Place-based Employment Support Programmes

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

16:29

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered place-based employment support programmes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am very pleased to have secured this debate. Discussions of employment policy can sometimes feel very abstract in this place; we talk about things like rates, targets and programmes, but for the people we represent, employment can be intensely personal. It is about confidence, dignity, routine and feeling that they have something to contribute.

I know all that from personal experience. The depression that I fell into in the mid-’90s, at the end of the Tories’ previous disastrous spell in government when I could not get a job, had a long-lasting effect on my life. Growing up in what was then and by many measures still is one of the poorest boroughs in the country, the pressure to find a job—any job, to be honest—was immense, but the availability of jobs did not match that pressure. The local factory had closed down in 1991. My home town had barely any industry left to speak of, and most of the low-paid, temporary jobs I could find were in the next town along. It was almost a two-hour walk away for a lad who wanted to work but could not afford the bus fare to get to the factory. That is why I want to make the case today for place-based employment support—support that is rooted in communities, shaped by local need and delivered by people who understand the realities of the lives that they are working with.

In my Southport constituency, I see it time and again: the people furthest from the labour market are not those who do not want to work, but people with caring responsibilities, health issues or gaps in their work history, or people who, for whatever reason, just cannot get a break. In my local authority area alone, that equates to over 26,000 people. What they need is not another box-ticking exercise, but someone who knows their area and knows what the local jobs are, and has the time to treat them as a person.

I want to put on the record my thanks for the work of several place-based employment support programmes across the north of England. The Big Onion in Southport does things differently, and that is precisely why it is effective. Its work is rooted in trust. It helps people to rebuild confidence, develop skills and, in many cases, explore things such as self-employment or community enterprise as a route back into work. It does not rush people. Its approach recognises that, for many people, the first step towards employment is simply believing that they have something to offer. That kind of progress does not always show up immediately in headline figures, but it is essential if we want to make sustainable outcomes for the long term.

Zink is a charity based in Buxton that started out as a food bank but, once it investigated the drivers of local food bank demand, soon branched out into offering employment support and debt advice. Its most innovative programme, microjobs, offers small, paid roles tailored to people who are far from the jobs market—often people who have been affected by homelessness or past substance abuse. Three quarters of those with a microjob subsequently move into part-time or full-time work within six months.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that place-based employment schemes are a vital way of converting local strengths into local jobs, and that sector-specific initiatives can and should be tailored to the circumstances of individual constituencies? In North Down, there is particular potential in tourism, hospitality and the wider marine and coastal economy.

[Patrick Hurley]

That is one in a long line of things that place-based employment initiatives can do well, so I thank the hon. Member for his intervention.

The Recruitment Junction, which works up in the north-east, mainly in Newcastle, places people with criminal convictions into paid work. It works with local employers to identify skills shortages and then identifies suitable candidates, meets them and helps them to renew their qualifications, write their CVs and prepare for interviews. So far, it has placed almost 900 people with criminal convictions into paid work, with a 66% retention rate. Fewer than 5% of those that it places reoffend, compared with around 24% nationally.

I also want to commend the work of Transform Lives Company. Its model deliberately breaks away from what many people expect employment support to look like. It is welcoming, informal and feels safe, and for many participants in its schemes, that alone is transformative. People who go to Transform Lives Company are supported not just with job search, but with things like confidence, wellbeing and life skills. They are listened to, rather than lectured at. As a result, people who would never normally engage with employment services do so willingly. I think that should make us stop and think about how our national system is experienced on the ground.

[Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I am reminded of the JobsPlus scheme that is being run on one of our council estates in Leyton, where L&Q has been going out and actively knocking on doors. We have seen not only the young people who were the target of the scheme coming back into the work environment, but their parents. Does my hon. Friend agree that that type of scheme needs to continue to be funded, and to be extended, so that other people can be brought back into the working environment?

[Patrick Hurley]

Indeed. I promise Members that I did not give my hon. Friend advance sight of my speech, but I will be talking about JobsPlus in due course. It is an amazing system and an amazing scheme.

I have touched on some of my own experiences as a young man, but it is worth going back to them, because I want to put Members in the shoes of someone who would have really benefited from one of these schemes, had they been running back when I was in my late teens and early 20s. Many families have funny anecdotes about things that children have said, and mine is no different. Perhaps unwisely, I am going to share the funny anecdote that my family tell about something that they say I said back in around 1982, when I was four or five years old—of course, they teased me about it for years afterwards.

