B

Baroness Sherlock (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 10 September 2026

Debate

Jobcentre Plus and National Careers Service: Merger

Contribution

I said in opening that the outsourced part of the current service, which is merging into the DWP, costs £40 million. As I explained, the final cost of that will depend on two things. We are in the middle of the process, where the staff who work for the various contractors at the moment are going through the TUPE process to work out whether they come over to us. The final cost will depend on how many of them do. It will also ultimately depend on how we choose to shape that service; we are not simply going to replicate what is there now. At the moment, for example, some careers advisers spend a lot of time helping customers to build up a CV. We have lots of tools available now which can do the CV building for you, so we really want people to use those skills to work more directly with people to find out what they need and what their aspirations and skills are, and to develop them. There should be savings in some aspects of efficiencies, but the aim in the end is a better service. What we need now is to get people into work, whatever their challenges are. This is part of that enterprise and we are going to do it.

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