Good morning, everybody. I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today and to talk to you about the UK Government’s hugely important plan for jobs.
As you just heard, I am joined by Margarita Morrison, area director for DWP operations, work and health for Scotland, and Jonathan Mills, our director general for policy at the DWP. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Margarita, Jonathan and all my department’s hard-working civil servants for the impressive skill and dedication—and everything else—that they have demonstrated in the handling of the unique challenge of Covid-19 and the health emergency.
All through the pandemic, the DWP and the wider UK Government have provided a comprehensive economic support package, with a focus on protecting, supporting and creating jobs. Our main focus has always been to encourage and guide people back into work, where going back to work is safe. We will continue to be led by the latest public health advice, and we will continue to work closely with the Scottish Government to support those who are most in need.
Faced with the significant pressures that the virus has placed on the labour market, the Chancellor of the Exchequer quickly introduced the coronavirus job retention scheme and the self-employed income support scheme, alongside additional measures to strengthen the welfare safety net, to support businesses and individuals affected by the pandemic and—most crucially—to keep as many people as close to the labour market as possible.
That generous support package was swiftly rolled out, and it remains in place for those who need it. However, our focus has rightly turned to supporting people across the UK back into employment.
We recognise that young people have been among the most impacted by the pandemic, which is why we launched the kickstart scheme in September. Brought in at pace, kickstart is a £2 billion fund to create hundreds of thousands of new six-month work placements for people under 25 who are on universal credit and who are at most risk of long-term unemployment. The roles are fully subsidised by the UK Government and will give young people valuable employment experience, which will benefit them in the short term by providing a sense of fulfilment and, crucially, acting as a springboard to improve their chances of unlocking long-term, high-quality work and opportunities. The placement could lead to a traineeship, apprenticeship or further education, and it will help young people to map out their future.
I am pleased that a variety of Scottish employers are already taking part in the kickstart scheme, including an employer in the west of Scotland that is offering an exciting programme for 200 young people in the cyber, tech and digital sector. Kickstart is open to employers of all types, shapes and sizes in Scotland, and we are working with local gateway organisations such as chambers of commerce, local authorities and colleges, alongside employers and third sector organisations, to encourage as many employers as possible to apply to be part of the scheme over the coming months.
In addition to kickstart, we established the new, enhanced DWP youth offer in September, which has seen the department increase the support that is offered by our 13-week youth employment programme to help young people gain the skills and experience that employers are looking for. We are also working with our network of external partners, who are delivering 100 new co-located and co-delivered local youth hubs, and we are expanding the number of youth employability work coaches, of whom there are 70 in Scotland.
In the spending review in November, the chancellor announced the launch of our new DWP restart programme. Representing investment of almost £3 billion in England and Wales, the scheme will help more than a million of our claimants who have been unemployed for more than 12 months. The scheme will launch in the next financial year, with £36 million being made available to the Scottish Government under the Barnett formula.
We have gone even further by boosting our sector-based work academy programme, or SWAP, schemes. Those schemes are for pre-employment training and work experience, and they guarantee job interviews that are linked to actual vacancies, perhaps in a different sector. They will give jobseekers of all ages the chance to develop and understand the skills that employers in particular sectors are looking for. The DWP is looking to further bolster that programme in the next financial year. We have already run 40,000 SWAPs this year to help people pivot into new industries; we are looking to double that next year to 80,000.
The new DWP job finding support service is an additional one-to-one scheme that has been established in response to the pandemic, to help those who have been unemployed for coming up to three months to increase their chances of finding their next job. With 12,800 new starts in Scotland, this new online service draws on the private sector’s capacity to help those who are recently unemployed to bounce back into new roles and new sectors.
In addition, our job entry targeted support—JETS—scheme has begun its roll-out in the UK. It will take off early in the new year in Scotland. We are currently contracting it, and it is on track to go live in January. That new scheme will provide essential and additional support to enable those who are unemployed for more than three months to engage with the labour market. JETS will offer personalised support for up to six months to help participants prospectively re-engage with the labour market and focus on their job search.
Finally, we need to add great people to our fantastic DWP family to help deliver those excellent and wide-ranging support programmes. Therefore, we are committed to doubling the number of work coaches in our jobcentres across Great Britain before the end of the financial year, and we are on track to do that. We have committed to recruiting 800 new work coaches in Scotland by March 2021, and more than 400 have already been recruited.
We are also undertaking work to increase our Jobcentre Plus capacity, to ensure that the service can be delivered in a Covid-safe environment for our employees and our claimants. We have reduced the reliance on face-to-face interventions by offering work coaches’ support via digital and telephony channels, to allow our claimants to access the full Jobcentre Plus offer without the additional anxiety that might be associated with travelling into an office when we have the impact of tiers and lockdowns.
All our new recruits will receive six weeks of intensive training to acquire the skills that are necessary to deliver the tailored support that our claimants need. They will continue their learning through on-going access to action learning sets and bite-size products—a learning hub that will help them build their confidence and skills so that they can continue to grow in their role at the DWP.
Thank you for letting me set out where we are so far. I look forward to your questions and our conversation.