Meeting of the Parliament 08 February 2017
From the day that I discovered that the DWP had plans to close a number of jobcentres—initially in Glasgow and then across Scotland more broadly—I articulated my concerns about the proposals, first to the Secretary of State for Scotland, as the minister knows, and latterly in this Parliament and in the press. From the beginning, our priority has been to seek to understand the proposals, not to condemn or to condone them. Our amendment seeks to reflect that position.
It is important to understand the context in which the changes are happening. There are two elements to that. The first is that, in Westminster, there is all-party agreement—that includes the Labour Party and the SNP—that the future of Jobcentre Plus needs to be different from its past. The employment market is changing; the work that jobcentres perform is also changing. For example, it is increasingly important to the work of jobcentres for them to have the facility and the space to act as recruiting hubs for local employers so that employers can seek to hire employees at those jobcentres. That is much easier to do with a smaller number of larger jobcentres than it is with a larger number of smaller jobcentres. It is worth recalling that, in November 2016, the all-party House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee said:
“The future of Jobcentre Plus ... is one of change ... To make a success of its new, expanded role, JCP will have to ensure that it is open to working in ways that are increasingly flexible, adaptable and experimental.”