Apparently, I asked my parents one day why they watched the news on the telly. In my childhood brain, this made no sense at all. My mum was a dinner lady and my dad worked nights in the local car factory 6 or 7 miles away. I had got it into my head as a little kid that the TV news was only for people who did not have jobs, but my mum and dad had jobs, so what were they doing watching the TV news? It was only about 20 years later that it dawned on me that it was not that TV news in the early 1980s was not for people who did not have jobs, but that it felt like it was only about people who did not have jobs.

Every night on the 6 o’clock news, the headlines were about the unemployment figures—the latest round of lay-offs in some critical industry or other, the factory closures, the countless thousands being put on the sick as a way of keeping the official number of jobseekers off the balance sheet. I grew up in that context in Knowsley, a local authority area that had been drawn up a decade earlier in such a way as to exclude all sixth-form provision. This was an area that was being written off. I was a poorly qualified, unskilled lad in his late teens, living in a town with few opportunities, and suffering with my mental health because I could not see a way out.

By way of contrast, these days my city region is benefiting from the award-winning Cradle to Career scheme, which provides holistic mental health and wellbeing support and focuses on the underlying causes of youth crime and antisocial behaviour. Just as important as the metrics of success that make the headlines in the press are the testimonies of the people whose lives have been turned around.

To return to my broader point, many of the approaches that I have described echo the work done in recent years on fundamentally rethinking employment support. That work has made a compelling case for a more wraparound employment service that links employment with skills, health, housing and local economic conditions, and gives frontline staff the flexibility to respond to individual circumstances.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) said, we have seen that in things such as JobsPlus, which has demonstrated that embedding employment support directly in social housing communities can reach people who have been economically inactive for years. Early evidence shows people do not just move into work, but gain improvements in their confidence, wellbeing, readiness and resilience—the things that actually make employment sustainable for people.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very sincere speech, and I am listening to it with great interest. He talks about youngsters’ confidence. One of the great industries that was run down during the Conservatives’ years of rule was the nuclear industry, but I believe it will be great again one day. Dounreay in my constituency still has an apprenticeship scheme, which gives youngsters great confidence. I hope it will be carbon copied by many industries as we revive the fortunes of what we are good at in this country.

[Patrick Hurley]

That pinpoints exactly why place-based schemes are so important. What is useful and necessary for my part of the country will not be useful elsewhere. That difference can have a positive impact on local people’s lives.

I have talked about the good things that JobsPlus can do, but despite that evidence, too many of the programmes that I have mentioned today exist in a state of uncertainty. Short-term funding and delayed decisions are forcing providers to plan for winding down even when their outcomes are improving. That is not a sensible way to run employment policy, and we risk losing exactly the sort of expertise and relationships that we should be encouraging and building on.

If we are serious about increasing employment and tackling inactivity, we also need to be serious about how the support that is needed is delivered. Central systems have their place, but they cannot do everything; we also need long-term backing for place-based approaches and proper partnership with community organisations. Collectively, we need the confidence to move away from one-size-fits-all solutions.

More than 9 million working-age people in the UK are economically inactive, and long-term sickness is the single largest driver of inactivity among 16 to 64-year-olds. In Southport and across the country, organisations such as The Big Onion and Transform Lives Company, and schemes such as Cradle to Career, are already doing the work that we say we want to see. The question is whether national policy is willing to learn from them and support them properly.

[Mr Calvin Bailey]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about place-based intervention. Last week, I welcomed the Minister for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), to Build Academy in Wanstead, an incredible scheme that is providing accessible training in construction skills to local people. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) was making the point that we need to focus on these fantastic young learners to ensure that they are site ready and capable of going directly into full-time local employment or apprenticeships. Does he agree that such learning programmes need to be shared, so that they can permanently address the issues that he raises and be scaled up and rolled out around the country?

[Patrick Hurley]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. Not only can we scale and roll out those programmes, but we can do peer-to-peer learning, so that the best of what works in one part of the country might be applied elsewhere.

I hope the Minister will reflect on some of what I have mentioned this afternoon and on how future employment policy can better embed place-based delivery of these schemes, giving local providers the certainty they need and ensuring that employment support is something people feel genuinely helped by, not just processed through.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to begin calling the Front Benchers at 5.08 pm—do the maths.

16:45

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for securing this important debate.

In my constituency, the scale of youth unemployment is stark and deeply concerning. We are among the worst-affected areas in the country, with one in every six eligible adults—16.1%—currently not working. Those are not just statistics; they represent thousands of young people whose talents are being wasted and whose futures are being put on hold. Across the west midlands, around 29,000 young people are classed as unemployed, with youth unemployment rates in parts of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Walsall running at double the national average. The sheer scale of the challenge facing our region underlines the urgent need for growth and genuine job creation.

