What a pleasure it is to present my first report of this nature with you in the Chair, Mr. Taylor—no doubt that will be the cause of further discussion later. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to what I shall call his first confrontation with the Select Committee on Work and Pensions. We shall see how we get on today. No doubt there will be many future occasions on which we can cross swords.

The background to the report started in November, when the then Minister of State in the Department for Work and Pensions, who is now my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and the Regions, and the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, appeared before the Committee for discussion of the annual report. All members of the Committee, through their own constituency work, press reports and submissions made to our incapacity benefit inquiry, were well aware that there were escalating problems in the operation of Jobcentre Plus. As a result, we decided to conduct a short inquiry. Had we known what we were going to find, we would probably have decided to have a longer inquiry, but we had set ourselves a timetable and we had to adhere to it.

The focus of the inquiry was the impact of the efficiency savings on training programmes, personal advisers, the customer management system and contact centres. It is important to say at this stage that what was originally the Department of Employment finished up being merged into the Department for Work and Pensions in 2002. That was the third major change of machinery in Government in seven years, and no doubt it has left some legacies. We need to recognise, as we did in the report, the achievements of Jobcentre Plus offices. Every working day, details of 13,000 vacancies are received; they conduct 36,000 work-focused interviews; they place 4,000 people in work; and they take 16,000 new claims. By any standard, that is reasonably impressive, but we have to recognise the nature of the clientele with which Jobcentre Plus is dealing. Any failure in that is a failure for those in society who are least able to help themselves.

We found that the Department or Jobcentre Plus was trying to carry out four major projects at the same time: rationalisation of the estate; the creation of Jobcentre Plus offices; the integration of a new information technology system; and the very significant head-count reductions. Any one of those would have been a major project on its own; having all four running at the same time stretched management capability to the limit and perhaps even to breaking point. That was not just nationally; in districts and local offices, there was real pressure on management.

As a consequence, many of the services provided through the Department suffered. We should remember that Jobcentre Plus is key to two major departmental objectives: the welfare-to-work programme and the elimination or reduction of child and pensioner poverty. If the system is not working, those laudable social objectives are not being met and vulnerable people suffer as a result.

One consequence of the head-count reduction has been that, frankly, inappropriate staff have been placed in contact centres. Anyone who has had experience of contact centres, whether in the public or private sector, knows that a special talent is required to work in them. We visited one contact centre—I do not want to name it, because I do not want to embarrass anyone—and it was quite obvious from the submissions and the evidence that we received that that process was happening. It was being done almost in a humane way, from management’s point of view: rather than putting someone out of a job, they would be transferred to fill a new vacancy. However, the skills required to work in a contact centre are specific. They do not relate to someone who has spent 20 years being a decision maker, benefit processor or claims assessor. Last summer, because of the process that I have described, there was virtually a total breakdown in the contact centre operation.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for an excellent report. Does he agree that one problem is not only that inappropriate staff are in the contact centre, but that it is impossible to get through to the contact centre to get advice? My constituents and I have certainly found that over and over again. The local citizens advice bureau regularly finds it impossible to get through to St. Austell, which is its contact point, but I can get through, so the only point of contact for all the people in North Swindon who need to get in contact is through me and the dedicated contact centre for MPs. Members of the public find it practically impossible to get through.

I have a deal of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. The situation has improved significantly since the low point of last August, but it would have been difficult for it not to. There is still a major problem with people’s ability to get through to chase up progress once a claim has been established. I think that the achievement level now in terms of calls answered on initial claim is about 94 per cent. That sounds impressive, but there are 16,000 new claims a day, so even 6 per cent. of calls not answered represents about 1,000 claims. That is 1,000 people who are delayed in receiving their entitlement. There had also been major difficulties with the quality of the telephone systems that were installed in the first place, but we understand that, through work with BT, most of those problems have been dealt with.

The second consequence of the efficiency targets being chased was on fraud and error. In many ways, the figure for fraud and error is nebulous. No one can say down to the last pound what it actually is, but we received plenty of evidence that the rate and scale of fraud and error increased last year, and the previous permanent secretary confirmed that the efficiency savings targets had been a contributory factor in that. All this is a consequence of management being stretched and having to deliver on four major targets. What I am describing was not a deliberate action at all; it was almost an inevitable consequence of what was happening.

I am admiring the thoughtful way in which the hon. Gentleman is putting his case. Will he accept this point from my own business experience? When I ran a business, I always worked on the basis of being able to carry out one additional task on top of running the business normally—a building project or whatever. Anything beyond that would have been quite beyond my powers, and I think that something similar has happened in this case.

I have long been an admirer of the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that he could have completed more than one task at a time. We came to the conclusion that each of the four projects was almost certainly worth while on its own, but the phasing of them was wrong; it was out of kilter. A Department that employs 130,000 people should be able to do more than one major project at a time, but the evidence is that it could not do four at a time. If it thought it could, it did not succeed, and the evidence is there for all to see.

The next major consequence—sadly, the figures out yesterday provide further evidence of this—was on the job entry target. Apart from, I think, one month, since February 2005 the numbers on the claimant count have increased every month and the job entry target has not been met. I think that, even at the year end, the figure was about 97 per cent. of target. At one point, the figure was 93 per cent., so something had been clawed back. If the number of people on inactive benefits had also increased, that could be put down to the general economic situation, but, as we all know, the number of people in employment has gone up dramatically, and the number of lone parents and people on incapacity benefit moving in to work has also gone up. So, why is the jobseeker’s allowance sector the only one with adverse figures? The job entry target figures spell that out. I do not think that that was by design, but a result of the constant pressure on management time to achieve other things.

The Committee thought that Jobcentre Plus was doing a good job and that the amalgamation of the Benefits Agency and Employment Service into Jobcentre Plus was the right thing to do. What disappointed the Committee was that the good work of Jobcentre Plus was undermined last summer by the difficulties of managing the change and the staff reduction, and we were keen that that good work should not be overshadowed. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to make sure that the Department gets it right in future, so that the number of people going into work can continue to improve and we do not see the dip that we saw last summer?

I would never disagree with my hon. Friend. She is my guide and mentor. She is absolutely right: in theory, the Employment Service and old Benefits Agency came together in 2002, but, in practice, the welding together of those organisations probably still is not complete. An awful lot of the estate rationalisation was about getting rid of unsuitable offices and creating processing centres. Those are worthwhile objectives—each of the four objectives is worth while—but there are questions regarding the scale on which they were dealt with and how they overlapped with each other.

Finally, because I want to allow plenty of time for colleagues—

Will my hon. Friend give way before he moves on?

How can I resist Stockport?

I was interested in what my hon. Friend said about the difficulty with jobseeker’s allowance. Did the Committee take any evidence on the effect of the efficiency savings related to the outreach work being done by Jobcentre Plus? I am sure that he will agree that advisors do valuable work by going out to new communities. That is an effective way of reaching those families and parents who might not have worked for a considerable period of time.

There is no doubt that Jobcentre Plus does good things like that. I hate to say this, but, in 1984 I established the first contact arrangement between benefit advisors and the old Department of Health and Social Security staff in Bradford, which was developed and replicated throughout the country. The more pressure we put on staff to do core tasks, which must be to deal with new claims effectively and efficiently, the less chance there is for them to do other necessary and worthwhile things, because there is less space, capability and staffing time available.

There is a lot of concern about the many groups in society for whom telephone claiming simply is not possible. We have taken evidence about cases in which the claims of people who are hard of hearing or totally deaf have been almost cruelly rejected because they were unable to complete a telephone conversation to make the claim. That outrageous example is not isolated; there are many others. There are also concerns about people with problems that come under the general heading of mental illness, particularly those with psychosis. The last thing that people who suffer from hearing voices want to do is to get on a telephone and hear a voice, because it triggers problems, but that is not recognised in the system.

At the end of last year, or perhaps early this year, the Department beefed up its advice to contact centres about classes or groups of people for whom it is acceptable to make claims by post or even through home visits. That is welcome, but it has not been happening on the ground. Every Member of Parliament can report cases—not isolated cases, as there are far too many—in which the practice, at ground level, has been that people have done all they could to ensure that claims had to be made by telephone. I can understand that to some extent, because that is the cheapest way for new claims to be processed, but the focus of attention should be the individual, not the unit cost. If there is a problem with unit cost, we should go back to considering budgetary matters. There is a process for dealing with such matters. So, there are real issues about those groups of people who are already severely disadvantaged—mostly by mental health, but also by other disabilities. It just is not right, fair or proper, especially in this day and age, that claimants should be abused in that way.

My next point concerns crisis loans. Boy, did we get some conflicting evidence and words on those. About four years ago, the system on crisis loans changed to one in which claims are mostly made by telephone. We were told that at every office people can make a walk-in claim, but we received lots of evidence from many different organisations that people can walk in, but are then told to go away and use a phone. If they do not have their own phone, they are advised to find a public telephone that they can stand by and wait for someone to ring them. People have waited for up to three hours for someone to call them.

Applying for a crisis loan is not the most ennobling situation in the first place. By definition, if someone is in such a state that they have to apply for a crisis loan, there has probably been a major incident in their life and they are probably penniless, if not destitute. For such a person to be told to wait somewhere for three hours, not knowing what the decision is going to be, and that somebody might ring them in that time is unacceptable. We received lots of evidence about the walk-in facilities at different offices around the country stating that people can get through the door, but that it is still difficult for them to have their claims processed there while they wait.

