Jobcentres will no longer force people into “any job” available, the employment minister has said, promising there will be long-term, personalised career support for those losing out due to welfare cuts.
Alison McGovern said she was ending the Conservative policy under which jobseekers were obliged to take any low-paid, insecure work and that the service would now be focused on helping people to build rewarding careers.
McGovern, who is tasked with a major overhaul to employment support as a result of significant cuts to disability benefits, said the department would use AI to free up the workloads of job coaches, giving them more time to provide “human” support to those with complex needs and long-term unemployment.
The government is facing open revolt among Labour MPs over the proposed cuts – which some in No 10 fear could mean losing the vote in parliament.
McGovern said she wanted to acknowledge there were many disabled people who would feel “frightened” by the cuts to personal independence payments and incapacity benefits, with many losing support entirely.
“I don’t blame anybody for being scared or worried about it because given what’s happened with changes to disability benefits before, I understand that,” she said.
But she added she was deeply concerned about the numbers of young people out of work – with many needing specialist help to even engage with job support because of extreme social anxiety.
McGovern said that people whose benefits were cut under Labour would receive radically different support. Work support will be offered by GPs and physiotherapists, in addition to the extended support in jobcentres.
“One of the things that broke me was reading people say that they thought ‘no one would want them,’” she said. “I cannot live with the idea that there’s people in this country who think that no one wants them.”
The government will eventually spend £1bn a year in additional support for those with long-term health problems to access work, though the funding will be less for the first few years, starting at about £300m next year as the changes begin to come into effect.
But the Resolution Foundation thinktank has previously suggested that the support available would bring at most 105,000 people into work by 2030, and would push many more into poverty.
McGovern said she hoped changes to the current system and the way the department relates to employers would make a significant difference to the numbers.
She said the Conservatives had left a “black hole” in the service, where a top-down bureaucratic system was having no measurable impact on getting people into work.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) staff in jobcentres will be asked to rely more on AI software called DWP Ask and to fill in forms in advance of work coach meetings so that time can be spent on longer support for clients.
Trials have already been run in which work coaches are given more time with clients than the usual five minutes. “Nobody is ever going to make a film of I, Daniel Blake, but the reverse,” McGovern said.
“But what I would like is a person comes into the jobcentre who has perhaps not worked for some years and … they are given the time so that they can tell their whole story. Jobcentres will then be able to pick up the phone to tailored specific support for that person’s barriers, then support once they are in work as well. We’ve got to see the whole person.”
McGovern said she would like to radically improve the number of employers engaging directly with the DWP – currently just one in six. She said that would help jobcentres match people with the right skills and prepare them better for interviews or placements.
“The Tories used to talk about ABC: ‘Any job, Better job, Career’. I think that if you think about the career [first] … If we can get people into an NHS job where they’re more likely to move on and move up, then that is far better for them.”
McGovern said she was particularly troubled by the plight of younger people, many of whom had been scarred by Covid. She said in some areas work coaches were having to accompany young people even to public places such as job fairs to help them overcome their anxieties.
“Now, that tells me that there’s an issue,” she said. “We have to pay our debt to the Covid generation … I worry particularly about young people, and I think there has not been enough discussion or understanding of what Covid took from young people.”
Ministers are anticipating a significant rebellion and potential defeat when the welfare changes come before parliament, with up to 170 MPs suggesting publicly or privately that they could vote against or abstain on the changes.
“I don’t blame colleagues for listening to their constituents who are fearful,” McGovern said. She said that people would have those fears alleviated only if they could see the system had truly changed. “I also look at the reality of our economy,” she said. “And I know that the social security system is designed as a kind of bulwark against poverty and to help us smooth life events over time. That only works well when you’ve got an economy that supports people’s living standards.
“[The] social security system can never overcome the sort of deep inadequacies that there are in our economy. What we need is to change our economy, make sure that people have got chances and choices and opportunity … So I think these changes are necessary. I know that the job is much bigger than that.”