Young people are not short of ambition or willingness to work; what they are short of is real opportunities, secure jobs, quality training, and pathways into employment that offer dignity and progression. Too many are stuck in a cycle of rejection or short-term work, or being shut out altogether. I hope the Minister will detail how young people are being actively supported into large infrastructure projects such as HS2 and the large housing programmes. As the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), said:

“To get Britain growing, we need to get Britain working again.”

I wholly agree with that sentiment, but I cannot agree with the Government’s approach of removing universal credit from young people if they do not take up a job—there could be a whole host of reasons why they cannot do so. Punitive policies do not create jobs or address the structural barriers that young people face, and they risk pushing already vulnerable people into further hardship.

Young people are struggling to get jobs, a struggle intensified by wider changes in the economy. New research suggests that the UK is now losing more jobs than it is creating because of artificial intelligence, and that Britain is being hit harder than any other major economy. According to a recent study by Morgan Stanley, British companies reported that AI had resulted in net job losses over the past 12 months, with employment down by 8%—the worst performance among comparable economies, including the United States, Japan, Germany and Australia. That performance matters, because it means that young people are entering a labour market that is shrinking, not expanding. Getting Britain working again does not require sanctions; we need investment, collaboration with local employers, properly funded skills programmes and an economy that works for every region, not just a few.

I commend the excellent work of the West Midlands combined authority under Mayor Richard Parker, which is building up skills and training our young people in areas such as construction, the arts, tech, life sciences and clean energy. However, I urge more support from central Government to ensure this is happening across the midlands and the wider economy. If we are truly serious about growth, we must be serious about our young people. That means backing them, not blaming them; it means opportunity, not punishment; and it means ensuring that places such as Birmingham Perry Barr are not left behind, but are at the heart of our national recovery.

16:48

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for bringing forward what I consider to be a truly vital discussion. Colleagues will not be surprised to hear me talk about towns today—I am the proud product of one, and I proudly represent two towns, Stafford and Eccleshall. It is important to be in this Chamber today discussing them, because I want to use this debate to make a simple but important point about place.

Far too often, towns such as Stafford are described in relation to somewhere else. We are labelled a commuter town because we have excellent rail connections—and we do: a person can get to London, Birmingham or Manchester really quickly from Stafford, but Stafford should not be defined by its neighbouring cities, and a child growing up in Stafford should not be told, “Just go to a city to access better employment opportunities.” If our policy only sees us as part of someone else’s labour market, it will misunderstand us and the brilliant talent that we have in my constituency.

Our young people deserve to build happy, successful lives in the town they call home, and there is so much potential for that. We are home to GE Vernova, whose Stafford site produces the only high-voltage direct current transformers manufactured in this country, which are absolutely key to our national energy security. We have Bostik’s UK headquarters, where world-leading adhesives are made. We have Arco Professional Safety Services keeping those working in risky roles safe, including on Big Ben—or the Elizabeth Tower, I should say—and we have so many wonderful small and medium enterprises. We are supported by Stafford college, widely acknowledged to be the best college in the country, with back-to-back outstanding Ofsted ratings, which works closely with local employers to build the technical and vocational skills that our industries require.

Stafford is a county town where people are proud to live, but people feel its potential is not yet being fulfilled. Research from the University of Southampton shows that that is a pattern repeated across the country, and a pattern that we must address as a Government. We must provide the tools for every community to ensure that their town flourishes. Let us be frank: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this. When we talk about designing employment programmes around place, we are talking about a massive opportunity for promoting our towns, and building secure jobs and futures for residents that cater to our national diversity.

The economy of places including Stafford should not be trickle-down cities. We must recognise the strengths of towns such as Stafford, particularly in manufacturing and energy infrastructure. We must directly align skills provision with local employer demand, rather than assume that opportunity sits elsewhere. It is also time that we stop telling our talented young people to move away to London or Manchester, and start recognising the potential that our towns have as economic engines in their own right.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady. In Northern Ireland, we are doing a collaborative, localised model through the Ards community network. We have done there what the hon. Lady is referring to in Stafford: identifying job opportunities. HGV training is one—it costs about £3,500 to do that—and there is also security training. The local Ards community network, the Government in the Northern Ireland Assembly and others have come together to ensure that those job opportunities are available for people in my constituency. Many of those people are now driving HGV lorries, and lots of them are in security jobs and training. That inspires people from deprived areas, and I think that is what she was talking about in Stafford.