All of those issues are compounded for people who live in rural areas. In major conurbations such as Stockport, Bradford, Aberdeen and Swindon—I shall not name any more—there is a reasonable chance of people being able to manage that system. However, for someone who lives in Kirby Stephen in Cumbria, the nearest office is Carlisle, which is an 80-mile round trip. Take someone who is hard of hearing who needs to make a crisis claim. Using the telephone is not an option for them, and they will not have the money to travel the 40 miles to Carlisle to get the money that might help them to get back. That might be an extreme example, but there are green and pleasant parts of this country which are 10, 20 or 30 miles from the nearest major population centre.

The Committee recognises and understands the rationale behind the reorganisation of the estate. In terms of pounds, shillings and pence—I am showing my age—there is an argument for it, but there is also a service argument. We need some sort of network in rural areas which uses other agencies, if necessary, by which people can access Jobcentre Plus services, particularly for those people who are already disadvantaged and want to make new claims, for whom the speedy processing of their benefit claims is essential. The same applies to crisis loans.

I apologise for leaving in the middle of my hon. Friend’s speech, but I was in the quorum of an all-party group. We have all had to leave the Chamber for that purpose. I encountered exactly the problem that he is talking about when they shut the Dursley job centre in my constituency, which was done against my better judgment. I discussed it with the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who is now the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. The issue was that the alternatives were that people could travel to Stroud, Yate or Gloucester. Anyone who knows Dursley will know that some people would never normally travel from there to those places. People regularly say how disadvantaged they feel, particularly as they want to get back into work. They feel that they are being punished just because they happen to be in a place that no longer has a Jobcentre Plus office.

I am glad that my hon. Friend raised those points. There is a serious issue in rural areas: people who are no longer in work are doubly disadvantaged because they have not got a job and they have not got a service—

Order. Interventions should be brief.

I do not think I need to add anything to those points.

One of our recommendations was that the Department should report progress against efficiency targets to the Committee, if necessary on a confidential basis. Apparently, they have to be submitted quarterly to the Office of Government Commerce. We were told that there was no way that we could see those figures, because they were extremely confidential. There has been an exchange on this in a sitting of the Public Accounts Committee.

Frankly, one of the prime roles of a Select Committee is measuring the operation and efficiency of the Department it is monitoring. If we do not have access to the basic information, it is a denial of that basic function of the Select Committee. I realise that this is a wider issue than—

My hon. Friend is making the important point that this material about how the efficiency savings are working should be available to the Select Committee. Has he experienced, as I have, that Governments of both hues sometimes do not provide the full information? If they summarise information that they have, there are sometimes omissions or they doctor it in a way that is convenient to them. If they are getting this information anyway, surely all of it should be provided to the Select Committee so that it can see the whole picture of how the efficiency savings are working, and not just a doctored picture.

I am mindful of my hon. Friend’s comments. Government responses are like our own personal election addresses: we highlight the positive and miss out all the other things. We are all guilty of that at one time or another.

To return to the point I was making, I do not think that this is an issue solely for the Department, but I hope that the Minister will pass on the comments. There is a major constitutional issue: if Select Committees are to carry out that function, which Parliament has charged them with—it is in the Standing Orders—we should have access to that information. I can accept that it needs to be in private and in confidence, but if we are to do the job properly, we should have that information.

I should not sit down before complimenting the diligent work on behalf of the rural community done by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), who sadly cannot be present this afternoon as he is attending a family wedding. I know that he would have kicked my shins had I not put his name on the record.

We were deeply concerned at what we found, and the more we took evidence, the deeper the guilt became. There is no doubt that there has been significant improvement in the areas that we raised, but we think there are still challenges and major issues for the Department. In the next two to three years, particularly given what has been foreshadowed in the next comprehensive spending review, these issues will not go away. It is a major challenge for Ministers and for management, and, if I may say so, the poor infantry are still trying to carry on, despite all the odds.

I should like to pick up on some of the comments made by the Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney). I begin by picking up on the point that he made about whether or not information is available.

Let us consider the grip of the leadership and management on the performance of the efficiency savings programme. Significant questions remain to be answered, even after one has read the Government’s response to the Committee’s report. We asked in recommendation 16 why the figures were not available for local performance targets as opposed to a national overall target. We had spotted that there had been some severe and material local variations around the national average.

The Government said :

“Performance scores below national level are not statistically valid”

in the way they collect the information

“for any subsets of the organisation, and significant fluctuations…are expected. For other reasons connected with sample size and timing, the Contact Centre performance scores will not necessarily properly reflect performance at individual Contact Centre level.”

If that was just a problem of the nationally published, publicly available numbers, that might be all right if the Government had at their fingertips detailed information that portrayed the local variations, particularly where there was a significant local problem, with one or two contact centres falling down on the job. However, in recommendation 23 we mentioned that there had been a national failure of the customer management system on 18 January. We were surprised about something just a week later, when both the chief executive and the Minister gave evidence to the Committee. The Government’s response acknowledged:

“Neither the Minister nor the Chief Executive were aware of this incident at the time and therefore were unable to provide such detail to the Committee at the hearing”.

They rightly provided it subsequently in answer to supplementary questions. The fact that they were not aware of the incident raises significant questions about the degree of leadership and management grip on performance in the important area of the contact centres.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if there is to be effective management, accurate reporting of information to them, whether or not it reaches the House, is essential, because there is no chance for senior management unless they have a system that tells them what is happening in their organisation?

I completely agree with that point. Without effective information, any management in any organisation, be it in the public or private sector, are flying blind.

It is deeply concerning if insufficient private detail is available to Ministers. The fact that they were not aware of the situation that we raised in recommendation 23 indicates that perhaps there was insufficient private detail.

To pick up on the point made by the Chairman of the Committee, in recommendation 20 we asked for current performance measurement systems to be improved. We recommended that

“the DWP should commission six-monthly reports on how Jobcentre Plus is proceeding with its efficiency savings programme as a supplement to its quarterly reports to the Office of Government Commerce.”

At that point, as the Chairman of the Committee said, the Government said, “Well, we cannot possibly reveal this, because the principle of confidentiality applies”, and they referred us to their response to recommendation 8. It contains a sentence of such Orwellian doublespeak that it is worth reading out:

“The principle of confidentiality underpinning those reports is essential to ensure absolute openness and honesty in reporting”.

That is apparently written without any hint of irony, and I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I read it. Exactly which bit of national security is threatened by publishing this information? Exactly which part of the defence of the realm will be undermined if the information is made public? We are not even asking for all the detail; we are asking for the information every six months, not every quarter, and the Government can publish a sanitised version if they like. However, the numbers should be available. Is there is an issue of commercial confidentiality? Well, no. Is there is an issue of legal privilege? Again, no.

This is hardly a commitment to open government, and I am afraid that the suspicion may be that, because they are unwilling to publish these numbers, the situation remains poor, or is not improving as fast as it should. The Chairman of the Committee has said that, had we realised exactly how bad the situation was when we began this inquiry, we would have allocated more time to it. The fact that there is a continuing dearth of publicly available information on this leads many of us to fear that the situation is not improving as fast as it should. We are sure that if the Government were improving the situation as fast as they claim, they would trumpet their success promptly and proudly. I look forward to the Minister’s explaining the situation to us and giving us lots of detail on how it has been improved. Perhaps he will commit to producing that information on a regular basis in future.

The second item that I want to raise is the problem of the customer management system, which we mentioned in recommendations 26 and 27. The Chairman of the Committee alluded to severe problems with poor staff morale in the agency. That extends over a long period, and one of the frequently mentioned reasons is problems with the CMS. When we began our inquiry, the system had already been through two different versions: CMS1 and CMS2. CMS3 was being rolled out and was, in a few places, allegedly causing fewer problems, but the first two releases were absolutely dreadful and we heard a huge amount of evidence about the problems that they had created.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the question mark about leadership in Jobcentre Plus and referred to CMS. The explanation in the Government’s response to the report was that the Minister and Chief Executive did not know that there had been a full CMS failure the week before the Committee sitting. Does that not show a lack of leadership that needs to be addressed?

The hon. Gentleman raises a point that I made earlier; I have already covered that. Clearly, it is an issue that needs to be brought forward and a grip must be taken on it, particularly because the Government in their response on that very question said that that was part of a pattern of failures in other parts of the country as well.

To return to my more general point about CMS, the system has cost more than £360 million to develop and install so far. We now discover that it is already due to be replaced. The Committee, logically and reasonably, asked why on earth, if it was due to be replaced and had not yet been completed satisfactorily, all that money was spent on it in the first place and whether anything would remain of the vast amount of taxpayers’ money that was sunk into the project.

In their answers to recommendations 26 and 27, the Government said that new proposals were being developed to deal with proposals in the Green Paper on benefits reforms, and I am sure that the Committee understands that IT changes must reflect changes in policy. However, it would be useful to know how much of the latest version of CMS was expected still to be in use and how much of that £360 million-plus of taxpayers’ money would still be deriving some benefit for the nation one year, three years and five years from now, or whether the entire investment was due to be junked in short order.

In recommendation 27 we ask whether the planned new system is worth while. I presume that it will be more efficient and is being introduced because it will create some benefits. We also asked:

“will the planned new system (if it is implemented successfully) mean that significant additional efficiency savings will be available from the Department in due course?”

