Viscount Younger of Leckie

Bringing together the National Careers Service with Jobcentre Plus in England and the creation of a new Jobs and Careers Service will form a key part of our plans to transform our employment support, as we set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper.

We will deliver this transformation using a test and learn approach, allowing us to gather evidence based on small-scale tests, iterate the service design, and scale up interventions that meet success criteria. Through this approach, lessons from our small-scale tests will be taken into consideration as part of our plans to bring the two services together.

At the Autumn Budget, the government announced £55m to take forward the first steps of building, testing and trialling the new service in 2025/26. Departmental budgets for the next Spending Review period will be outlined by the Chancellor in due course.

As a start to our commitment to better integrate employment support and careers advice in England, we have launched a data sharing agreement between the Department for Education (DfE) and DWP. This will encourage ‘join-up’ of our services and promote a more streamlined process for our customers ahead of the new service. We will continue to work closely with the DfE as we develop the new service, including careers advisers, who will be able to share their experiences, views and ideas around how we deliver careers services in the future.

The National Careers Service provides free, up to date, impartial careers information and advice for citizens aged 13+, plus in-depth careers guidance from 19+, and can help people make informed decisions on learning, training, and work at all stages in their career.

As we set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper, we are reforming Jobcentre Plus, and in England bringing it together with the National Careers Service, to help get more people into work and help them get on at work, including through greater focus on skills and careers. We are starting a test and learn approach to develop the new service, ensuring that we develop a service that is locally tailored and embedded, designed to meet the different needs of local labour markets, local people and local employers.

As a start to our commitment to better integrate employment support and careers advice in England, we have launched a data sharing agreement between the Department for Education (DfE) and DWP. This will encourage ‘join-up’ of our services and promote a more streamlined process for our customers ahead of the new service. We will continue to work closely with the DfE to develop the new service, including career advisers, who will be able to share their experiences, views and ideas around how we deliver careers services in the future.

We have set out proposals to reform the health and disability benefits proposals in the Pathways to Work Green Paper published on 18 March 2025. A full suite of accessible versions is available including Audio, British Sign Language, Braille, Large Print and Easy Read.

The consultation will close on 30 June 2025, to ensure that everyone has sufficient time to engage with and respond to the consultation.

We want to improve and refine our plans by consulting on certain measures as described within the paper. We are committed to putting the views and voices of disabled people and people with health conditions at the heart of everything we do.

The Green Paper is an important staging post on a journey of reform, building on the vision and approach set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper in November 2024. It sets out our vision, strategy and proposals for change. We would like to hear views from a wide group of people, in particular disabled people and people with health conditions and disability organisations and encourage responses to the consultation through the online form, email and post.

We are also running a number of accessible virtual and face-to-face events on the Green Paper to hear from stakeholders, including disabled people and their representative organisations, directly. More information on these events and registration are available on GOV.UK.

In the Green Paper, we have also announced that we will set up collaboration committees to develop parts of our reforms further. This will involve bringing together disabled people and other experts with civil servants around specific issues to collaborate, provide ideas, challenge, and input into recommendations.

Table 1 shows the estimated corrections to benefit claims associated with the costing entitled “Welfare Fraud and Error: Recruit over 500 new counter fraud and error staff from April 2025”. This costing is described on page 15 of the Spring Statement 2025: Policy Costings document which accompanied the publication of the Spring Statement.

Table 1. Forecast corrections to benefit claims

Caveats:

• Numbers are rounded to the nearest 10,000.
• Corrections to benefit claims includes both overpayments and underpayments.

The methodology underpinning this forecasts is outlined on page 15 of the Spring Statement 2025: Policy Costings document which accompanied the publication of the Spring Statement.

The cost base

The cost base for this measure is estimated using DWP data on performance of current fraud and error programmes and current and forecasted levels of fraud and error in DWP benefits, including national statistics on DWP fraud and error.

Costing

The costing is estimated by taking the performance of the Verify Earnings and Pensions Service and the General Matching Service and applying this to forecasted levels of DWP benefit expenditure. This produces the savings achieved from correcting payments that were incorrect in the past, as well as correcting payments that would have otherwise been incorrect in the future without DWP’s intervention.

It is the customer’s responsibility to report change of circumstances impacting their entitlement to benefit to the Department for Work and Pensions. By providing additional resource to action data alerts we are taking action to more promptly detect and correct under, and overpayments.

The Government inherited a £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances, which has required necessary choices around spending priorities. Despite this backdrop, we were determined to identify the funding required to support additional places for NHS Talking Therapies and individual placement and support schemes.

The Get Britain Working White Paper confirms the Government’s commitment to expand access to both services, to help thousands of people with common or severe mental illness to find and keep employment

The Government inherited a £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances, which has required necessary choices around spending priorities. Despite this backdrop, we were determined to identify the funding required to support additional places for NHS Talking Therapies and individual placement and support schemes.

The Get Britain Working White Paper confirms the Government’s commitment to expand access to both services, to help thousands of people with common or severe mental illness to find and keep employment

The Government inherited a £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances, which has required necessary choices around spending priorities. Despite this backdrop, we were determined to identify the funding required to support additional places for NHS Talking Therapies and individual placement and support schemes.

The Get Britain Working White Paper confirms the Government’s commitment to expand access to both services, to help thousands of people with common or severe mental illness to find and keep employment

The Government inherited a £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances, which has required necessary choices around spending priorities. Despite this backdrop, we were determined to identify the funding required to support additional places for NHS Talking Therapies and individual placement and support schemes.

The Get Britain Working White Paper confirms the Government’s commitment to expand access to both services, to help thousands of people with common or severe mental illness to find and keep employment

The government intends to provide guidance in due course to strategic authorities and to Local Government Pension Scheme funds and asset pools, including on working together to increase local investment.