Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the number of jobseeker's allowance claimants who did not have basic English, mathematics or IT skills in each of the last five years.

The department does not publish information on the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance who lack basic skills in English, Mathematics and IT.

Where a claimant's lack of skills is a barrier to them finding work, Work Coaches will make a referral either for an in-depth skills assessment with a training provider or direct to the most appropriate training.

Table 1 below shows the highest level of learning undertaken by JSA benefit claimants in the first half of the 2012/13 academic year (August 2012 to January 2013) for claimants studying at Level 2 or below.

Figures are estimated based on learning data held by BIS taken from the Individualised Learner Records (LIR) dataset matched to benefits administrative data held by the DWP. Claimants studying English and Maths have been grouped together, while claimants studying ICT are part of the ‘Other' category.

DWP does not currently have equivalent data for the academic years prior to 2012/13. However a back series of statistics on claimants who studied Maths, English and ESOL aims, from 2009/10 to 2011/12, will be published in the 2012/13 final Further Education for Benefit Claimants official statistics in summer 2014.

Table 1: Highest Level of Learning by Benefit Type, 2012/13 Year to Date (Benefit Claimants), Level 2 or below.

Source information:

The latest Further Education for Benefit Claimants official statistics publication, published in December 2013, can be found at the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/further-education-for-benefit-claimants-december-2013.