That does not mean efficiency savings that are currently planned under the Gershon targets. If the new system is introduced, will there be a still more efficient Department as a result? If so, that would be welcome news because presumably the Government would expect some sort of return on the additional investment of who knows how many millions that the new IT system will require. If efficiency savings are made, all of us and particularly the staff in the Department for Work and Pensions deserve to know whether their jobs will be at risk and what further reorganisations are due to take place. I echo the point made by the Chairman of the Committee that the Department has already taken on four major reorganisations and that this is the fifth. The Department fell flat on its nose doing four and if it is to undertake a fifth major reorganisation we need to have more details about it. How much will it yield, how much will it cost and when will it happen? If savings are not planned, why is the Department planning to spend yet more money on yet another new IT system, given the undistinguished record of the CMS so far?

My final point is about the Government’s employment projects. We asked a series of questions, culminating in our recommendation 55. We asked the Government to publish more details about the success of building on the new deal, general new deal funding and other suggestions, including about ambition and a reduction in the use and scale of the adviser discretion fund. When it made that recommendation, the Committee was worried that the trend in funding of the various initiatives was either sideways or downwards. They are all clearly essential to this part of the Department’s work in terms of bringing people closer to the job market, preparing them for work and getting them into work. They have been much trumpeted as essential ways of intervening and supporting and helping people who are far away from the job market to prepare them for work.

If those initiatives are successful, they should pay for themselves, and we should surely increase the amount of money that is spent on them because the investment would pay off hugely over time. If they are failing, should we not cut them entirely because they have not worked, and should we not should stop wasting money and try something new? The Government have already suggested some variations and new ideas in the Green Paper of a few months ago. A general and gentle sideways to downward trend in funding begs the question whether they are failing and no one wants to admit to it, or whether they are a massive success but are being throttled and prevented from doing what good they could do. We are asking the Government to give us details about which of the two options it is and, when they have given those details, either to fund the programmes a great deal more generously so that more people have a better chance of getting back into work, or to cut them, save the taxpayer some money and redeploy the resources, if necessary, elsewhere. I am afraid that in the Government’s response to the report there is insufficient detail even to begin to answer those questions, and I urge the Minister to address the issue because both we and those who are looking for work need to know.

I congratulate the Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), on a thoughtful presentation of a report that is uninspiringly entitled “The Efficiency Savings Programme in Jobcentre Plus”. As he made clear, it is very much to do with people.

I am looking for some reassurance from the Minister about the protection of outreach work by Jobcentre Plus. That is crucial if Jobcentre Plus is moving from being a face-to-face service to a contact service organisation. That protection is crucial for all the reasons that my hon. Friend outlined and are stated in the report.

One area of interest to me is the Sure Start projects that are rolling out in children’s centres. As my hon. Friend knows and as the Minister is well aware, those projects encourage intervention in families’ lives at an early stage so that children grow up with equal opportunities. The underlying principle of that is support for parents, and part of that support is help for those whom the benefits system has failed over a number of years and who may never have worked to get them into a work situation. Jobcentre Plus, which brought together the benefits system and the Employment Service, was an attempt to tackle that, with the emphasis on advisers and on training staff to provide advice to groups who might find it harder to get into work.

The Sure Start project had a target for the number of families whom it would help into work. I am not totally sure, but I think that that target is being transferred to the new children’s centres. As the Minister knows, a recent report on the effectiveness of the Sure Start projects identified that even in Sure Start areas where there are universal services, the more advantaged tend to take up the services offered. There is still concern that the most vulnerable families are not being reached. Of course, those are exactly the families with parents who have probably never worked, and we are trying to get them into work. If we can get them into the children’s centres, it is important that there is an outreach worker from Jobcentre Plus who can talk to them about the jobs that are available locally. Jobs are available in Stockport. That outreach worker will also be able to talk to them about the in-work benefits that they will receive and to help them over the difficult transition from not working to having the confidence to go into work.

I would be very concerned if any of that outreach work was compromised in any way, not only because individual children’s centres would not meet their targets but because our welfare-to-work programme would be compromised. More important, those families would miss a really good opportunity, given that jobs are available, to make the transition from not working to working .

Does the hon. Lady agree that one advantage of that face-to-face contact is that families can build up a personal relationship with the adviser? Such a relationship is not possible when people speak to a different faceless person on the phone every time they contact the Jobcentre.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That was the underlying principle when we set up Jobcentre Plus with advisers. There was a recognition that something a bit extra was needed. That goes back to the reason why I am seeking a reassurance from the Minister that outreach work will not be compromised by a nationally driven policy or by management decisions taken locally by Jobcentre Plus managers.

Having said that, I should add that a Jobcentre Plus opened in my constituency a couple of months ago, and it will make a huge difference. It is in new premises and replaces a very dilapidated Benefits Agency office, and that sends a very good message to people about the help that is available. That is a good thing, as is the whole Jobcentre Plus initiative. I simply seek a reassurance that outreach work will continue to be valued in any changes and that resources will be made available so that it can continue.

I congratulate the Select Committee Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), on his presentation. It was no mean feat, given that we were in discussions all morning about our latest report, which is on pension reform. It is amazing that he has a clear head and that he gave such an excellent presentation. It is also amazing that he has delivered the report that he has, given that it is the first to be produced by the new Work and Pensions Committee. Bar two old hands, the rest of the Committee’s members were all new to the game of work and pensions and to delivering such a report. It is an excellent report, not only because of the circumstances, but because it really gets to the difficulties. It draws attention to the serious issues not only of Jobcentre Plus, but of the impact on claimants—the vulnerable people for whom Jobcentre Plus cares.

I hope to stay for the whole debate, but I apologise if I cannot do so because I am due for tea at No. 10 with the Prime Minister’s wife. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] I thought that I would get that into the debate. It is one of those occasions when she invites three needy local schoolchildren from various MPs’ constituencies to tea with her, and it is the turn of my constituents’ children. That is a great excuse, and I thought that I would put it on the record.

At my last advice surgery, I had a constituency case that is relevant to the debate. A couple came in, and the man was unemployed. He was actively looking for work and he was keen to get it. His wife did a bit of cleaning work. However, they had a two-year-old and a seven-month-old child, both of whom were very active—and great kids they were, too. The family was made homeless, and the council rehoused them in a totally unfurnished property—there was not a scrap of furniture or a bed for those two children.

The couple went to the Jobcentre Plus to ask for a community care grant, which is not unreasonable, given that they had two vulnerable children. However, they were rejected. I looked at their application, and the amount that they were claiming was not excessive, given that they wanted to buy beds and things and that they were starting from scratch. Perhaps the Jobcentre Plus staff should have said that the family could have only a bed or the basics to start with and that the amount should be reduced. However, they did not do that and they did not give the family advice—they just said no. The couple could have appealed, but an appeal takes months. As a result, they could not get the money when they needed it. The problem is not just that they were rejected, but that the Jobcentre Plus people did not have the time to sit down with them and say, “I don’t think this bid’s going succeed, but why don’t you try this other route to meet your need?”

That is part of the pressure that we have seen and which the report is all about. There is a staff head-count reduction and pressure on staff, and that has an impact on the service to vulnerable individuals, which is wrong.

The hon. Gentleman has just raised the important issue of the work load, particularly on the advisers, who do a very good job under extremely difficult circumstances. Does he share my concern, which is reflected in one of the recommendations that we made in the report, about the need for improved administration support for advisers to free up their time so that they can spend more time giving advice? Does he also share my concern that instead of giving us a response on that issue and telling us how many administrative support staff they are recruiting to overcome the problems, the Government have given us the number of mangers that they are recruiting?

That is a valid point, and I note that one of the Government’s answers says that they are turning 9,000 staff into front-line staff. Of course, we need front-line staff, too, but they need support if they are to operate efficiently. We cannot cut one group and say that we will get a full service. The hon. Lady’s point is well made.

We have had a briefing from the citizens advice bureau, which tells us:

“Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK continue to advise clients who are experiencing difficulties with the administration of their benefit claim, particularly through the new Customer Management System for claiming IS, JSA and IB.”

It then lists some key messages, which I want to put on the record:

“There is a lack of awareness among Jobcentre Plus staff of alternatives for clients for whom the telephone-based claims system is not suitable.

Office closures are impacting upon claimants who are required to collect Crisis Loan payments or attend interviews and are having to travel long distance to their nearest office.

Many clients are experiencing significant delays in the registering or processing of their benefit claim.”

The briefing continues:

“Vulnerable clients are most at risk when things go wrong…Jobcentre Plus had over-emphasised use of the telephone system and had not promoted the alternatives sufficiently…the CABx continue to report problems in getting paper forms or face-to-face interviews for claimants unable to make a claim over the telephone.”

Examples are given of vulnerable people—one with, I think, a mental health problem, another who was an old lady with a disability, and another who was suffering domestic violence—who were not getting the right service, because of the restriction on how their cases could be processed, and, in particular, the telephone system that did not work properly. The briefing states:

“Bureaux continue to report serious delays in the processing of benefit claims.”

That is the view of Citizens Advice, which works in the field with the most vulnerable people.

There has been a reduction in staff. The Government made it a policy to reduce the head count at Jobcentre Plus. I know that that is meant to go hand in hand with efficiency—it is called efficiency savings. The head count in March 2004 was 82,067; in March 2006 it was down to 71,222—a big cut; and at the milestone of 31 March 2007 it will be down to 68,550. We then had figures for office closures in a recent answer from the Minister, who attached a letter from Lesley Strathie, the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, stating that

“206 offices have closed since 1st April 2005. A further 113 offices are scheduled to close in 2006/07 and 8 during 2007/08. In addition there are a number which are scheduled to close but for which final closure dates are subject to further planning and stakeholder consultation.”—[Official Report, 13 June 2006; Vol. 447, c. 1141W.]

