WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL 1998

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

  180. What about the availability of after school care or holiday out-of-school care?
  (Ms Bailey) We are very lucky in the areas that we work in. We have a childcare information centre actually based in Sutton in Surrey and the number of after school clubs and holiday clubs are quite large, but I can only speak for our particular area.

  181. So you are not coming up against that as an obstacle? Once you have got somebody that has come in and you are discussing what the options are, you are not coming up against that as an obstacle?
  (Mr Cavey) The availability of childcare, I do not think so.
  (Ms Bailey) It is not a problem.
  (Mr Cavey) The financial side is another part of it.

  182. Right. What about on the financial side? Is the financial side an obstacle?
  (Mr Cavey) I think we are finding that if they have one or two children of primary school age they can normally work around it and still be better off and quite often we can demonstrate that. Where somebody perhaps has three or four children who are under the age of 11 it does prove more difficult.
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think the childcare tax credit is going to make a real difference to helping parents with the affordability of childcare. Sometimes parents could find that they could afford childcare, but it is not as good as they want it and they would like a better sort of nursery or something like that, in which case it helps them with more choice of what is within their reach price-wise.

  183. You Personal Advisers are finding that there is a need for something like a childcare tax credit, then?
  (Mr Cavey) Definitely.

  184. Just go back to some of the figures on the pilot areas, this started in July, is that right?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) 21 July.

  185. And of the 40,000 lone parents only 25,000 have been contacted. Is that because it is a rolling programme of letters?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Yes. We had to phase it and we were expecting to contact all 40,000 within the first year so we think that we are well on target to do that, but definitely we phased it. We did not expect to contact all 40,000 straight away, but by the end of the first year we should have contacted all 40,000.

  186. The people who respond; some of the people who have come in for interview, what is the average time, do you think, since that particular person's letter went out and they came in to you for an interview? Is it very quick, or does it take a while for them to get back in touch and arrange an interview?
  (Ms Bailey) The letter that we send out initially is inviting them in for an interview.
  (Mr Cavey) For which we set aside the time and the date.
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Not all of the eight areas have done that; this is one of the things that we have looked at. Some of the areas have said: "Please come in to meet Ms Bailey, your Personal Adviser, on Wednesday at 3 o'clock" and that is how they have done it, but in other areas they have said: "Get in touch with us to fix an appointment" and we are looking at what difference that makes in terms of the take-up.

  187. So in terms of looking at—
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I am sorry. I interrupted before you had answered the question of how long it was after they get the letter and before they come in.
  (Ms Bailey) Yes. We give them about a fortnight. We have done different things and we find that any longer than that and they forget about it and any shorter time then it is not going to be enough time for them to make arrangements if they need to.
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) That is science for you!

  188. Thinking of the people you have managed to get into jobs or into training or education, whatever it is that they want, and where it has been relatively easy—they know what they want to do and you can find it, that sort of thing—how long roughly does that take after interviews? Does it take a couple of interviews while you build up confidence, find out what they are interested in and how does that sort of thing work?
  (Ms Bailey) When we first started we invited them in for an initial interview and then invited them back for a second interview and we found that just did not work. People were not coming back for a second interview, for whatever reason. So we now do a first interview which is a very long, involved interview, which nine times out of ten is the only interview that we need to do initially. They then will go on to a training course, for instance. People who are looking for work we will invite to come in as often as they want to and we will contact them, probably on a weekly basis hopefully with jobs that have come in to the Jobcentre.

  189. So bearing all that in mind, given the lags at all the different stages, there are the lags in the roll out of sending out the letters, there are then the lags in terms of how long it then takes for them to come back in depending on which pilot area we are talking about and which one is doing it, then there is the time after that first interview in which you are looking for a job for them or whatever it might be. We have 1,500 people into jobs already. It is therefore far too early to look at that as a proportion of the overall eligible group. At what stage do you think it is fair to look at how many people have got into jobs?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think it is going to be very difficult to say when we have reached the end of the programme and can do the slice there, because what is happening at the same time is that the word is going out—I can see Mr Brady looking cynical here.

  190. Amused?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Do not be cynical; listen to what Mr Cavey said about the grapevine because this is a kind of cumulative programme and that is why the quality of service is so good. It is exponentially increasing but only because people say to other people: "Oh, I have got this letter" and somebody else says: "Well, my friend went down and they were really helpful" and that can continue to develop. So it is not where we have a stock of people who are required to come in and such like. We are building on a voluntary basis from a zero base, so I think that is a way of not answering your question Ms Cooper and saying there is no particular point at which we say: "Right. We have now reached the optimum and this is the percentage". I think that we want to continue to go in the right direction, but I think that one in three of those interviewed getting jobs if we could maintain that, with the growing number of lone parents coming in, it really is a cracking outcome.
  (Ms Bailey) May I add something? We are also finding that maybe people we contacted last August are now coming back to us, having been to see us last August when they said: "No, I do not want to work", they are now contacting us: "I have changed my mind. I would like to come and see you". So as the Secretary of State said, there is not a clear line at which you can say: "Right, we have seen everybody and that is it".
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) There are more lone parents all the time, so you will never have seen everybody.
  (Ms Bailey) Unfortunately, yes.

  191. Will you contact people again? So people who were contacted and told: "You have an interview in two weeks' time" and they did not want to come or it was just too much hassle for them, they were only just divorced and it was all too traumatic—whatever the reason—will they get another letter next year?
  (Mr Cavey) It is six months.

