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that jobcentre staff undertake an extremely challenging role in helping disappointed and sometimes embarrassed individuals to be restored to the dignity of working life and I do not criticise any individual in a jobcentre or any particular jobcentre. Indeed, I have visited my local jobcentre where the staff are hard-working and committed. Rather, I want to highlight some systemic issues.
Common themes highlighted by my constituents include the need for training at an appropriate level, the need for a more tailored client approach and the need to signpost appropriate executive-level job opportunities or agencies. Constituents have also requested that opportunities within voluntary organisations should be identified and promoted to help them to broaden and update their skills and CVs. There is a need to point in the right direction those who want to use their experience to set up their own business and it is important to provide the managers of companies in which redundancies are planned with constructive support in assisting staff with finding new jobs at the earliest possible stage—ideally before redundancy hits.
May I illustrate those issues through the experiences of some of my constituents? A senior project manager who had overseen a number of complex building projects such as a forensic lab, a theatre and a sports centre and who had managed many skilled staff asked for help and was sent on a training course to learn how to look for jobs online. It was so basic that he learned nothing and ended up helping the person running the training programme to teach others. He was sent on an interview training course, which was again so basic that he was told to shine his shoes and what to wear—wholly inappropriate for a man who had selected and recruited hundreds of staff himself. That was a waste of time and public resources, but for the training he really wanted, to update his senior construction skills certification scheme card, no help was available.
Another constituent of mine, a lady who had worked for a leading bank for more than two decades, wrote:
“Signing on was a completely humiliating experience. Professional people are just not catered for…I was less motivated coming out of”
the jobcentre than on going in. She also said that the box-ticking procedures could have been done by computer terminals.
When I raised these issues with Jobcentre Plus, I was told that in 2009 it had
including job search techniques, signposting advice and coaching seminars. However, a constituent of mine who had been seeking work for several months told me that none of that had been offered to him in an appropriate manner.
Another constituent wrote to me about his experience of trying to set up his own business, saying:
One might argue that it is not the role of jobcentres to advise on setting up a business, but at least better signposting to organisations that can provide such advice would be a good start, particularly if we are serious about encouraging enterprise.
From a separate but very serious perspective, this week I received an e-mail from a manager at Ideal Standard, the bathroom manufacturer that is closing a
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factory in Middlewich in my constituency. More than 250 people will lose their jobs there by June. He highlighted how difficult Ideal Standard has found it to obtain the right support for its workers who are facing redundancy and want re-employment. Although in other parts of the country there might be individual support and funding for retraining, he says:
“For those of us who live in the CW post codes, i.e. the Cheshire East area and your Congleton constituency there appears to be nothing; no support for retraining redundant employees. Employees are going through and coping with huge and major stress factors during this emotional change and site closure. To date, they have handled themselves extremely well, with professionalism, respect, pride and dignity, and I can only say how proud I am of them all. However this situation only aggravates and upsets people and contributes to pushing some beyond their limit. We have no control of this and cannot influence any outcomes. It is most unfair”.
Will the Minister please look into this specific issue raised by Ideal Standard as a matter of urgency?
Finally, another constituent has told me that in looking for work she was willing to work voluntarily to improve her CV and job chances, but she was told by the jobcentre that it was not its role to signpost her in that respect. She wrote to me and said that there is an
“evident lack of suitable advice/provision for claimants from a professional background…There does seem to be a gross failure and it is affecting a great many people’s lives.”
She wants to work. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