Others have also been identified for closure. What is meant to go with that reduction is a top-of-the-range computer system that is up and running. However, we have learned from Citizens Advice that there are problems with that. I could have quoted a briefing from the Public and Commercial Services Union, the union that represents the workers in question, to the effect that that has not happened properly. Indeed, the Select Committee took evidence that made that very point, and expressed concern that the computer system is not filling the staff gap. The consequence is an effect on the service.

Recommendation 21 in the Select Committee report refers to the “catastrophic failure” of the service provided by Jobcentre Plus contact centres in 2005. Let us think about what those words really mean for people. That year has gone, but we cannot have catastrophic failure, or anything approaching that, for many vulnerable people this year, this summer or this autumn. I want the Minister’s response to that point. Will what is being done work? If we have problems, what remedial measures will he take so that vulnerable people do not suffer severely as a result?

Recommendations 6 and 7 in the report refer to reductions in services and programmes, and recommendation 17 mentions

“ ‘a detrimental impact’ on accuracy levels”—

so they are getting the figures wrong for people too. That is extremely serious. My experience as a constituency MP is that often when such things happen the individuals concerned, many of whom are on low incomes, do not get their entitlement to start with. It may be only a small amount of money that they are bilked of, but for them it is crucial in getting through the day. Often, if things go the other way and they are paid too much, they can be accused of fraud and of somehow having cheated. Beyond that, they are told, “Well, you have been overpaid. We will have to take all this money back off you”—money that they have spent on their daily lives. That presents them with huge bills and huge problems. The matter of accuracy is a serious one, and there is no doubt about something to which the Committee drew attention—accuracy levels dipped with the staffing head count reduction and the failure of other measures that were meant to compensate for that, including the computer system in particular.

The report made some other good points to which I want to draw attention. Often some staff are over-reliant on a script. If someone puts in a claim and says, “These are my needs,” they are read a script. I am not against a script. It sets out entitlements and helps the member of staff to get the point over, but things go wrong with a script. People’s needs do not very neatly fit in with the answers on the script. They are slightly different, and there is a need for flexibility about that. Errors creep in, firstly as a function of employee training that is not very good, or insufficient to build up their skills and show them what the system is about and what is available—even if that is off the script. Secondly, errors are a function of the low pay. Many Jobcentre Plus employees who have the script to work from are very low paid. Clearly training needs to be improved, but the best interpretation of what is available will not be provided by people working from that low base. Scripts are needed, and there is a need to update them, too, but there is also a need for competent people to operate them, and for much better training.

Personal advisers are another issue, akin to that of scripts. They are crucial for what the Government plan in their welfare reform programme. They are crucial if we are to get people off incapacity benefit into work, and make the best opportunities for them. My understanding—the Committee dealt with this in recommendations 45 and 46—was that about a third of the advisers were deemed almost to be on special measures. They were about to get the push or be moved somewhere else in the system, because they were not deemed good enough. That was because they had a fixed target for getting people into work. The trouble is that often they deal with people who have the most serious obstacles to working. I accept, again, that it is necessary to measure how well people are working as personal advisers—very competent people are needed—but the measurements must take into account the clientele that they work with, and the economic circumstances in which they operate. There might not be any jobs to get people into in a particular area. Personal advisers need to be given a bit of a fairer deal.

I am not defending anyone who is not succeeding. I agree that it is a management job to move them on, or do something with them, but it is wrong that so high a proportion of the personal advisers are not succeeding. It sets off a serious alarm bell, if we are to rely even more on personal advisers to deliver the incapacity benefit reforms. The Minister needs to deal with that, too.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) referred to the new deal, to building on the new deal and, I think, to the ambition programme. The Government have not come forward with the next way to build on the new deal. I think that although the new deal, particularly in London, has not ground to a halt—it is still doing a good job—it has slowed down. When it was introduced in the late 1990s it had a terrific impact. It found people jobs, got them trained, and put them on the environmental taskforce. It was one of the Government’s success stories, but it has slowed down. It needed to be built on. That is what is proposed—building on the new deal. It is a shame that the Government have not yet thought through what they want to do. It is vital that young people are given work and training programmes, but they must go up a step; what is needed is a step change.

The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform should think seriously about building on the new deal. That is not being done because of the efficiency savings programme, which is reducing staff and offices and which cannot seem to make the computer system work well. There are too many problems here and now to get on with the job and go forward to the next phase in youth employment and training, but it must be done sooner or later and I urge the Government to do it.

My penultimate point is that when the Select Committee produced the report, about 90,400 people had been added to the claimant count. The Select Committee thought that that figure was added, in the main, because of the changes; everything was not operating as efficiently as it had been and as a result the claimant count rose. That is bad for every one of those 90,400 people.

Publicity about the fact that the claimant count is about to go through the million barrier gives the Opposition parties a tool with which to attack the Government. The figure could be 90,400 less than that if the changes had not had such an impact on the claimant count figures. That may be a political point, but it is not a good thing for the individuals involved. It comes down to the gap between reducing the head count and the number of people who can help people into work and getting the other systems up and running efficiently. The other groups that help people to find work, which have contracts with Jobcentre Plus, could do more in that regard.

My final point is on the briefing from the Public and Commercial Services Union, which says that there should be a commitment at least to retain a consistent level of service while the changes and the efficiency savings proposed by Gershon, especially the head-count reduction, are being implemented. There has not been a consistent level of service over that period and that worries me. The PCS states that

“we are alarmed that the Government are promising a brighter, better technologically delivered future for Jobcentre Plus and the delivery of the reformed welfare state at the same time as there are significant reductions in staffing and delivery outlets.

The continuing belief that these reductions can happen before the new IT delivery mechanisms are robust and in place is an unacceptable risk, both for service users and those remaining in service delivery who will have to pick up the pieces of any failures.”

The PCS is concerned about the scale and pace of the reductions and the office closures. The Government need to consider the matter extremely carefully; they should not just roll on the set of figures that they laid out several years ago without considering the consequences of the impact on the service, especially in respect of vulnerable people. The PCS and the Select Committee say that there may be a good case for revisiting the scale and the pace of the proposals.

I welcome the opportunity to debate this important report. I compliment the Select Committee on the quality, depth and detail of the report, which was exemplified in the initial remarks of the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney). I compliment him on the way in which he opened the debate.

The Government’s response does not match the quality of the report. Several issues have been raised in the debate and I will mention a few more, but my fundamental response to the report is that the Government took an overly Panglossian view of the mistakes that occurred in 2005. The introduction to the Government’s response stated:

“The Government accepts that not everything has gone perfectly in Jobcentre Plus over the last year”.

Not everything going perfectly is something of an understatement compared with some of the more robust, and I would say appropriate, language used by the Select Committee.

The nature of the Government’s response gives me cause for concern, not least for some of the reasons mentioned by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen). There are a number of other major changes coming down the track in the Department for Work and Pensions; additional efficiency savings are being sought by the Treasury, and a major programme of welfare reform and additional IT changes are proposed.

I hope that in his response the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform will acknowledge that it is incumbent on the Government to take full responsibility for the mistakes that occurred and to ensure that they fully learn the lessons from those mistakes when introducing future changes in the Department.

In its report, the Select Committee described the circumstances of the efficiency savings and the consequences of introducing the customer management system and so forth as “a catastrophic failure”. I contrast that with not everything having gone perfectly. The Select Committee’s phrase is appropriate. The Government state that lessons have been learned for future plans following problems that occurred in the contact centre. First, as the Chairman of the Select Committee made clear, there have been improvements in performance since the period that was the focus of the report. However, it is too early for claims to be made that the situation has been fixed. The briefing provided by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux probably reflects the constituency experience of all hon. Members present: there are continuing problems with delays—for example in benefit processing times—in ensuring that those people who cannot use a phone system, particularly because of their disability, can engage in another form of processing.

There are examples in my constituency of people wishing to go to Jobcentre Plus to make claims and being turned away and told that they must use the phone. There are still too many examples of such unacceptable conduct for the Government to be able to say that everything has been put right.

Secondly, if and when the catastrophic service performance is resolved, there is little in the Government’s response to reassure us that the problems that caused the crisis have been addressed. There is still a state of denial within the Department about the problems that occurred in 2005.

It is disappointing that the Government are not taking the matter as seriously as they should, especially the points made in recommendations 21 and 22 of the report. We need more clarity about what lessons have been learned; in particular, do they accept the Select Committee’s view that too much was done too quickly? Was it good judgment to introduce a new IT system—the customer management system—at the same time as staff cuts and redeployment? Was it efficient to introduce an IT system that could soon be replaced again when the IT component of the benefit processing replacement/working age transformation and change programme—I hope I have got the title right; I cannot use the acronym—is implemented? Can we have any confidence in the Department and Jobcentre Plus to roll out pathways to work, and the new employment and support allowance, no doubt with a new computer system to manage that benefit, without a further breakdown in the quality of service provision of the sort that the Committee rightly outlined in its report?