  192. Every six months?
  (Mr Cavey) Yes. We put it in our brought forward tray in our computer and it will pop up in six months and we will send them another letter, or if we are holding an event for lone parents then we will invite them to that.
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Or there might be a specific event. One Personal Adviser told me about a man who had recently been widowed and who was contacted about the New Deal by a Personal Adviser and he said: "My daughter is just starting her course work for her GCSE and is very traumatised by her mother's death, but I do want help to get into work after the summer because then she will have done all her particular bits of course work." So sometimes there will be a brought forward system which is about somebody's particular circumstances or "No, I do not want to think about having a job now because I want to see her settle into primary school for the first year, but actually I will want to be doing it then". So sometimes the brought forward system is about where people are in their lives as well as those people who are just simply not responding.

  193. A quick numbers question. Of the 5,000 that have come in for interview, how many have gone into jobs and how many have gone into education and training?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) 9 per cent of that 1,500.

  194. 9 per cent of that 5,000?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) No, 9 per cent of the 1,500 is training.

  Yvette Cooper: 9 per cent of the 1,500.

  195. I agree it is a very important matter of family-friendly employment, but Government Departments and Agencies are very important employers. Now, do we know how good they are and what are we doing to ensure that they are better at being-family-friendly?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think if we are asking employers to recognise that a lot of the people they employ are somebody's mother and that they have family responsibilities as well, we have to make sure that our own house is in order. I think if we are also producing a national childcare strategy and saying that we expect employers to think about whether there is anything they can do to help their employees with their childcare costs and with information or availability of childcare, then again we have to lead by example and certainly not be lagging behind the best examples in the private sector. Shortly, Chairman, I shall be launching the new Parents at Work programme that I have asked the Benefit Agency to develop. We have something like 80,000 employees across the DSS of which 70 per cent are women and I have had an extensive consultation done with the staff in order to draw together a programme to help with employees' childcare and also to begin the task of making much more family-friendly employment. So I am glad you asked that question, Chairman, because we have made some progress on that which I am very pleased with and I hope it will show the way to many other Government departments or agencies. I do not know if you knew about that when you asked?

  196. No, I did not. So you agree that it would be a good thing for Government and local government, the Health Service, Education Service—
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Certainly, and this is the first announcement that we are actually doing it, but we have not yet published a programme. We will in a couple of weeks' time.

  197. Two very quick questions. You mentioned, Secretary of State, that the whole scheme is increasing exponentially, very much because of the enthusiasm which those who have taken part in it show to other people, which is good news. But if it continues to expand in this way, which would theoretically be good, how are you going to pay for it? Is it part of the New Deal programme which is to be financed by the windfall tax, in which case the windfall tax is a finite amount of funds, so where are you going to get the money from for this part of the New Deal?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) Certainly, we have sufficient to cover the programme as it is going. We actually discovered that we had to add to the programme from the windfall levy; we had to get more funds from the windfall levy, an extra £60 million, because people were coming in, volunteers as they are called, women with children under five. So we had to put extra money into the programme because people who we were not inviting to come in were seeing the poster out and about, so as the demand grows then we will simply have to meet that demand and certainly that is something where we will look to the windfall levy. But what happens if people come in and are interviewed and get work is that although they remain on some level of benefit because they will probably still be getting housing benefit, they will certainly be getting Family Credit, the cost of their benefits to the DSS is less than if they are out of work and full time on benefit. So one of our concerns is to reduce the number of lone parents on Income Support and increase the number of lone parents who are working and claiming Family Credit. Therefore you can see how the figures might be going to add up.

  198. So you have a hope of making it, if not exactly self-financing in that way, balancing to an extent. Because once the windfall tax fund runs out then any New Deal programme if it is continued will have to be paid for from some other budget?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think that is a very important point indeed and one which the evaluation will critically look at. The question is how much it costs, how nearly it might be getting to self-financing or whether it is self-financing is an absolutely critical issue. We know it is a good investment anyway, because if we are helping people have opportunities and we are making sure that children are not brought up in workless households, it is part of our programme for tackling social exclusion. So it is not just a financial equation here and there are all sorts of good evidence around. The evidence is that a young girl who is brought up by a lone mother who is working is less likely herself to become a young, lone mother than a young girl who is brought up by a lone mother who is not working. You can understand why, of course, because it seems to be that life appears to be like getting yourself up and getting yourself off to work and that is the role model and example they set. So I think there is a short term issue about returns, but then there are also the long term issues about tackling a cycle of dependency and parents being able to be role models. One parent I met in Halesowen said that she has three children, she is working now 40 hours a week and I said: "How much better off are you in work than on benefit?" and she said: "I am £40 better off". So I said: "You are only working for £1 an hour" and she said: "No, I am not working for £1 an hour" and I said: "Yes, you are; £40, 40 hours, £1 an hour". She said: "No, I am working to set an example for my children and for my self-respect" and there is a big non-financial issue here which is about investment in the future.

  199. That is exactly why I was so interested in the women returners side of this and Ms Bailey mentioned right at the beginning of this session about self-confidence being very important, so I recognise the point you are making. That leads on to my one short final point, Mr Chairman, which is I was very struck by your answer to somebody's question about if there is one thing which is a block to making people take the risk to go from benefit to work it is mortgages. Now that seems to me to discriminate against the women returners that I have been talking about because they are the very people who have mortgages and might find themselves in the position of being lone mothers which they never intended to be. Is the Government going to tackle that from the point of view of mortgages? If you, as Government, rather than you as your Department, are doing a total review of those matters will you tackle that?
  (Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman) I think it is clear we have become strongly aware of it because it is what all the Personal Advisers in all the areas have told us and we are strongly looking at it, trying to work out how we can deal with this. They have to earn so much more to make it worth their while working and if it is their first job back it might be that they do not feel they can take on the obligation of a hugely paid job or would even get access to it, so I think that is a very important point.