Oral evidence: Employment opportunities for Muslims in the UK HC 782Tuesday 3 May 2016
Oral evidence, 3 May 2016.
Witnesses
Helen Barnard, Head of Analysis, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Sarah Elie, Executive Director, Somers Town Community Association, Karen Galey, Head of Economic Development, Camden Borough Council, and Kirsty McHugh, Chief Executive, Employment Related Services Association, gave evidence.
Chair
Thank you very much for taking up your seats swiftly. I will try to get us back on track in terms of timing. Can I, again, thank you for taking the time out to be witnesses in our oral evidence session today in this important Inquiry? As I said to the previous group, I know how much time it must take for you to prepare for a session like this and, also, to then take the time to be here. Can I thank you on behalf of the whole Committee for doing that and lending your expertise as part of our discussions and our report? I apologise for colleagues coming and going; as you know, colleagues have at least three different places to be simultaneously and hence some people will be coming in and out. Before we kick off with our usual list of questions, could I ask you just to say your name and your organisation, starting with Sarah?
Sarah Elie
My name is Sarah Elie, and I am from Somers Town Community Association.
Helen Barnard
I am Helen Barnard, and I am from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Karen Galen
I am Karen Galen from Camden Council.
Kirsty McHugh
I am Kirsty McHugh from the Employment Related Services Association.
Chair
That is wonderful. We are going to kick off with Maria’s questions around the DWP’s approach to ethnic‑minority outreach.
Maria Caulfield
Thank you. I know this evidence session is looking at employment, as we move on from the universities session. Looking at the evidence, we know that all groups of Muslims experience the lowest rates of employment at 47.5%. Are Jobcentres and conventional employment services doing enough to support Muslim communities so they can find work?
Karen Galen
Camden Council commissioned work as part of its equalities taskforce to look at the key drivers of inequality in the borough, particularly around employment and the significantly high rate of unemployment among women—maternal employment—and particularly Bangladeshi and Pakistani women. One of the things we wanted to have a look at was the way in which we could understand what caused that unemployment. One thing that has come out strongly from that is the ability to build confidence in those groups. To answer your question about Jobcentre Plus, one of the things our project has demonstrated is that it is really important to spend a lot of time with those groups of women. Jobcentre Plus is primarily set up to get people into work, but some of these groups are so far from the labour market that they need a lot of additional support. That is one of the criticisms of the Jobcentre Plus approach and the current Work Programme.
Kirsty McHugh
Talking in the round, I am going to pick up a couple of points there, if that is alright. First of all, in terms of BME employment generally, if you look at the Work Programme as the largest outsource programme, the job‑outcome rate there for people from an ethnic‑minority background is higher than it is for white British groups. That said, if you poke beneath that, there are different outcomes across different geographies and different racial groups. It is not a uniform picture, but generally there is no evidence to say that ethnic‑minority groups are doing worse on the Work Programme; actually, they are doing slightly better. The Learning and Work Institute—some of you may know it as the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion; it recently changed its name—has confirmed that. Looking at Jobcentre Plus and outreach, I have a slightly different view from Karen in that I think a lot of Jobcentre Plus’ main purpose is around benefit processing. Of course, it also does the employment‑support element of it, but Jobcentre Plus only deal with people who are on benefit. That is what gets them through the doors. There are an awful lot of communities out there, particularly partners and predominantly women, who will not be claiming a benefit themselves and who, at the moment, do not come under the remit of Jobcentre Plus and therefore do not get any specialist support.
Chair
Can I ask one supplementary on that? You talked about outcomes for the Work Programme among BME populations. Is that data broken down further than that big sub‑heading?
Kirsty McHugh
To some extent, yes. The Learning and Work Institute have probably done the best independent analysis of that. However, I do not think they have done it for the latest statistics. I have to say that the Work Programme statistics tool does not make it easy for the majority of local authorities or other interested bodies to do analysis in terms of those sub‑headings. The breakdown is basically white, mixed, Asian or Asian British, black or black British, Chinese or other ethnic group and then “prefer not to say/unknown”. These are really big headings and, within that, there is going to be an awful lot of information that is quite difficult to get our hands on.
Karen Galen
One of the compounding factors we are finding, particularly in inner London, is that people now prefer not to say; they are not declaring their ethnic group. Working with the data is becoming far more challenging.
Helen Barnard
I was going to add that the lack of data and evidence is a real problem in this space. Particularly in the last few years, the direction of travel has been to devolve down to local districts and let managers take the lead on how they use funding. However, we have not had the data to know what they are doing, how they are using the flexible funds, who is benefiting and what the outcomes are, i.e. evaluating what they have been doing. We have lost all of that information, which means it is incredibly hard to say. One of the things we would like to see is much better data and evidence, so we can answer your question in more detail.