The Committee Chairman rightly referred to the impact of the closure of local service outlets. I have experienced it in my constituency, where the Jobcentre Plus in Nairn, 15 miles east of Inverness, was closed. All the services in my constituency are provided through Inverness, so that someone who lived in Dalwhinnie, for example, would have to make a 115-mile round trip to the Jobcentre Plus.

My constituents have raised a number of issues, but I shall not dwell on them as I have been in correspondence with the Minister and his predecessor about them. However, there are ongoing issues about one important point. Within the Department, there is a travel-to-interview scheme to ensure that when people’s costs rise above a certain amount when they travel to job interviews or interviews at the new Jobcentre Plus to which they are supposed to go, which in my constituency is Inverness, they can have their costs reimbursed. A range of different interpretations of the scheme have been given to claimants in Nairn. Clarity is important when a local outlet is closed, so that claimants know their entitlements, where they are expected to go and how they can access those services. I am concerned that it has not been properly dealt with in Nairn.

Several hon. Members have made points about staffing and training, and recommendation 3 in the report deals with that. It is clear from the report that in the Committee’s view, staff are redeployed in some cases without adequate training for their new roles. The Government’s response was soft. They said:

“It is fully accepted that staff should receive the training necessary to execute their duties effectively”.

“Should” is not will. There are no guarantees, and the reply does not set out the headlines of the redeployment strategy up to 2008, as the Committee specifically requested. Will the Minister do so in his response?

The Government make it clear that Jobcentre Plus staff will get an average of six days training per year. That is an average. It means undoubtedly that some staff with high training needs may get little or even no training in a particular year. Back office staff are being redeployed in customer-facing roles, for example as personal advisers. The Welfare Reform Bill and the associated roll out of pathways to work will require an increase in personal advisers employed in Jobcentre Plus. However, personal advisers for sick and disabled people will need to be well trained and skilled for what is a specialist role, as other Members have said. Will the Minister set out clearly the minimum provision of training for those who are redeployed in that role?

Future staff reduction is the subject of recommendation 7, and we are told that Jobcentre Plus staff numbers have already been reduced by 10,000, that there will be a further reduction of 4,000 and that the reductions will take place only once detailed work force plans have been completed. I am sure that there were detailed work force plans for the reduction of the other 10,000 jobs, but it is clear from the report that not enough attention was paid to the impact on services as the reductions were made. Will there be greater flexibility in the pace of future reductions to ensure that the service to claimants is maintained during the transformation? It is clear from the report and our constituency experiences that services to claimants were not maintained during the initial transformation.

In recommendation 47, the Committee concludes that the procurement process for voluntary and private sector delivery of services is “deeply flawed”. The Government admit that last year, they

“fell short of what providers had a right to expect.”

The taskforce and provision forum are welcome, provided the Government genuinely listen and respond to the points that they make.

Although the Government state that most contracts are for two or three years, many are still for one year only. In any case, two or three years may be too short a period. I recently spoke at an event sponsored by the organisation Tomorrow’s People, which it was running as part of its getting London working programme. It had secured funding for six years through the London Development Agency and the single regeneration budget. During that time, it achieved, pound for pound, double the job outcomes of any other SRB-funded programme nationally.

What assessment have the Government made of the system introduced in Australia, where since 1998 the Jobcentre Plus roles of providing services at the same time as regulating services and paying benefits have been entirely separated? The publicly funded job brokerage service was replaced by Job Network, a national network of private, voluntary and public organisations, leaving the Australian Government’s equivalent of Jobcentre Plus as purchaser and regulator of services, and manager of benefit claims, rather than the direct provider.

One cannot necessarily read across, but that is why I am interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government have studied that system either in response to the Committee’s report or as part of wider welfare reform. Under Australia’s new structure, the cost per employment outcome has roughly halved and job outcomes have significantly improved. They are efficiency savings way beyond those that the Government achieve with Jobcentre Plus.

As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, yesterday we heard that unemployment continues to rise. I shall not comment on what he said about the political consequences of it, but 1.65 million people were classed as unemployed in the three months to May, an increase of 90,000 on the previous quarter.

The chief executive of Jobcentre Plus has made it clear that rising work load could put the efficiency savings programme at risk. She said that

“the more people we have claiming, the more there is to do...I need to look first and foremost to see if I can move resources... If that becomes unmanageable for me I have to have a conversation that says, ‘Do we maintain this regime? Do we change it? How do we do it?’, but that would be for ministers to decide.”

What is the Department doing in the context of the report to monitor the impact of the growing work load from rising unemployment? The chief executive made it clear to the Committee that certain decisions would need to be taken because of the rising work load. Has the Minister made any of those decisions yet?

The Committee also raised some important points about fraud and error in the benefit system. It was particularly concerned that the changes were having a detrimental effect on accuracy levels. Error costs the Department more than fraud, and last year the Select Committee on Public Accounts said that

“losses due to errors…remain too high.”

It estimated the annual cost of staff and customer error to be £1.5 billion, and its report warned that the plans to cut 30,000 DWP staff, of which 14,000 have been cut already,

“may affect morale and lead to increased turnover of staff whose skills are most needed to combat fraud and error.”

The Department’s permanent secretary, Sir Richard Mottram, told the Public Accounts Committee last year:

“If you want an honest discussion, that is the reality: official error has gone up because of organisational churn.”

It is unacceptable that an efficiency savings programme should lead to the growth we now see in official error. That “organisational churn” should not be considered inevitable when staff reductions and efficiency savings are made. What is the Department doing to get on top of rising error in the benefits system?

In the Government’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee, they mentioned a three-phase plan for improving income support accuracy. We require a clearer explanation of the plans, how they are delivered and how the variation between the delivery centres in the Government response will be addressed. We need more detail. Will the process-driven improvement mentioned in their response make any difference if error is down to low staff morale, insufficient training and poor IT procurement and transition? If those are the causes of the error, what are the Government doing to address those more fundamental points?

An interesting point is made in the Government’s response to recommendation 19, which called for output measures to be adjusted to reflect qualitative factors. The Government’s response stated:

“Analysis has shown that although the point scores were designed mainly to incentivise staff rather than as measures of social and economic value, they broadly reflect the net fiscal benefit to the Exchequer of moving a customer off welfare and into employment.”

The net benefit to the Exchequer is interesting information. Will the use of such measures be developed further? Will the information provided on net benefits to the Exchequer be made publicly available? Does it suggest the economic net benefit, too? Such information will, I believe, be important to monitoring the progress of welfare reform in the future, so again there is a lesson that can be drawn from that experience to shed a positive light on future proposals. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the Chamber that such analysis has been further developed and will be made publicly available.

Since the period reflected in the Committee’s report and since its publication, the Chancellor has made it clear that a further 5 per cent. efficiency savings will be sought from the Department for Work and Pensions. There will be yet further pressure on staffing and budgets. It is important that the Minister reflects on what lessons the Department draws from the episodes outlined in the report and how it will handle those future additional reductions.

That is particularly important when we look forward to welfare reform, when the Government are planning to spend an initial £360 million on rolling out the pathways to work scheme. Most organisations believe, and I share their view, that to be an inadequate level of funding for rolling the programme out comprehensively across the country. Additional efficiency savings are being sought, unemployment is rising, which is increasing costs, and the Department has been told that the money to be released into the pathways to work programme has to come from other savings in existing budgets, so it is clear that within the Department for Work and Pensions there is a great deal of financial pressure and pressure to make more efficiency savings. I am concerned that even the inadequate amount of money that has been made available to allow the pathways to work programme to be rolled out will be eroded and undermined yet further by the additional changes that will have to be made in response to the targets that have now been set by the Treasury.

There is a lot more for the Government to do to show that they are responding effectively to the concerns outlined in the Committee’s excellent report, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

First, Mr. Taylor, may I say how pleasant it is to appear yet again under your chairmanship, and to do so on the occasion of an excellent Select Committee Report, which was well introduced by the hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney)?

The debate has been thoroughly constructive and all the speakers have added value, from my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), through the hon. Members for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), and on to the hon. Gentleman who has the magnificent title of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander)—I think, for the first time in recorded history, I got that right. That is only a moment of levity in a serious subject. Everybody has had serious points to make and I am sure that the Minister will wish to respond appropriately.

With the exception perhaps of the defence of the realm, the prime duty of Government is to administer their business properly. I have a feeling—I will not dilate on it long this afternoon—that when the Government are finally laid to rest that will reflect a high degree of public resentment and even hatred at all the failures that have built up on their watch. There is no single, exciting event. There is no winter of discontent at the moment, no photo opportunity to draw people’s attention to, but the reality of administrative failure is beginning to hit MPs in their postbags, and is no less real for being dispersed rather than concentrated.

It is all the more distressing, as certain members of the Committee have already acknowledged, when that failure impacts most heavily on those who are in some difficulty already, such as those who are out of work and looking for another job. Perhaps some of them are a bit less fluent, able, pushy or inclined to make a fuss than some of us might be in such circumstances, but the way that jobseekers of all kinds were let down in the summer of last year by what the Select Committee described as a “catastrophic failure”, to return to that phrase, was indefensible. I do not think that the Minister or his officials would seek to justify it.

One of the less appealing features of the present Government, in my view, is that Ministers invariably tend to blame someone else for failures within their Departments. It is perfectly true that Jobcentre Plus is an agency, and that Ministers should not be tearing it up by the roots and seeking to manage it themselves. However, responsibility for its conduct and the outcomes of its work must remain with Ministers and cannot be shuffled off on to officials who are doing their best in difficult circumstances.

