Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his Department's policy is on the setting of time limits for jobseekers' interviews with their work coaches.

Work Coaches working with their local managers are best placed to identify the support and guidance that is appropriate to each claimant to help them move in to work as quickly as possible.

The length of the appointment and the number of times that a Work Coach sees a claimant is dependent upon which conditionality group they are placed in. As an example those claimants undertaking Intensive Work Search are required to attend mandatory face to face weekly interventions for the first 13 weeks of their claim

Work Coaches have the flexibility to apply easements for attendance, for example:

• temporary absence to receive medical treatment,
• bereavement of partner or child,
• domestic Violence,
• child in distress,
• drug/alcohol dependent,
• carrying out public duty,
• periods of sickness,
• claimant in prison,
• witness protection