[Leigh Ingham]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. Recognising the talent that we have in our towns, and making sure that all our Government programmes are working to support that, is integral. I welcome the Government’s investment in growth and opportunity, and we are seeing a revised investment in towns. Pride in Place and town of culture are really good examples; those are not necessarily employment programmes, but they lay the foundations of our commitment to regeneration across the country. The upcoming high street strategy also has a lot of potential to help with that investment.

Although investment into UK cities is undoubtedly important, it is vital to remember that most of our population live in towns, and many of those people are feeling left behind, frustrated by the decline on their high streets under the Conservative Government and sceptical that politicians in Westminster understand them or the places that they call home. This is a chance to show that we do, and that is exactly what Labour Governments do better than anyone else. Time and again, we see that working with communities and using their local knowledge and experience is how we can best regenerate our areas.

I ask the Minister what conversations she is having with colleagues to ensure that towns have a voice in designing their local employment strategies, and what steps the Government are taking to ensure that young people who grow up in towns including Stafford can secure well paid jobs in the towns they call home. Towns such as Stafford are central to our Government’s plan for growth, and I welcome employment programmes that recognise that reality.

16:54

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for giving us the opportunity to speak in this debate. In my career before being elected, I was involved in a number of successful place-based employment schemes, including having direct responsibility for delivering some of this work within a housing association. I am therefore a strong advocate for the approach, and I will come on to that later in my speech.

As a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, I visited Durham last week to speak to participants and employers on the Connect to Work programme run by DurhamEnable and Triage. It offers voluntary supported employment initiatives designed to help people with learning disabilities, autism, health conditions and complex barriers to employment to find and sustain meaningful work. Such programmes offer a great example of why and how place-based employment really works.

Durham uses the supported employment model, “place, train, maintain”, which focuses on finding the right job first, and then offering training and ongoing support, and I will break that down a little further. Stage one is place: finding the right job for an individual and emphasising that employers are key to delivery and engaging with future employees. Working with the person, as well as the local job market, to discover who they are is a key principle.

Stage two is training. DurhamEnable ensures that future employees are benefiting from the right support. It was also clear that that support inspired confidence. One person we spoke to had recently been made redundant from a long-term job. DurhamEnable had helped them to navigate the more complicated process nowadays of job applications that they had never needed to do before. Stage three is maintain, which includes offering ongoing support to participants and employers to navigate reasonable adjustments in the workplace while applying for such things as Access to Work.

I will briefly mention JobsPlus, which has already been mentioned, and information from the Learning and Work Institute. The latter found that in 2003, social housing tenants were nearly twice as likely to be out of work and more than twice as likely to be disabled. When in work, social housing tenants are twice as likely to be in lower skilled work on average and are paid a third less than people who live in other housing tenures.

JobsPlus, which is being piloted in 10 sites across England, is a key initiative. It brings together tenants, landlords and key agencies to provide targeted support to those who need it. It works because of that joint commitment and the targeted support that is provided. In fact, it is the simplicity of the scheme that works overall. The non-reliance on system-based referrals sets JobsPlus apart from most other employment programmes. All the programme needs to know is where somebody lives, and then it simply helps them.

It will be no surprise to Members that as a long-standing housing professional, I advocate the work done by housing associations. East Midlands Housing, based in North West Leicestershire, is not only a great local employer, but part of the Placeshapers initiative, which is about creating place. That is another important part of employer-based support, because it means putting support right at the centre of the community. Above all, it is the community that knows how best to boost engagement and to support one another.

I conclude by emphasising that the key point to take away from today is that we do not need to reinvent the wheel to be successful; we just need to look at what is being done already. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Southport about limited contracting. My experience over two decades is that we have great schemes, but they are often reinvented, which means we then lack consistency. Consistency develops our communities and the long-term commitment from employers that we need to see real change in place-based support. When schemes come and go, momentum is lost. Can the Minister tell us how we will breed that consistency to ensure that place-based schemes have a seat at the employment support table for the long term, and not just the short term?

16:59

[Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for securing this important debate on place-based employment schemes. Local jobs, local skills and local employment support, rooted in communities, will change individuals’ lives as well as boosting local economies. My residents in Wolverhampton North East will understand that deeply.

In previous debates on young people not in education, employment or training, I have said that the challenge cannot be solved by a single national programme or by one-size-fits-all policies from Whitehall. Instead, we need local solutions, rooted in local labour markets and built around developing and building people, skills and aspirations. That is the approach that I am calling for and I welcome the Labour Government to continue to work closely with our Mayor, Richard Parker, and also with local councils. In Wolverhampton, through the Wolves at Work employment hub at the i10, residents are not handed generic advice; instead, time is invested in individuals to support them as needed. More than 1,800 residents have had employment advice and successful job matching, with more than 40% of those supported aged under 25. That is place-based employment support that is rooted in local partnerships and focused on real outcomes.