The figures and the scale of the problem are not really in dispute, and they have already been touched on this afternoon. They were set out in a letter from the chief executive of Jobcentre Plus to my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) earlier this week. She points out that in 2005-06, performance by Jobcentre Plus contact centres dipped to 62.4 per cent. against a target of 81.2 per cent. That was, she concedes, a result of the difficulties experienced in responding to customer calls during the summer months of 2005.

Meanwhile, almost on the same day, I received a helpful response from the chief executive, in which she gives details of action being taken to stabilise the performance of Jobcentre Plus including, interestingly—we have heard this phrase before—the launch of a national action plan on 30 January. I need add only that stabilisation is a concept drawn from the agency’s own words in its planning document. It is its word, not mine, and yet stabilisation is required only when something is manifestly out of control and needs stabilising.

My next point has already been referred to, but I make no apology for returning to it. I have personally awarded the Nobel prize for understatement and the Sir Humphrey prize for economy of language to the Government’s acceptance in their response to the Select Committee report that

“not everything has gone perfectly in Jobcentre Plus over the last year and that there were, and remain, some areas of difficulty.”

I can assure the Minister, having said that, that I do not intend to go along taking cheap shots this afternoon. We need to look forward as well as back and to use the example and the lessons of what took place better to inform administration for the future.

I agree with the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made, but is it not also important that despite the fact that this is in the past and the principal objective is to learn lessons from it, Ministers should also accept responsibility for the failures that are recorded in the report?

I was perhaps rather generously assuming that the Minister would wish to make some statement with a word of contrition, as things have not been very good. It is all very well for us to say that as the political class, but it has been rotten for our constituents and the people who have been mixed up. I know perfectly well that many officials in the Department will be exposed to such situations day by day and are not happy about it either.

It is important that we both acknowledge the past and look forward to what should be done in the future. The two are interrelated, because we need to know better what took place and what went wrong in order to ensure that it does not recur. The careful work done by the Select Committee and the detailed responses that I have received in response to various parliamentary questions that I have tabled on Jobcentre Plus are some indication that the task is not impossible and may indeed be under consideration. I think that Jobcentre Plus would join me in admitting that there are still difficulties along the path.

As I have suggested, and as any former Minister needs to acknowledge, public administration is a difficult task. It is actually the most difficult task in public affairs. Politics is easy, but running a Department is not. Sometimes, it is a closed book even for Ministers. I have shown that I do not think that Ministers need to get their hands on every last detail and nor would they be thanked by officials and others if they did, but they need to have some understanding. I do think, though, that even within the time constraints our exchanges and the Committee’s inquiry have been useful in beginning to develop an informed view.

I endorse the Select Committee’s view that the historic situation arose from a mixture of problems rather than one single problem—for instance, IT problems, staffing issues and poor change management programmes. I might add that, in my view, the pressures have been further aggravated by the Gershon review, under which head-count reductions in Jobcentre Plus alone will amount to 15,000 full-time equivalents over a four-year period. That represents half of the Department’s commitment to reducing the head count. Interestingly—I shall not ask the Minister to expand on the point—that comes at a time when, because of its undoubted problems, some staff are being moved in to increase the complement in the Child Support Agency; the overall picture will therefore be more difficult to fulfil without further reductions in Jobcentre Plus or elsewhere.

We on the Opposition Benches do not challenge the principle of Gershon. Indeed, I might go further, and say that the broad thrust of the Government’s modernising is right. However, it is important that it should be conducted within certain parameters, and I list three.

First, it requires careful change management to effect it successfully and without a reduction in quality, which is a commitment of Gershon and of the Government. They say that the changes can be made without reducing the quality of service to users.

Secondly, I remind the House of the explicit commitment to retain the service level; that should therefore be implicit in everything that is put in place.

Thirdly, as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, further disturbing pressures are building up as a result of the Chancellor’s statement earlier today about further reductions. Again, it is not that we are against them. I take the spirit of my question to the Chancellor when he announced round one; I asked how much consultation had taken place and whether it was possible to secure the objectives without the loss of service. Those are real questions, and Ministers will have to worry themselves through to the answers.

It would be helpful in his response—the Minister will have quite a bit of time—if the Minister could reflect on five issues that arise from the report and one or two other concerns. First—I think that no one has touched on this, but it is mentioned in the report—there is the roll-out of the Jobcentre Plus process. I know that Ministers are pleased with the change to job centres. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to open one in my constituency. Things are definitely better than under the old arrangements. I do not argue about that. The changes are supposed to be substantially completed by July—later this month. Will the Minister confirm that we have got there at last? It has been an expensive process, and although we are not debating it today, it would be useful to know that it is completed.

Secondly, I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare was going to mention it, and the Minister owes us an explanation, but I note that the Select Committee recommended that a report should made to it on financial performance as against budget. That is not quite the same as individual performance targets by region or otherwise, of which my hon. Friend spoke. We were promised that information before the summer recess. We do not have long, and it would be useful if the Minister could give us an indication of the time scale, or even report financial progress as against the budget for Jobcentre Plus. At this point, I reinforce my hon. Friend’s plea for better management information, whether or not it is made public to us. Until Jobcentre Plus knows accurately what it is doing, it will not be able to respond to the challenges that it faces.

Thirdly, and partly in answer to questions already asked—Members can have a little fun in asking questions—the Minister’s Department has set up an error task force. We need to know where that is going and whether it will deal with the problem. Just having a press release and saying that one has set up a task force will not undo the difficulties that have arisen because of unmanageable pressures, but I hope that it will make a real contribution.

Fourthly, I am worried about the disappearance of the building on the new Deal programme. I agree with what has been said. I recently tabled a question on what had happened and what lessons had been learned from the pilot schemes. The answer can only be described as stasis. Nothing appears to have happened. Perhaps the budgetary pressures are insurmountable, but Ministers must explain what has happened.

Finally, going back to the service delivery and last year’s experiences, can the Minister report to the House what progress has been made in stabilising the benefit centres? Of 22 centres, seven were not fully back on the automatic customer management system. Has that number reduced? In the present circumstances, ensuring that benefit centres are fully functional is a necessary condition for short-term improvement. In the longer-term, Ministers and the agency management need to concentrate on the major reforms that they are undertaking. Some, like the single operating plan referred to in the Committee report, could be generic, and they are easily woven into other sorts of changes.

I emphasise that it is important to concentrate on the main task and to avoid additional initiatives—eye-catching or otherwise—like the plague until they are sorted. I am afraid that history, and not only in this Department, is littered with ideas like the ambition programme—ideas that peter out, that make no long-term contribution and that are not pursued. That is not an argument for everything to be done at the same time, it is an argument for concentrating on the essentials and to ensure that initiatives do not proliferate.

Underlying this, appropriately, are issues of staff training and morale. I recognise the difficulties referred to by the TUC representative of the Department simultaneously making changes and cutting the head count. It is clear, indeed Ministers have replied fairly frankly about it, that there are outstanding industrial relations issues; continuing reports, not only from the unions, show that morale is low.

In a sense, all those problems are interlocking. A Department and an agency that have not got on top of the means of change, that in consequence are prone to the risk of further service failures, that along the way have neither trained nor motivated a significant or satisfactory number of staff to the required level remain vulnerable, just as the client route remains vulnerable. That is a continuing source of worry.

I do not want to sound relentlessly negative. Much good thinking is going on, with some good initiatives and ideas. In a sense, and without removing ministerial responsibility, we need to allow the Minister and the agency a bit of space to get themselves sorted out. But they must be sorted.

I have three remaining points to make in conclusion. First, despite my somewhat limited knowledge of Jobcentre Plus operations, the targets on which they report to management, and ultimately to Ministers, have some potential for being massaged locally. I am told that it is not too difficult to win performance points by recording individual job seekers not just as unemployed but as being on income support, or as having disabilities—or even to massage their residence by not entering the postcode correctly. If such practices are widespread and are not picked up by internal validation through a departmental audit, it will not only distort staff remuneration reporting but it may impact on the overall reporting of job centre figures and achievements. Indeed, it may simply distort the whole pattern being presented to Ministers.

That may have been true of job entry analysis, but even moving to job outcomes does not automatically nullify the point. Such issues are sensitive, and Ministers do not always get inside them easily because of their degree of distinction from the level of operation. However, I have concerns about these issues. Will the Minister consider some external independent validation of the extent to which such practices have become widespread? Perhaps a sample analysis could be undertaken.

I touch only briefly on the political point: some of the problems may have arisen as a result of the Government’s overblown target culture. I am much more concerned that there should be propriety and that Ministers should be told what is actually happening, rather than what people think they would like to hear.

I share the Select Committee’s concern about the disruption of the agency’s contracts and relationship with private sector, including voluntary sector, providers. I hope that every effort will be made in that area and other areas of departmental business, to restore and make more responsive good commercial and proper business relations. As is clear from the pathways to work exercise, about which I spoke briefly only this afternoon, the Government are belatedly coming to terms with the need for an active private or voluntary sector contribution, and that is an opportunity that the Minister may wish to develop. However, he will have to do that on the basis of a good commercial and business model.

I am not the first to make a point about the increase in claimant count. I draw the Chamber’s attention to paragraph 86 of the report; the Committee’s conclusion was simply:

“If the increase in the claimant count continues it will undermine the efficiency savings programme.”

That fear is not confined merely to jobseekers, but applies more widely to the Department’s situation and finances.

