A ‘genuine Department for Work’? The pathway to meaningful DWP reform

Yesterday, Liz Kendall, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, gave a speech in Barnsley setting out plans for reforming employment support. One of her key lines was that she wants to deliver “fundamental reform so a department for welfare becomes a genuine department for work”.

The Department for Work and Pensions has had its current name since 2001, but it probably is fair for Liz Kendall to say that a significant amount of focus during the 2010s was on the creation and gradual rollout of Universal Credit. 

For this reason, in recent years DWP has tended to concentrate on providing employment support only to people receiving benefits. This narrow focus has prevented us from utilising all the tools at our disposal.

In general people who aren’t receiving Universal Credit are not able to get support from staff at a Jobcentre. If someone turns up at a Jobcentre without a Universal Credit appointment, they are usually turned away at the door. As Liz Kendall put it in her speech yesterday: “Jobcentre Plus [has become] a benefit monitoring service, not a public employment service – which was its original aim.” 

The result is that very few people voluntarily use Jobcentres: almost everyone using them is required to be there as a condition for receiving benefits. The consequence is that the proportion of all jobseekers using a public employment service (Jobcentre Plus or equivalent) is very low compared to other countries – just 18% in the UK, compared to 60% in France and 74% in Germany, according to OECD data.

In our new Demos research report, Open Door Policy, supported by Phoenix Insights, we showed that this is primarily due to policy decisions. We identified a significant ‘back to work support gap’ for example: in our survey of 4,000 people in the UK, we found that one in three (34%) of those currently out of work would like to start a new job, but only one in seven (14%) have accessed a public service to get advice or support in the last two years. That is equivalent to 2.1 million people missing out on advice or support to help them get a job.

The good news is that the new government has announced “a major overhaul of Jobcentres” and has also committed to creating a new ‘national jobs and careers service’ by bringing together Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service. The likely implication of this would seem to be opening up access to Jobcentres and allowing people to access them voluntarily, whether they are receiving benefits or not. National Careers Service advisers could provide support to people not receiving benefits, for example.

Here at Demos, we welcome the new government’s commitment to reforms. We have advocated for the importance of reforming employment support for the last two years, since publishing our own blueprint for reform, which we called a ‘Universal Work Service’ – a public employment service which anyone could access to get advice and support related to work.

The creation of the new ‘national jobs and careers service’ needs to be accompanied by a new message to citizens. In our focus groups, people told us they wanted the government to communicate clearly and raise awareness that new support was available. We argued the government should announce an ‘Employment Advice Guarantee’ – a guarantee to all citizens that ‘if you want advice or support related to jobs, careers or work, you will be able to access it.’ This would be an opportunity to reset public views of the DWP.

This ‘message reset’ could also play a key role in improving and expanding the existing network of Youth Employment Hubs. These are Hubs which DWP runs in partnership with Local Authorities, charities, training providers and other local organisations, providing a range of support to young people in community locations rather than at Jobcentres. Demos recently published the first major research report about Youth Employment Hubs, supported by Youth Futures Foundation, and we found they have been a successful initiative, with young people praising the community-based locations and the range of co-located support they could access. Generally, however, the Hubs suffer from the same problem as Jobcentres: very few young people access them who aren’t receiving benefits. This is a serious problem when two thirds (62%) of 18-24-year-olds who are out of work do not receive Universal Credit. In our report, we recommend that the new government should open up access to Youth Employment Hubs to all young people. 

Reform of in-person services should also be accompanied by reforms to digital services. We have recommended that the DWP should create a digital public employment service – what we called a ‘digital front door’. Accessing a physical Jobcentre won’t be possible for everyone. And in our research focus groups, when we presented people with different options for reform, the online/digital option was the most popular. It can also play a crucial role in promoting other initiatives and programmes, such as Universal Support and devolved programmes commissioned by Combined and Local Authorities. The ‘digital front door’ should be a website which offers information, as well as the opportunity to speak to an adviser remotely. Usually, this adviser would have an initial conversation and then refer the citizen to a relevant organisation, programme or service near them.

If the government takes these steps, it can boost workforce participation, productivity and economic growth – this government’s key mission. It can also mark the beginning of a new relationship between citizen and state within employment support, one which looks beyond administering benefits and towards making sure people have the support they need to thrive in the workplace. In building this new relationship, we can achieve the vision laid by Liz Kendall to truly be a Secretary of State for Work, not just welfare.