The open door programme does literally that. It opens up opportunities by giving paid work experience to those who might otherwise never get that first chance. Labour’s support for sector-based work academy programmes, a practical route into work, and for the youth guarantee trailblazer, part of the Get Britain Working plan, shows how this Government are focused on tailored, targeted support that will meet local needs. The major funding package for youth employment, benefiting about a million young people, is a sign of Labour’s commitment to tackling the long-term issue of young people not in education, employment or training.

Behind every statistic on NEETs is a young person who needs a guided pathway, with support for their specific needs. In Wolverhampton, we know that 2.6% of young people aged 16 to 17 were NEET in 2025. Although I appreciate that is lower than the national average, it is still hundreds of young people who deserve the opportunity to see themselves in a good quality job and a career suited to them.

For too long under previous Governments, employment support, skills funding and local growth strategies have operated in silos and we have seen inconsistencies, but this Labour Government are doing things differently. We are aligning skills with jobs, investing in local employment hubs for the long term, and backing councils and mayoral combined authorities to shape programmes that work for their places.

How will the Minister address the challenge of scaling up that success, so that where someone grows up no longer determines whether they can get on in life? I call on the Minister to fully back place-based employment schemes to connect people to jobs for hope, ambition and action.

17:03

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I also thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) for shining a light on this important issue.

The Liberal Democrats strongly support the principles of devolution and localism so we welcome the Government’s stated ambition to expand place-based employment support. Employment conditions vary so much across the country that a purely national strategy could never work. However, local delivery is only half the story. A succession of Governments have been adept at passing on new responsibilities to local government but not necessarily the budget to match. The Liberal Democrats will not support reforms that simply shift costs and risks on to councils without the funding systems and accountability to make them work. What extra powers or funding flexibility will the Government give local and combined authorities so that they can design and deliver place-based employment strategies that genuinely reflect their local labour markets?

Improving employment prospects is also about removing barriers. Estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of people are economically inactive due to long-term sickness linked to NHS waiting lists. More than 600,000 people have reduced their working hours while waiting for treatment. Too much existing work support consists of generic help with CV writing and basic qualifications such as maths and English. Although important, that does not go far enough to answer individual needs, especially for people with specific health conditions. The current system seems to work best when providing adjustments for people already in work, who then become disabled, but fails those who are trying to get a job in the first place. The practical adjustments through Access to Work are frequently agreed only after the job offer and that is too late in the process.

The case of one of my constituents from Horsham, Amanda, illustrates what can go wrong when systems do not join up. Amanda is deaf; she got a job and needed an interpreter funded through Access to Work, but a basic administrative breakdown between her employer and the Department for Work and Pensions resulted in her support being refused. Long delays in making awards are causing real trouble; I believe the waiting list has increased by four times in just a few years. The current system seems unable to respond to individual circumstances.

The Liberal Democrats argue that devolution must be matched with stable funding and enough resources to support implementation. There is a journey to go on and, as we embark on it, we need to be honest about a legacy of negative culture in the system. According to a 2025 survey by Turn2Us, 64% of claimants say that the system is trying to “catch them out.” Only 15% said support from work coaches is useful, while 55% of universal credit claimants say that claiming benefits has “worsened their health.” That sounds less like an employment system and more like a deterrence system.

That tactic has backfired. Job hunting is a tough process; morale matters. Totally undermining unemployed jobseekers by treating them like benefit scroungers has only ended up making sure that is exactly how they remain: stuck on benefits. The pressure on jobseekers to demonstrate industrial quantities of applications every week has destroyed trust on both sides. I have seen how local employers in my constituency have disengaged with the jobcentre. They feel that the applicants they are being sent are not interested and are just trying to meet their weekly quota of applications. The Liberal Democrats welcome the trial of place-based approaches, such as JobsPlus. It is too soon to judge, but the early signs suggest higher engagement and improved confidence and wellbeing. We need to get both jobseekers and employers believing and trusting in the system again.

We need clarity on funding. Council budgets are already under severe strain and rural areas, such as mine in west Sussex, face some of the greatest barriers to employment support, yet also face some of the stiffest demands and the tighter settlement under the new local government finance settlement. Councils are concerned that JobsPlus funding ends in March 2026, yet the full evaluation has not yet been completed. What long-term funding certainty will be provided to ensure that community-based employment support is not cut off just as it starts to deliver results?