I should add another point, which has been eloquently put in this debate, about service to claimants or users. Such people are human beings; the Department should not show only a technical face in its activities, but a human one. If people have disabilities, cannot hear on the telephone, cannot get to the jobcentre or whatever, somebody has to sort those issues out, no matter how much technology there is. Acting in such cases is a proper use of public resources; if necessary, resources will have to be rebalanced. We cannot get away from providing a service to members of the general public.

In thanking the staff and others, I am reminded that Jobcentre Plus and its staff lie on the front line of meeting the needs of some very vulnerable people. Those who work for the agency need the tools and the leadership to ensure that they can do their jobs properly.

It is good to appear before you, Mr. Taylor; I am more comfortable when you chair proceedings than when you question me. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), who opened the debate in a way that characterises his role and the tone that he uses in his chairmanship of the Select Committee. He continues to earn great credit across the House for the exceptionally diligent manner in which he performs that role.

I say again that I look forward to visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency on Monday next week to see how some of the issues and programme initiatives about which we have been speaking and which are a success in my constituency, have been working in Bradford. Despite some of the concerns raised, everybody substantially acknowledges the very high quality of service delivery and support for the majority of Jobcentre Plus customers.

I have observations to make about the tone in which the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) started his comments, but I shall start where he left off. We all know, through personal or family experience, or our experience as Members of Parliament—although that is a little detached—how Jobcentre Plus has to work, and its predecessor agencies had to, to support the most vulnerable in our society and those who, often through no fault of their own, find themselves in a very difficult position.

A period of unemployment is unsettling in so many different ways—reduced personal confidence and self-esteem, impact on family, uncertainty about the future, material uncertainty, family breakdown, child poverty and many others. We acknowledge that across the House. Staff in the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus know that as much, if not more, than we parliamentarians. I should like to put that on record; it should be reflected in how we conduct our debate and conversation, and how in the vast majority of cases we, as an organisation, support such folk in an effective way. However, on occasions, yes, people are let down. It is important to reflect on that when it happens and learn from it. That should be the tone of my comments today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North paid tribute to Jobcentre Plus as an organisation and the staff individually and collectively. I have a sense that Jobcentre Plus, and the way in which it has been brought together from its predecessor organisations, is now genuinely remarkable. Since its creation in 2002, Jobcentre Plus has helped more than 850,000 people into work, including 100,000 lone parents. It has supported 60,000 people with health conditions or disabilities to get the chance to get back into the workplace. Despite recent trends in the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count, about which I shall speak later, that support has contributed significantly to the observation, made by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, that the UK has a combination of the best employment level and the healthiest position in respect of economic inactivity of any of the G7 countries.

I shall fracture the consensus for a moment, because the hon. Member for Daventry was uncharacteristically harsh in his political observations about the impact of parts of the Select Committee report and the wider political ramifications. He overstated his case. I say that having known him for a number of years. I remember visiting him when he was a Minister and I was president of the National Union of Students. I had great affection for the way in which he personally carried out that job. Of course, I disagreed with some of his policies, but the way in which he carried himself personally earned him great credit. During my conversations with him when he was Minister with responsibility for higher education, I always had the sense that I was playing the ball rather than the man—I was arguing with the policy, not the individual. So I thought his comments today uncharacteristically harsh.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s encomium. Given that we are talking about jobseekers, it would be improper to follow him along that route, other than to say that we had an entirely pleasant professional relationship, which I hope will continue.

However, I say to the Minister in all seriousness that there is a problem of dissatisfaction and disaffection, and that what is involved is slightly more than just a mistake by Ministers. Something is upsetting people and it goes wider than his Department. It will not be solved today, but I should like him to take it seriously.

We do take such issues seriously, and I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s point. However, the situation now is a world away from the time when it was a matter of explicit Government policy to allow child poverty to become the highest in the European Union and incapacity benefit levels to treble, and when vast, grotesque unemployment rates were tolerated.

Order. May I bring the Minister back to the topic of the debate, which is the Select Committee report on the efficiency savings programme?

Of course, Mr. Taylor, but the point that I was making in response to the hon. Gentleman was that there is a world of difference between the frustrations about administrative and organisational difficulties that were identified in the report, and the public policy during some of the 1990s.

Our innovative labour market policies and the work of Jobcentre Plus have been examined by more than 750,000 official international visitors to the UK who wanted to learn from our effective, modern approach to employment support. It is in no small part because of innovations in Jobcentre Plus that other nations seek to learn from our experience. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) asked about the Australian model and experience. We are always happy to learn from international experience in the same way as others are keen to learn from us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North spoke about significant improvements, but said that there were still challenges ahead. There are many of them. Last month, we celebrated the opening of our 800th new-style Jobcentre Plus office. Of course success is not simply about the policies that we put in practice and the ground-breaking design of our offices but about our people and the quality of the support that they give to our customers in towns, cities and villages around the country. The centres support people who often are vulnerable and who have complex needs but also aspirations. We must play our part in helping to fulfil those aspirations.

I wholeheartedly support the Committee’s tribute to the staff. Since joining the Department a couple of months ago, I have been struck by their dedication and expertise in serving claimants and jobseekers and in working with our other principal customers, the employers. I am pleased that the Committee recognised the staff’s professionalism.

The vast majority of Jobcentre Plus customers receive a good service. For 2005-06, customer service satisfaction levels were above our targets, at 85 per cent. for customers and 87 per cent. for employers, but we must go further. I believe in the need to embed continued public service reform and responsiveness outside our strict target regime, in the need for good-quality, scientifically researched customer services and in the need increasingly to drive personalisation and improvement in public service provision. Jobcentre Plus has those challenges ahead.

A challenge was included in an announcement last Tuesday to Parliament about our Welfare Reform Bill, when I announced the national extension of our pathways to work programme. Jobcentre Plus has a vital role to play in the success of our innovative welfare reform strategy. The pathways strategy, which is internationally renowned, is a holistic approach to tackling health-related, personal and external barriers that people face in returning to work. It is already changing many thousands of lives for the better. The tailored, personalised support offered by pathways empowers individuals. It is an essential change of emphasis in respect of our incapacity benefit customers, and we wish to see the approach replicated nationwide and facilitated by the private and voluntary sectors. It will enable us substantially to capture some of the capacity, expertise and talents that exist in those sectors.

In that context, we aspire to an 80 per cent. employment rate, which would mean that 1 million people were helped off incapacity benefit, and 300,000 lone parents and 1 million older workers were helped back into work. That will mean reaching out to those whom the tide of opportunity has so far not reached, and we will have to listen to our customers to shape our services to achieve that ambition.

I shall respond to some of the comments made in the report and observations made in this debate. I apologise if I am not able to respond to every point, but if hon. Members feel that I have not fairly responded to their concerns, I am happy either to meet with them or to correspond with them on specific points.

Hon. Members rightly expect Jobcentre Plus, like all public services, to be challenged to deliver its services more efficiently and effectively. The hon. Member for Daventry expressed his continuing support in principle for the challenges of the Gershon agenda. I am pleased that Jobcentre Plus has met the cost and staffing reduction targets that we set for it last year, but I fully understand the Committee’s concerns that our efficiency drive may have impacted on customer service.

We take the Committee’s comments seriously. Action has been or is being taken to address them, but our view of the severity of some of the issues raised in the report differs in some important respects from that of the Committee. I may have a chance to reflect on them in a moment.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) is still in her place. Her presence publicly symbolises her continuing commitment to Sure Start, which supports those who remain outside the labour market. Among them are those who are the most vulnerable, particularly young mums. However, statistics show that of those who are entitled to support through family centres, one in 10 are young dads. That point is often missed in public debate.

I share my hon. Friend’s concern about the link between Sure Start, children’s centres, Jobcentre Plus, employment advisers and outreach work. In fact, I have asked that we consider in greater detail how we can strengthen Jobcentre Plus interaction with the children’s centres, which have been a remarkable innovation and a phenomenal investment in recent years. In time to come, we will wonder what was in their place just a few years ago.

I recently visited a children’s centre in Harpurhey, which is one of the poorest areas of Manchester. The children’s centre provides support and advice to young mums—there was one young dad there, but mostly young mums. It was built on the site of a derelict car park. The opportunities that have been created by that facility are an antidote to the sense that politics changes nothing. We know that that is not the case, but we have to go further and strengthen the links with Jobcentre Plus.

We must be live to the concerns that my hon. Friend raised about the centres being an opportunity for those with the sharpest elbows to access an important public service. We must ensure that the centres are an important way for young mums and dads to have the chance to get back into the labour market or, importantly, for people to get into the labour market for the first time. We rightly concentrate on getting people back into the labour market. The debate is not framed around getting people into the labour market for the first time.

In respect of outreach work and the general issue about contact with the public, several concerns were raised in the report and in the debate about contact centres. I do not represent a rural constituency, but I recognise that there are issues about the most effective, appropriate and convenient way to maintain contact with Jobcentre Plus customers. Many of our customers wish to interact by telephone and, increasingly, through IT and the website, but for some that is not appropriate. We must remain vigilant about ensuring that the right opportunities remain in place for those customers.

Outreach work through children’s centres is important, as are opportunities to carry out business by post and through home visits. I would like staff increasingly to go to other facilities such as council offices and public libraries to interact with our customers. If there are specific problems in hon. Members’ constituencies—if that interaction is not happening—I would be happy to correspond or meet with them to discuss those problems.

