Meeting of the Parliament 08 February 2017
I am in my last two seconds.
The other two thirds of the building are being used by other Government departments. It illustrates the magnitude of what we are talking about, which is about redesigning jobcentres to be more effective instead of cutting services. If we held that in our minds, perhaps we would understand the proposals a bit more clearly.
Finally, as the minister knows, I am all in favour of co-location and linking devolved employability services and the like with Jobcentre Plus; indeed, I want more, not less joined-up working between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. I also fully accept what he said about two-way streets for communication and having dialogue rather than monologue on this score.
However, the fact is that, as our amendment makes clear, this is a two-way process, and the minister, for all his protestations to the contrary, has been—if I may say so—remarkably reticent in coming forward with concrete proposals as to how either Skills Development Scotland or the proposed new Scottish social security agency could in practice co-locate or link with existing Jobcentre Plus provision. Instead of shouting from the rooftops, a little more maturity might have realised better results.
I move amendment S5M-03873.1, to leave out from “will have” to end and insert:
“may have on people and communities; calls on the DWP to provide more detail on the timing and scope of these closures, alongside equality impact assessments; believes that the terms of paragraph 58 of the Smith Commission Agreement, which sets out that ‘the UK and Scottish Government will identify ways to further link services through methods such as co-location wherever possible and establish more formal mechanisms to govern the Jobcentre Plus network in Scotland’ should have triggered more meaningful dialogue between the DWP and the Scottish Government; recognises that such dialogue is a two-way process, and calls on the Scottish Government to make plain its proposals as to how Skills Development Scotland or the proposed Scottish social security agency could co-locate or otherwise link with the existing Jobcentre Plus network.”
15:07Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.