Finally, on national oversight, it is vital that we ensure that place-based employment support is properly integrated with jobcentres and national programmes such as restart to avoid duplication and confusion. Will the Government commit to clear outcome measurement and regular, public reporting so that Parliament can hold the DWP to account for what those programmes actually deliver? Alongside that, what are the Government doing to properly integrate local employment schemes with national programmes, such as restart and jobcentre services, to make everything work together effectively?

To conclude, the Liberal Democrats believe that place-based employment support can reduce inequality, improve outcomes and help people into sustainable work, but it must be backed by long-term funding, a competent Administration and clear, national accountability. Otherwise, localism will end up as a slogan, not a solution.

17:08

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) and congratulate him on securing this important debate.

Getting people into work should be a core priority for any Government and I know Members across the House share that view. I, and the Conservative party, wholly believe that work is the best route out of poverty. Work brings independence, dignity, opportunity and the ability for people across the country to provide for themselves and their families. It gives meaning and purpose, and has real, proven mental health benefits. That is why successive Conservative Governments have put in place a lot of employment support schemes. The restart scheme was one example. Launched in 2020, it gave tailored, intensive support to jobseekers who were often in need of more support.

I appreciate that the current Government recognise the challenges of joblessness and that there is a genuine desire to tackle the problem. Whether through local authorities or the private sector, there are many ways of attempting to improve employment outcomes and get people into work. There is a clear difference between broader national schemes and localised place-based approaches. It is clear that employment challenges in Carlisle, for example, are very different from those in Cardiff and that tailored, localised support can be a more effective way of helping people in those areas to gain meaningful, lasting employment.

The JobsPlus scheme—started by the previous Conservative Government—is an example of that, and has been mentioned a few times already this afternoon. The scheme was inspired by the response to problems in the United States, and has been carried out in the UK through social landlords, and convened and organised by Communities that Work. These pilots were carried out in a diverse range of areas, such as Swale in Kent and Toxteth in Liverpool, as a useful road test for a scheme that would show how it would work in different parts of the country. The evaluation last autumn, written by the Institute for Employment Studies and Learning to Work, said that there had been

“positive early indications that the JobsPlus model could be implemented effectively in the UK”.

There is, of course, a long way to go. We hope for the success of place-based employment schemes and for each area to see an uptick in employment. There are hard-working and committed people in communities across the country who are doing their utmost to improve the life chances of others. Effective wraparound support is essential in tackling those complex barriers to work that so many of our constituents are facing in their own communities.

We certainly know that a one-size-fits-all approach from Whitehall is often not the answer, and that devolving power down to local people and local decision makers can be the best way to achieve real, tangible progress and outcomes. However, we recognise that core principles apply to helping people throughout the country when they are trying to get a job. We must also guard against a postcode lottery, where some areas have a good level of support and others are, quite frankly, left behind. There is a clear balance to be struck, and I would like the Minister to explain how she will make sure that it happens.

I would also be interested to hear the Minister’s view on private sector involvement. From my perspective, relying on state interventions alone does not work, and we will need to unleash private enterprise, particularly small and medium sized enterprises. One of the current problems in the British economy, and, indeed, in our jobs market, is that businesses of all sizes and in all communities do not have the confidence to hire in the current economic and regulatory environment. The Minister does not need me to repeat the impact on jobs of the Government’s decisions on things such as hiking national insurance or the Employment Rights Act 2025. I hear the impact from my constituents, and I do not believe that the Minister and others on the Government benches do not hear the same things too.

A thriving economy and business confidence really is the best way to boost employment across the UK. That simply is not the case at the moment, with job vacancies down and unemployment up from 4.2% when the Government came to power in July 2024 to 5.1% today. There are 700,000 university graduates who are out of work and on benefits, and nearly 1 million NEET young people. These are sobering numbers and will impact on the constituencies and constituents of every Member in this room, across the length and breadth of the country. They impact people now, but also into their futures. Those numbers put a huge pressure on employment support programmes, and often overwhelm them. We want employers to feel comfortable in hiring people, not to impose hiring freezes because they are concerned about the state of the economy.

I will briefly focus on my constituency, as others have today. I often talk in this place about the oil and gas sector and the impact that policies are having on jobs. Employment, particularly locally in north-east Scotland, is wholly reliant on the oil and gas sector. Every other sector and industry is related to it: hospitality, taxis, shops, and the housing market. Regardless of whether people support oil and gas or whether people believe in the energy transition, policies in this sector are having an impact on jobs.