Sarah Elie
We have gone back to what I call “old school”. We operate in the ward of St Pancras and Somers Town. We have done it through an outreach programme of door‑knocking. We have used local residents. We have trained them up to go out and do real old‑fashioned listening. We have knocked on doors and asked people what their solutions were for their barriers. The Jobcentre Plus approach did not come out very well, but that is unsurprising. What they really wanted was far more one‑to‑one support. We spoke to over 330 people in that door‑knocking exercise, and 157 of them still said they did not know there was anything going on in the community in relation to employment, training or support. There is a disconnect in terms of communication. Primarily, people do not seem to understand what is out there—and then they do not seem to understand how to get access to what is out there. We asked them to come in and identify their own solutions. It was interesting to hear the previous people talking about getting the students to have ownership of their journey and an understanding of where they are going. That is what we are doing on the ground. We have found that has really worked. We are now working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus. We are working in partnership with the local authority. However, it is really hands‑on nitty‑gritty stuff. 71% of people accessing the Job Hub, which was their own solution, are women. Although they had issues with the Job Hub, we said, “That is fine. You have your issues. What are your solutions? Do not keep on saying what the issues are. What are your solutions?” That is what the Job Hub is about, but 71% of people accessing the Job Hub are women. They are starting to understand the issues around this. Maybe the Work Programme or the Jobcentre Plus may not be brilliant, but how would you change it? What is your solution? We have gone right back to old‑school door-knocking and asked for solutions. We are not high‑level data up here. We knocked on doors and asked 330 people, “What are your solutions to your issues?” We asked them on a local and a national level. That is how we have taken it.
Maria Caulfield
That is very helpful. I know the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have been quite critical of DWP’s approach to closing the ethnic‑minority employment gap. I would like you to expand on that further, Helen, but could all of you just say what you think of DWP’s current approach and whether it is going to be effective? If it is not, what are some alternative solutions?
Kirsty McHugh
In terms of DWP’s direction of travel, it is to give Jobcentre Plus a far stronger role in relation to employment support. That is going to have a number of consequences. We need to make sure the Jobcentre Plus offer is right. However, the focus is still going to be on only those people who are claiming benefit. One of the elements we put in our submission was that universal credit brings over an additional 1 million people into the remit of conditionality for the Jobcentre Plus regime. I am including partners of people who have made a universal credit claim. There are quite a lot of consequences there in terms of BME communities. We are not looking at an ultra‑local level, but we know that is what works most. If everything is going through the Jobcentre Plus tunnel, that is only going to be focused on people making a benefit claim.
Karen Galen
Our work has been focused on working with Jobcentre Plus and understanding better—and for DWP to understand better—the role of a more integrated provision, working with local authorities and services that local authorities offer around housing, benefits advice or childcare, and integrating employment support into that setting. We think it is really important to utilise lots of different points of contact people have in order to get this information. We all agree that it is quite often misunderstood. The other thing is about the payments model. There is something around the current offer. Payment by results is absolutely fine, but there is something about incentivising the ability of providers to go for low‑hanging fruit or to park clients who are more difficult to get into work. It is about looking at a payments model that incentivises a longer term approach to getting people into work. It is not just getting them into a job but supporting them into sustained employment and—this is increasingly important—in work progression, i.e. helping people progress in work. We are all seeing the evidence coming forward now about lots of people being worse off in work than they are unemployed. It is about ensuring that, through an in‑work progression approach, people have the ability to be supported into better jobs and better careers.
Helen Barnard
Yes, there are a number of issues that could be fixed. The issue around thinking about integrating into the local level is incredibly important, because local labour markets are so different. The few studies that have been done, looking at how people from different groups do across the country, show that they have wildly different outcomes across different parts of the country. You get a high‑level statistic that tells you, “This group is doing terribly.” You can normally find at least one local authority area where they are doing fine. Having that local‑level analysis is really important to target what you do. The idea of integrated hubs is something we have been looking at as part of developing our anti‑poverty strategy. We are definitely moving in that direction, saying that we would have a single set of hubs in a local area, led by the local authority, with probably a successor to Jobcentre Plus rather than the existing one. Developing better opportunities is just as important, so in‑work progression is vital. At the moment, when people get into work, a lot of the time it is low‑paid work. It does not take them anywhere and they are back at the Jobcentre Plus six months later. That is both discouraging and it does not get them out of poverty. Having that integrated approach is really important. However, in terms of skilling people up, there is something quite interesting here. There is quite a lot of evidence around on what the barriers are, what works and what does not. It is not brilliant evidence, but it does exist. When I have talked to people in Jobcentres, it is not at all clear to me how far advisers are really given the tools to use that. For instance, if you did a straw poll of advisers, how many would know that people with names that do not sound British have to send in almost twice as many CVs to get an interview? People in the industry generally know that fact, but how many advisers know it? You might have someone who is not getting interviews and you are just telling them, “Send in more CVs.” You might not know that for that person it may not work, because they are not getting interviews. Probably, what you need is an intermediary organisation, a career‑ladder type approach, where you have somebody developing relationships with employers and funnelling people into those and supporting them. Those are the approaches that work a lot better. However, there is this direction of travel where we are devolving responsibility to Jobcentre Plus district offices, but we are not necessarily giving them the tools, information and evidence to act on that—and then we are not monitoring to see whether it works. All of those things could be fixed, but it needs a level of national leadership to go with that devolution of action and local‑level planning.
