Jobs Market: Wider Economic Implications

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Spellar

Thursday 18th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am not going to diss looking for a job in McDonald’s, but I do not want to see anyone unable to pursue the things that they want to do. The noble Lord is absolutely right. We have invested £600 million in a construction package and are working closely with the industry. We have a strategic relationship team in DWP that works with key sectors to try to make sure, if jobs come on stream, that our people get them. We want young people and people who are not in the labour market to get them—those who are struggling with economic inactivity. I am grateful to him for raising that.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, should not the Government look at the incredible difficulty that youngsters have in getting into work, with very bureaucratic HR processes for making applications? Should they also not say to employers who are on contracts to the Government that they need to provide a certain ratio of training places to qualify for being on government contracts?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, those are two important points. The second quite often happens. I know that the social value element of contracts is something important that we in DWP take especially seriously. On the first point, we must all have had that experience of knowing young people and their heartbreaking experience of sending out application after application, and getting nothing back at all. I understand how tough it is for businesses to manage that, but if any employer is able to do that—to make it as easy as possible to support young people—that is great. One thing we can do in DWP is to support the young people in doing that: to connect them with employers, give them the skills and make sure they are putting in the best possible application in the first place.

Autism Employment Review

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Spellar

Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

Well, that is an offer I cannot refuse. When I used to work with families with children, there was a saying that every child deserves to have at least one adult unreasonably committed to their flourishing. In this House, I think those adults are particularly ever-present, and I can imagine that Ollie is not only being loved to bits but supported.

I completely agree with the noble Baroness. One of the challenges for us in supporting people who have disability barriers to work is that we have to have confidence that people can be supported and helped to get work, because if we do not believe they can, why should anyone else? If we do not believe it is possible, why should employers take a chance on people and why should individuals have confidence in themselves? We have seen great results with supported employment. Start where somebody is, look at the barriers, think about what they might be able to do and support them into it. Some people will be happy with supported employment. Either someone is at risk of falling out of a job or we can get them into it and, once they are in, can we help them to stay there? I would be delighted to go with the noble Baroness to visit that project but let us talk about this some more.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, I recognise the danger that has been pointed out. If you move from the specific to the general, you often lose focus. But do we not have a broader problem? Millions of our fellow citizens are unemployed or underemployed. Meanwhile, we have a load of artificial barriers in not just the private sector but local and national government departments, about people’s conditions, previous criminal records, often from decades past, irrelevant qualifications and boxes being ticked—with employers therefore not looking at people’s potential. Is that not the broader issue and one that the Government need to take on, for individuals and the wider economy and wider society?

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Debate between Baroness Sherlock and Lord Spellar

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, paragraph 45 refers to the fact that the economically inactive are

“more likely (than the population as a whole) to have no qualifications, and some may also face other complex disadvantages, including homelessness, drug or alcohol addiction and contact with the criminal justice system”—

I stress that final point. In many cases, especially regarding criminal convictions and paper qualifications, these factors become insuperable barriers to gaining employment, even when they have no relevance to the actual requirements of the job concerned. Given that the best way to get a job is to have a job, I ask the Minister to look critically at these discriminatory practices, which are as prevalent in the public sector as in the private sector, and are not only damaging to individuals and their families but incredibly economically inefficient as they impact on hundreds of thousands of our citizens.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, and I do not need persuading of this. One of the most inspiring things I have seen in the DWP—I did not start it, so I can say this—has been work with prison work coaches. They are based inside prisons, working with those who are preparing to leave, to try to make sure that we can get them into a job. I am working closely with my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, and our departments are working together to try to find the best ways in which we can ease the transition from prisons into work. When we look at the levels of recidivism, which are staggeringly high—never mind what happens in young offender institutions—we know that, if we cannot crack this, it will not only be a potentially lifelong challenge for an individual, which they will never really overcome, but a huge problem for the state, both in the loss of opportunity for that individual and their talents and in terms of future crime. My noble friend raises a really important point.