No other constituency in the country is seeing as many job losses in a single sector as we are across north-east Scotland. If this were happening in any other Member’s constituency, they would not be sitting silent; they would be fighting for the employment and future of their constituents. That is what I am doing, and it is what must be done if we are to ensure that place-based employment support is not needed in Aberdeenshire to the extent that it would be if the oil and gas sector were allowed to collapse.

I certainly welcome robust place-based employment support, but I call on the Government to link it with broader economic changes that allow businesses to flourish and encourage them to take a chance on younger people and those currently out of work. I thank the Minister in advance for her response and the hon. Member for Southport again for securing this debate.

17:15

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Dame Diana Johnson)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Dr Murrison.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) on securing this debate. As he rightly pointed out, employment can often get bound up in numbers, targets and rates. What we all know is that this is fundamentally about people, families, communities and the world of work. Work is a huge part of people’s lives, and we should never underestimate how much it matters that we support people into work and help them succeed in their careers. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon, in what I think has been an excellent debate, about the support that their constituents are already receiving in many cases.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) talked about her local employers, as well as the vital role of towns in economic growth and regeneration. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Amanda Hack), who brings great knowledge to her role on the Work and Pensions Committee, as well as her experience prior to entering Parliament. She spoke about the Connect to Work programme, which I will say a little more about.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge) spoke about NEETs and about the excellent work, rooted in partnerships, that is already going on in her area to support individuals. At the end of her contribution, she talked about hope, ambition and action, which I thought was a very powerful message. I would gently remind the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) that over 500,000 people entered employment over the last year.

I pay tribute to what my hon. Friend the Member for Southport said, and to his commitment to helping his constituents into good work. It was great to hear him champion some of the excellent work of The Big Onion in Southport, the Cradle to Career scheme in the Liverpool city region more widely, and the various place-based employment support providers across the north of England. I was particularly interested in Zink and its microjobs, and in how it helps people move into part-time and then full-time work.

My hon. Friend also spoke with great eloquence about the challenges he faced growing up in an area where the local factory had closed and work was really hard to come by. It underlines the fact that where someone lives is often a significant factor in the challenges they face and the chances before them in life. Those who live in communities like the ones that he represents, or that I represent in Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham, will always know best what the barriers and opportunities are in their local area. That is why I am committed to working closely with mayoral strategic authorities, local government, the voluntary and community sector, and others to ensure that employment support works for people, no matter where they live.

I regularly meet with mayors and leaders in local government, as do my officials, to ensure that we are designing employment support that meets the needs of those local communities. In December, I met the mayoral council. Last week, the Minister for Skills, Baroness Smith of Malvern, and I met the Local Government Association’s inclusive growth committee to hear from local leaders working across England, including those representing towns, on youth employment and the jobs and careers service. Earlier today, I met the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham. We will continue to listen to and engage with local leaders as we reform employment support.

A core strength of the Department is our network of jobcentres and work coaches on high streets all around the country, with staff who are knowledgeable and passionate about the communities they serve. We have to make the most of that, which is why we are building a new jobs and careers service that moves away from the one-size-fits-all approach that has been mentioned several times this afternoon. We are instead building a locally responsive service designed to meet the different needs of local labour markets, local people and local employers. We are already testing new elements of this service through our pathfinder in Wakefield, which I went to see before Christmas. We have also matched up Jobcentre Plus boundaries with mayoral strategic authorities to strengthen partnerships between jobcentres, local government and other local stakeholders.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport mentioned the efforts to make jobcentres more human. I have to say, this is not the first time that effort has been put into that. I read that, in the 1940s, as part of his drive to humanise the employment exchanges that existed then, Ernest Bevin felt it necessary to issue an instruction that staff should say “good morning” to members of the public when they came into the employment exchange looking for help.

Fortunately, I think we are starting from a better position than that today, but we want to make sure that jobcentres are places that people want to go to for support, not places that they shy away from. We are making sure that the new jobs and careers service is less about benefit administration and box ticking, and that it better uses technology so we can free up our work coaches’ time to focus on giving people support that is tailored to their needs. In the English devolution White Paper, we again set out the important role of mayors in driving local growth and supporting labour market and skills needs.

I will turn to some of the locally led employment support that we are investing in already, including £1 billion through our Connect to Work programme. I recently saw that support in action in Lewisham, where a neurodiverse young man told me how the personalised support that he was receiving from the team was helping him in his work as a swimming teacher. Across England and Wales, he is one of 300,000 disabled people, or people with health conditions and other complex barriers, who we will be supporting through Connect to Work by the end of the decade.

