Unemployment
The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform (Margaret Hodge): New deal 50-plus provides help and support for people aged 50 and over who have been out of work for six months or more. That successful programme has helped more than 150,000 people into jobs and, as a result, we have helped to increase the employment rate for older workers to more than 70 per cent. Older workers who take up employment can also receive financial support through the 50-plus element of the working tax credit. We have also set out a number of further proposals designed to help older jobseekers into work in our welfare reform Green Paper.
Helen Goodman: I am grateful to the Minister for her response. This is a problem that I have to address in my constituency surgeries from time to time. It is a problem when people are not just capable of working, but enthusiastic about it. Will she explain what the Government are doing to combat age discrimination in the workplace?
Margaret Hodge: The Government have introduced legislation. I think that regulations were laid before the House last week to take further our steps to combat age discrimination. If they are approved by the House, they will come into force this October. We also run a range of campaigns, from the age positive campaign, for which the Department for Work and Pensions has responsibility, to a campaign that we run in partnership with all stakeholders—trade unions, businesses and particular interest groups—to ensure that employers recognise the benefits of employing older workers.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): Who gives advice to people over 50 about those various schemes? Jobcentre Plus in Bicester has closed altogether. Jobcentre Plus in Banbury seems to have become a call centre somewhere in Hampshire that no one can get through to. It is all very well having such schemes, but it is no good if no one knows about them. In days gone by, the jobcentre did two things: it gave people advice on benefits and helped them into work. Jobcentre Plus no longer seems to perform that second function of helping people into work. If the Minister is simply relying on newspaper campaigns, such things are not going to work.
Margaret Hodge: I am happy to correspond with and talk to the hon. Gentleman about the problems that his constituents are experiencing, but I do not recognise the picture that he paints. Jobcentre Plus innovatively brings together support and access to benefits with advice for employment. People access that advice in a variety of ways. Some will access it through the internet and the telephone and those sorts of mechanisms, hence the development of a number of call centres that people can ring. Others will access it by walking into their local Jobcentre Plus office.
In pursuing efficiency, which I hope the hon. Gentleman supports, we have ensured that our network of offices is such that everybody can access an office within a reasonable distance. It is better that we put our money not into offices but into advisers, who are there and capable of helping people. We are also providing outreach services in places such as local town halls and libraries to support people if they want advice about getting back into work.
Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab): May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on last year reaching the Lisbon agenda target for older workers in employment? The Government reached that target six years before they should have done. However, one of the main issues is how we will ensure that older workers can be retrained in new technologies. The challenge of globalisation is to use the full potential of those workers for the benefit of the country as a whole.
Margaret Hodge: I thank my hon. Friend for his congratulations. Our record on getting people into work is now the best not only among many of our European colleagues, but among any of the G8 countries. He is right to draw the attention of the House to ensuring that older workers get skills in new technology. So far, if I am honest with him, the training grant available in the new deal 50-plus has not been effective in attracting older workers to undertake further training. We are therefore talking to our colleagues in the Department for Education and Skills to find out whether we can better reach older people through the new deal for skills so that they can take up the skills that will enable them to stay in work, or return to work.
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