done something to improve their chances I suppose.

  145. You may perhaps be doubling the chances of somebody getting a job?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Yes.

  146. In which case 3 per cent would have got a job anyway?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think—

  147. I am sorry to be dull and keep coming back to figures!
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) The minute we have the figures the first thing we will do is let the Committee have them. Certainly the anecdotal evidence is of people saying: "I did not know where to start. I wanted to work. You have made all the difference." It might be that they just felt that but that is not what I think. It is certainly too early to give preliminary results of the evaluation, but I certainly think it was necessary against a background of a growing number of women going on to Income Support. I think that as we see the figures for the number of lone mothers on Income Support beginning to turn down, it is partly, not just because of the new deal in those eight areas, but because of the culture change whereby the message coming from the Government is: "We recognise that you might want to work and we are going to help you" and therefore the whole question, as Mr Cavey said, is that the issue of work for lone parents is on the agenda in a way that it never was before. I think that will mean that we will see more lone parents in work, claiming Family Credit, yes, but not on Income Support and having a higher standard of living and being in work.

  148. Would it not be wise to wait for the evaluation to report before deciding whether to take the scheme nationally or not?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) No, because I think the evaluation will be part of showing us how best to do it, but I think there can be no going back to a situation where we had no New Deal for Lone Parents. We simply had the door shut in their face and we had no special programme to recognise the need for lone parents to be invited in and be given help and assistance. So the New Deal for Lone Parents is here to stay, but one of the things that the Personal Advisers have been doing is working out how best it works and we change the programme according to their information about what is going on on the ground and I think the academic evaluation will give us further insights into that.

  149. But if the academic evaluation came back and said—at the cost of £1 million, very well spent—that in fact 5 per cent would have got jobs without the scheme, then you think it should still proceed? Or if it was 3 per cent or 2 percent?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I certainly think we would have to look at the issue of the rate of return on the Government's investment of course.

  150. And what rate of return is acceptable? This is what I am trying to drive at?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think the difficulty is that this is very much in its early stages and there is going to be a trend. It is not going to achieve its full returns right away. This is a brand new concept in a brand new programme so I think we will just have to take it a bit further and that is always in our mind, the question of value for money for this sort of investment, but so far I am encouraged. I am encouraged by the response of lone parents who very much welcomed it and I am encouraged by the response of employers who not only welcomed it, but have pitched in to participate, to think about training courses, to work in partnership. It is actually changing things on the ground in quite a remarkable way.

  151. Finally—and I promise this is final, Chairman—when can we expect the evaluation to report?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) It was programmed, this £1 million of evaluation, for a year from when we started on July 21, so it will be available probably, once they have processed the results, in the Autumn.[1]

  152. We spoke, Secretary of State, about a culture change from the Department's point of view, but certainly the evidence published only last week by Rowntree blows the myth that single parents are content to live on benefits. The evidence was overwhelming that lone parents want to move into work and did not want to stay on benefits. So there is obviously a big market out there for what you are trying to do?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) One of the reasons why I argued for this programme to happen and was determined that it should go into the manifesto, which it did, was because lone parents in my constituency, year in, year out, had been coming in to see me and saying: "Life for me on benefits is a dead end. I feel that the world is passing me by. The kids are in school now and they are getting on and I am being left behind and my life is on hold." It is the same thing that is being said up and down the country and I just think it was right for the Government to be determined to address that instead of focusing only on those who were on the unemployment register.

  153. Secretary of State, it occurs to me as we are talking about lone parents that that is a very vague definition and that there are various categories of lone parents and I wonder if your Department has had a chance to evaluate who are in the whole category of lone parents and those who are taking advantage of the scheme? Approximately what percentage are men, what percentage are young women who have never been married—and by young I mean, let us say, under the age of 23, that sort of young—and what percentage are women who have previously worked, have had a husband or partner, have given up work to have their children in the normal pattern and then have found themselves becoming lone parents, not deliberately but either because of marriage break-up or death, and then want to go back to work? It seems to me that those are three very different categories of people and that when the general public talk about lone parents, the image that comes to mind is a young woman with a baby who has never been married?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think you are absolutely right to highlight the fact that there are people of all ages who find themselves lone parents. They find themselves to be lone parents for a whole different range of circumstances. They might have different numbers of children. They might have different qualification levels. One of the things that I used to ask Personal Advisers, although I have stopped asking them now because of the answer that they gave, was "Which are the lone parents which you find you just think `Oh, this is going to be hopeless to help her into work. She is far too young, she has never had a job' or `She has been out of the labour market so long no employer will look at her' or `She is so over-qualified that she is never going to get a job because her expectations are too high'" and what Personal Advisers have always said to me is that they have had to dispense with any of those prejudices because there is no single category where it is very easy to help them into work or very difficult. What it is about is working out where that individual is at in their life and how they can be helped and they have been absolutely prejudice-free in a way because of their experience. I have had this conversation with Ms Bailey; I do not know if she wants to either confirm it or contradict it? I do not know if you can say that about the different sorts of lone parents that Mrs Laing is talking about?
  (Ms Bailey) I think that is very true that there is no set pattern at all.