Mayors and local authorities are being funded via grants to enable delivery of local Connect to Work programmes. Over two fifths of delivery areas are now up and running, and we have given areas considerable flexibility in how they deliver the service to reflect the local priorities and other support available in the area.

We are also expanding WorkWell across the whole of England over the next three years to support up to 250,000 people. I visited WorkWell in Cambridge a few months ago and saw the brilliant way that it is working together with local authorities, integrated care boards and Jobcentre Plus to provide a single route to personalised, integrated work and health support. This recognises that local areas are well placed to knit together local services. For that reason, we have also commissioned local Get Britain Working plans in all areas of England.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne), raised the issue of Access to Work, and I heard what he said. He will know that a National Audit Office report was produced at the end of last week. Demand has soared for Access to Work; we are already putting in additional staff and we are looking at what more can be done because we recognise how important it is.

I want to mention the voluntary and community sector, which was raised by a number of Members this afternoon, and how important its role is in employment support. With the mayoral strategic authorities, we are working closely with the sector to deliver 17 economic inactivity and youth guarantee trailblazers to test new, innovative ways of delivering that support, delivered by local partners. The partnership is about engaging with communities at that grassroots level to help them access holistic support to move towards work. I heard the calls this afternoon for the funding to be made available to that sector on a sustainable basis with multi year settlements.

There was mention of local authority funding. The local government finance settlement is the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s most significant move yet to make English local government more sustainable. The Government are making good on long overdue promises to fundamentally update the way we fund local authorities. We are delivering fairer funding and targeting money where it is needed most through the first multi-year settlement in decades.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport spoke about the long-lasting effect on his life when he could not get a job as a young man. For so many, the consequences of what happens at the start of their working life can cascade down the years. That is why we are putting a real focus on supporting young people, not least through our youth guarantee.

At the Budget, we announced the expansion of the youth guarantee, backed by £820 million of investment, which answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) about supporting young people into infrastructure projects. That investment will create around 300,000 more opportunities to gain workplace experience and training for young people. I take issue with his comments, however, because he failed to acknowledge that if support and help are offered to a young person, as they will be through the youth guarantee, there is a responsibility on them to take up that offer of assistance and support. That is part of the social contract in this country.

I have already mentioned the locally led trailblazers, but we are also expanding youth hub provision to more than 360 areas across Great Britain. That is important because those hubs are helping us to reach young people where they are—in places such as football clubs and other sports facilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport mentioned the importance of delivering support in familiar settings, and I am glad that he and several other Members highlighted JobsPlus as an example of that. It delivers community-based employment support through the social housing sector and is being piloted in 10 sites across England.

I want to mention the Milburn review, which is looking at why nearly 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training. It is due to report in the summer. We cannot allow the talents of nearly 1 million young people to be wasted. It is not good for those young people, and it is not good for our economy or the taxpayer either.

Whether it is our trailblazers, youth hubs, Jobcentre reform or programmes such as Connect to Work and WorkWell, we are determined that people should get the support that suits them, regardless of where they live or what their circumstances are. People’s lives are complex and people can face all sorts of barriers to work, whether it is health, skills, transport, housing or any other factor. That is why we must take a joined-up approach to deliver a locally tailored ecosystem of support to ensure that no one is left behind.

We must ensure that people can access offers of support from sources that they trust and that treat them as an individual and as a whole person. That is why the Government have committed to learn from place-based support, such as the economic inactivity and youth guarantee trailblazers and Connect to Work, and it is why we are committed to truly embedding and tailoring our new jobs and careers service to meet the needs of local people and employers.

As we develop our jobs and careers service, our youth guarantee and Pathways to Work, we will be working closely with local government, including mayoral strategic authorities, to ensure that they reflect the communities that they serve. Ensuring that employment support is integrated in, and meets the needs of, local communities will help people to benefit from the purpose, pride and independence of good work and to fulfil their potential.

17:28

[Patrick Hurley]

I thank you, Dr Murrison, for your exemplary chairing of the debate. I also thank hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. What has come through really clearly is that employment policy works when it starts with the reality of people’s lives and that, for people furthest from the labour market, progress works best when the support that they are given is human and rooted in place.

The message that I hope the Minister will take away is simple: the systems that we have in place centrally matter, but they cannot do all of this alone. Place-based delivery, person-centred support and genuine partnership are all essential if we are serious about tackling the scourge of inactivity. Crucially, funding, and the certainty of funding, is also massively important. I know that the Government will reflect on how future policy can embed the approaches we have talked about this afternoon. I thank everybody for their contributions to the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered place-based employment support programmes.

17:30

Sitting adjourned.