Streamlined skills and jobseeker support to cut ‘ballooning’ benefits bill

Chancellor also vows to ‘protect’ education priorities at Wednesday’s budget

Chancellor also vows to ‘protect’ education priorities at Wednesday’s budget

28 Oct 2024, 14:24

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The government is hoping to cut its “ballooning” benefits bill by targeting disabled and unemployed people with better skills, work and health support.

Mayoral combined authorities and several unidentified English ‘trailblazer’ areas will receive a share of a £240 million “Get Britain Working package”, aimed at the 2.8 million who are out of work due to long-term sickness.

The funding will “streamline” local services and fund the testing of “early interventions” that target specific barriers to work faced by the long-term unemployed.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Due to years of economic neglect, the benefits bill is ballooning.

“We will build a Britain where people who can work, will work, turning the page on the recent rise in economic inactivity and decline and towards a future where people have good jobs and our benefits bill is under control.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer first announced the move this morning ahead of Wednesday’s budget, alongside a new £3 cap on bus fares until 2025, up from £2, which is likely to impact on college students.

The £240 million package will focus on encouraging the unemployed to use existing local skills courses and employability support rather than fund new provision, FE Week understands.

Locations of ‘trailblazers’ will be announced in “due course,” according to the Treasury announcement.

Labour has pledged to raise the country’s unemployment rate from 75 to 80 per cent through several new measures including a board of labour market expert advisors, merging careers advice with job centres and devolved employment support.

Further details of government’s plans – such as localised work, health, and skills plans – are expected in a “groundbreaking” Plan to Get Britain Working white paper this autumn.

Been here before?

Language such as ‘trailblazer’ is not the only echo of Conservative policies in today’s announcement.

The Restart Scheme, one of several Plan for Jobs measures announced in 2020, also offers the long-term unemployed careers advice, coaching, training and wellbeing support.

The Work and Health Programme, launched in 2017, specifically targets long-term unemployed people with a disability, health condition or disadvantage circumstances with up to 15 months support including health and wellbeing support, work coaching, and training.

The £238 million Job Entry Targeted Support scheme, which ran from 2020 to 2023, also targeted people who had been out of work for three months with support including “specialist advice” on building skills.

‘Get Britain Working’ was also an initiative launched in 2011 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that included benefit reforms, work programmes and pushing local support services to work together.

Boris Johnson’s government also revived sector-based work academy programmes in 2020, a scheme first attempted under the 2011 Get Britain Working, that offers unemployed people a short-term combination of training and work placement, followed by a guaranteed job interview.

The Plan for Jobs also included free training for people without a level 3 qualification through the Free Courses for Jobs scheme and short, flexible Skills Bootcamps that are free for the unemployed.

Education spending ‘protected’?

On Sunday, Reeves vowed to “protect” education priorities at this week’s budget, including by committing £1.4 billion to funding the existing school rebuilding programme next year.

She said this as she repeated the new Labour government’s line that the party is having to make “tough decisions” in the face of a £22 billion blackhole in public finances inherited from the Conservatives.

But there is a lack of detail from the government about exactly what it means by “protected”. There have been no other announcements regarding FE and skills spending decisions so far.

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