  154. Do you know what sort of percentages?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) For me to answer on that, the answer is that we do not, but we will do. We are certainly trying to be as sophisticated as possible about the numbers because then it helps us take things forward. So we do not have the actual numbers, but we know there is a huge range through every one of the project areas.

  155. Are you categorising and building up statistics on this?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Yes, we are. We are looking at age, number of children, length of time on Income Support, number of hours in the job they are getting into, the sort of job, whether it is full-time or part-time, whether it is temporary or permanent. We are really wearing out the Personal Advisers with requiring them to keep all these records because we are looking at the signs of how things can go forward. Do you want to say anything about the information you have to collect, Mr Cavey?
  (Mr Cavey) I think all I will say is that at the end of every month we have to do a collation and a collecting of all these and certainly it is a wide range. I mean lone parents are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. I would suppose that we tend to see more lone parents in maybe their 30s and 40s, so that is where the bulk of our placings come from. That seems to be a trend that comes out. Maybe the women you were talking about who had given up their jobs to bring up a family and then have become lone parents.

  156. So would it be reasonable to say that the way it is developing it is not just a New Deal for Lone Parents, it is very much a scheme to help women returners?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Yes, because many of the lone parents will have worked before they had their children. Some of them will not. So it is very much a women returners programme, but it is not exclusively and there are some men because the people who are invited are all lone parents, not just women, although the vast majority—95 per cent or something—of lone parents are women, but there are some men. I do not know if Ms Bailey has anything to say about that?
  (Ms Bailey) We do see a few men, but very few, yes.

  157. When we have looked at this question before in taking evidence, it seems that the statistics are quite striking and that there is a very tiny percentage of men—and we do not need to go into that, but one can understand why that is the case because a woman might see childcare as a job, whereas a man does not in most cases—but it is striking statistic that has come out before that the number of lone parents, who are the kind of lone parent that has never been married, who is young, who has never had a job, is something like under 5 percent, would you say?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) No. It is a very small percentage. Those figures are published and I can let you have them again, but I think one of the things that has been striking is that there have been some very young lone mothers who have not worked before who have, through the New Deal for Lone Parents Personal Advisers, found their very first job. So there has been, like, careers advice and Personal Adviser and holding their hand all at the same time. And I would just emphasise that the personal quality of the relationship between the Personal Adviser and the lone parent is absolutely critical, not just because it is a voluntary programme, but because you are often dealing with people whose confidence is very low because of having been out of the labour market for so long and I just want to pay tribute to the lengths that they are prepared to go to to build that relationship, to sustain that relationship. Even, in one case, I heard of a Personal Adviser who actually drove the woman to the interview so that she could be there with her when she was being interviewed and she actually picked her children up from school because the interview over-ran and that is what a friend would do and what these Personal Advisers are is they are friends on the inside track. They are friends in the know; they are the best placed friend you could have because they can sort out your Family Credit, your Housing Benefit, your interview. They are very good friends to have, these Personal Advisers, and I think that is why the lone mothers have really welcomed the service.

  158. It would be great to have a friend like that!
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Yes, I know the feeling!

  159. I find it quite encouraging that the scheme is helping women returners and that being the case am I right in assuming you need a lot of flexibility—you have been saying that—in the way in which the Personal Adviser works and relates to the person who is being helped, as it were. Given that, are you putting a lot of emphasis on support systems for future career development because it could be that you help someone to get into a job which is the first rung on a career, rather than a job which is—forgive me using the word—a dead end job and we have been looking at evidence on this as well. Is it not more worthwhile if the scheme helps people to develop a career, rather than just put them into a job which is just for the sake of a statistic?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think as Ms Bailey said that many of the lone parents want a job and therefore if we help them to get a job we have delivered the service they want and met their aspiration. But one of the things that has begun to happen is that once a lone parent is in that first job they think: "Well, I can do this. This is not too difficult at all. I can manage this; it was a pretty modest job to start with, but hey, I can do much more than this." Then they are back on the phone to the Personal Adviser saying: "Keep your eye out for me because actually I could work an extra few hours or I think I could earn a bit more than this. This is too easy for me". I do not know if Ms Bailey has any experience of that, but the Personal Adviser service has become a kind of continuing service which is about getting on in your work as well as getting you work. I do not know if you have had any continuing involvement?
  (Ms Bailey) I think that the service that we offer does not end with the person getting a job, any job. We have always said to whoever has come in to see us and said: "I have got a job" that that is wonderful, but we have always left the door open. They have gone away with a card with a phone number; they can always contact us and some people do, not necessarily to get another job yet because we have only been running a few months, but for more help, more advice. Yes, quite definitely.