We must have greater ambitions. I have seen some genuinely inspiring projects in the past couple of weeks. I am sure that others will have seen or been involved in similar initiatives. In Vauxhall, which is one of the poorest wards in Liverpool, the streets ahead project—outreach work involving knocking on people’s doors—would have been almost unimaginable some years ago. Such interaction is not dependent on the Government. Streets ahead and voluntary organisations bring together all the agencies that are involved in this field, and interact on people’s doorsteps.

I saw a similar project in the east end of Glasgow. It, too, involved knocking on citizens’ and customers’ doors and interacting in an innovative way that has not happened previously.

I take my hon. Friend’s point. He is right.

There is a danger of we parliamentarians grouping people together and thinking that they cannot do anything, but we should recognise the tremendous amount of internet transactions that are made. We also need to learn from the private sector, which does not deny customers access to goods because they cannot use a particular form of communication. We need to bear that in mind.

I repeat the point about those with mental illnesses, for whom telephoning is absolutely inappropriate. That is not the only problem; there are also delays after the claim has been made. Such people are not allowed just to wander into an office to check progress. The only way to check progress is on the telephone, and then they finish up in a citizens advice bureau or in our surgeries.

My hon. Friend is right. For those with mental illnesses or learning disabilities, That is the nature of the challenge that we face in trying to support 1 million people who may have mental illnesses or learning disabilities to come off incapacity benefit and get closer to the labour market. Those with mental illnesses represent the biggest inflow on to incapacity benefit.

I strongly agree with the tenor of those comments. Does the Minister agree that it would be bizarre and unacceptable if his Department, which has lead responsibility for disability issues, was failing to implement the public disability duty that is imposed by the Equality Act 2006?

There is no question whatever of that occurring. Our efforts to support a net reduction of 1 million in the number of people on incapacity benefit will be assisted by support from pathways-style personal advisers, who are renowned as having been a success.

To return to the point about contact centres and outreach, I acknowledge the significant problems that some contact centres experienced with the telephone service last year. However, a process is now in place for managing work flows and matching them to staff resources, and that process has been tested. Jobcentre Plus successfully managed the annual peak in call volume in January this year and has strengthened its contingency planning. I am confident that we now have effective strategies for maintaining service during the peak staff leave period over the summer, and I have asked officials and management of Jobcentre Plus to ensure that that is indeed the case.

When problems arose last summer, Jobcentre Plus put in place temporary working arrangements in a limited number of contact centres, which was the appropriate thing to do. Based on the efforts that are being made in Jobcentre Plus, I am confident that we will not see a repeat of the problems of last summer. However, those difficulties were not caused by staff cuts, as has been suggested. In fact, Jobcentre Plus is building up its contact centre network and was recruiting contact centre staff during the period in which problems arose. For a period, standards were not what they should have been, but that was the result of a transition to a new way of delivering our services that will ultimately enable us to support our customers more effectively.

The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) raised some points about value for money and IT. We will provide the Committee with the cost of future IT systems and information on the negotiations with Electronic Data Systems in a report to the Committee before the summer recess. The hon. Member for Daventry made a further point about financial issues. In answer to him, I can say that we will give the Committee the unaudited performance and resource accounts for 2005-06 before the recess as well.

Will the details that the Minister plans to provide also include information about any additional efficiencies that the new IT systems are supposed to create and any implications that they will have for staffing, resources and potential job cuts, in addition to those already envisaged in the agency?

I shall reflect on whether it is possible to provide the additional information that the hon. Gentleman has requested.

In relation to official error, which was raised by the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and the hon. Member for Daventry, it is generally acknowledged that the amount of fraud has halved since 1998. As the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey said, the error taskforce, chaired by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), is considering ways to drive down official error. My hon. Friend will be providing more detail on the strategy to tackle error and Jobcentre Plus will monitor the action plan closely. However, underpinning the establishment of that taskforce is the acknowledgement that we have to do more about official error. Simplification is one way to overcome it. We should be looking for ways to simplify a benefits system that is complicated for our customers and our staff. That is one of the issues that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is considering.

The target of completing Jobcentre Plus roll-out by July will have been met in all but about 10 or 12 cases, and in those it is a matter of making necessary alterations to buildings to enable what is generally regarded as a remarkable transformation in the culture and layout of the offices in which the unemployed receive support and advice. Next week in Wales I shall formally open the last Jobcentre Plus office, which will mark the fact that last Jobcentre Plus roll-out has been completed throughout Wales.

On the performance disparity mentioned by hon. Members, it is unacceptable that someone on jobseeker’s allowance or any other benefit in Glasgow, for example, receives a different level of support from that available in Gillingham or elsewhere. This is about strong performance management. Occasionally, there are management disparities at local and district levels and elsewhere and we have continually to drive to ensure that, while we retain some flexibility on decision making at local level, people receive a similar level of support in terms of interventions at 13 and 26 weeks. Such interventions have sometimes not been strong enough.

The hon. Member for Daventry spoke about point scoring. However, I can put it no stronger than to say that I note what he says and will reflect on his observation.

The Committee showed understandable interest in the Jobcentre Plus computer systems, as has been recognised in this debate, and I acknowledge that there is more work to do. Jobcentre Plus administers many benefits, some of which are extremely complex. Computer system changes are therefore rarely straightforward. Hon. Members have suggested that a more modular or incremental approach might work best, and Jobcentre Plus has been developing that approach. However, since the Committee’s report was published, we have started refocusing our IT strategy on the changes that we will need to make to support our welfare reform programme. Committee members and other hon. Members will understand that we have listened to the Committee’s concerns as we roll out that strategy.

The report also scrutinises our programme of office closures. It was right for Jobcentre Plus to review its office network. When it was formed in 2002, Jobcentre Plus brought together the Employment Service and the majority of the Benefits Agency. In many towns, both agencies had separate offices, sometimes on the same stretch of road. Reducing duplication has been a necessary step following the amalgamation of the two bodies.

The hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Jenny Willott), who is no longer in the Chamber—for a good reason, I am sure—asked how we could free advisers from unnecessary clerical duties and responsibilities. There is determination to do that and to remove the responsibility and need for them to collate clerical statistics. This is about providing additional clerical support to the personal advisers. It is important to note that the number of advisers has increased in recent years, both in real terms and as a proportion of Jobcentre Plus staff—from about 10,000 out of 80,000 to about 11,000 out of some 71,000. That is a welcome commitment as we continue to personalise support for individual customers.

I wish to say a word or two about the partnership with the private and voluntary sectors, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North was keen for the Government to focus on. Much of the face-to-face work with people who need support in finding work is carried out by personal advisers. Jobcentre Plus is supported in its work by private and voluntary sector organisations working under contract to provide specialist employment and training services. Jobcentre Plus spends more than one third of its budget on services delivered through external contractors. Those partners are an essential resource and a key part of our success in coaching and supporting people back to work.

We acknowledge that there have been problems in the past with procurement. We have introduced a provisions forum that enables proper consultation and communication to take place. Providers can influence the development of our contracting strategy, for example, on the size and length of contracts and procedures for letting and ending contracts. Partnership with the private and voluntary sectors is integral to the future of welfare delivery in this country. We will continue to ensure that the Department delivers best practice in procurement and contracting as we develop and extend our work in this area, which is appropriate when we consider the crucial role of the private and voluntary sector in the national roll-out of pathways to work.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North again for the leadership that he has shown in the Committee, for enabling trenchant observations on mistakes and for creating a consensus in his Committee. I also thank him for achieving consensus on the success of Jobcentre Plus. It is important that, as we reflect on what can be done about the mistakes and failings in the past, we also celebrate the remarkable achievements in our constituencies and listen to those who have experience of being pathways customers.

Our welfare reforms will continue to revolutionise employment-focused support for all those who can and want to work. Our cities strategy, about which we will make an announcement later this month, will open up new opportunities for delivering employment services in cities, enabling the civic leadership, business, the voluntary sector, the media and others to design their own solutions to the distinct problems in their cities. Given that two thirds of those who receive benefit in the UK live in our great cities, the nature and scale of the challenge is clear to us all. This vision can only be built on the foundation of an efficient, modern service. Jobcentre Plus must go further not only in getting the basics right but in being flexible and responsive to the changing customer needs. It must develop priorities about personalised welfare support.

Efficiency is not an optional extra in public services. In leading the Committee’s work on this scheme and in this debate, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bradford, North, has raised some crucial matters. I am happy to take note of the points made by hon. Friends and other hon. Members today. I agree that we are striving to achieve the right balance between our customers’ needs, demands and aspirations and the necessity of running an efficient service.

We have made remarkable progress in tackling the roots of poverty and worklessness, but we have to go further. The Committee’s report acknowledges that. Jobcentre Plus is not just about helping individuals to fulfil their potential but about families and communities feeling the benefit of people’s lives being changed for the better, which is why it is so important that we address the issues raised in the report, continue with our drive to modernise Jobcentre Plus and deliver the quality of service that people rightly expect from other public services.

Just because we are dealing with some of the most vulnerable people in our society, we should never lose sight of the fact that they remain aspirational, determined and focused on improving their lives and the lives of their families. Jobcentre Plus, the Government and the private and voluntary sector and others have an important role to play in the partnership and in helping to bring about that transformation. Our discussion on the Select Committee’s report identifies that. I thank the Select Committee for its work.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Five o’clock.