Kirsty McHugh
It is worth noting that, if the jobseeker is on JSA, they will be the responsibility of Jobcentre Plus for two years, from next year. If JCP is not able to help them, they could well be stuck.
Chair
Can I press you on something? Kirsty, you were talking about the outcomes of the Work Programme for BME populations being better than one would expect.
Kirsty McHugh
Yes, by a couple of percentage points.
Chair
Which is the most recent analysis that would unpick that? You talked about the research done by the Learning and Work Institute. I am not familiar with that yet, but does it go into enough detail for us to understand why that is the case?
Kirsty McHugh
No. The latest DWP release of statistics was in March 2016, but, as you know, Chair, there is a time lag in terms of the DWP statistics. It does not give you the latest picture of what is going on. However, probably nothing exists that would give you the detail you probably want.
Helen Barnard
It is also worth saying that looking at BME versus white is not massively helpful when you are thinking about labour markets—just because the groups have such different profiles.
Chair
That was Kirsty’s response to the earlier question.
Ruth Cadbury
We have covered some of the areas that I was going to ask questions about. Thinking about access to higher quality employment support and better quality jobs, what would you like to see in the new Work and Health Programme to make sure that Muslim applicants get that help?
Kirsty McHugh
The new Work and Health Programme is potentially going to be tiny. It could potentially be a fifth of the size of the current spending on Work Programme and Work Choice. There will some around the Committee who will think, “Work Programme has not delivered to the extent we would have wanted it to.” Actually, it has done as well, if not better, than predecessor schemes—with the labour market over the last five years being rockier. It is not me saying that; it is the National Audit Office, the Work and Pensions Committee and Frank Field etc. saying that. We have had quite a success there. Not all groups have done as well—particularly those with disabilities and long‑term health conditions. The funding is not right and the profile of the providers is not right. We all know that; we all know what needs to be fixed. If the funding continues to be the bare minimum, as set out in the financial statement, I would suggest that a huge number of people are not going to get much specialist support at all. That is a big issue. About 20% or 25% of people on the programme will be those who are mandated at the two‑plus year unemployed rate. If you are on jobseeker’s allowance and you have been at a Jobcentre Plus for two years, at that point you will be mandated onto the specialist scheme. Obviously, Jobcentre Plus can purchase additional support through the flexible support fund, which Helen mentioned. However, there is a real lack of visibility about what is going on with that. It is not collected nationally; it is very devolved. The rest of the places on the Work and Health Programme will go to people with disability and health issues. There may be a real issue in terms of some ethnic‑minority groups accessing specialist mental‑health support in particular. Something I did not push in our evidence but should have done is that we have been working with Norman Lamb in the West Midlands on some of these issues, but we need to integrate the health support and the employment support if the Work and Health Programme is going to make a difference. However, particularly for ethnic‑minority women from particular communities, there is stigma attached to accessing mental‑health support—and they simply do not.
Karen Galen
To reiterate that whole thing around integration, particularly with work and health, we have to ensure that public‑health colleagues are involved in integrated provision. Being able to tap into that tailor‑made support that is only available from specialist health providers will be key. It is obviously concerning that the money is tiny and reducing, because, again, the work we have done shows that just having longer term and more tailor‑made support for individuals is the way to get them back into sustained work.
Helen Barnard
There is also something about much more of a partnership approach. There is a real danger, when we talk about this, that the whole focus is around what employment services do to get people into work. Actually, the biggest players in all of this are employers. The programmes that work best, when you look at employment programmes, are those that have a really active involvement from employers—ones that identify things that employers need, and offer training and support to meet those skills shortages. On the other side, employers then commit to employing the people who need it and helping them progress and so on. That kind of approach needs to be far more what we move to now. We need much less pushing of the supply side and much more of a partnership. Getting more employers to offer good‑quality flexible jobs is something that carers across the board need, but when you do research with Muslim communities, Muslim women will talk about that all the time. Many want to work but, like a lot of carers, they want to be able to fit it in with childcare. That traps them in either unemployment or low‑quality jobs. We know there are some programmes going on looking at that, but they are quite small scale and they do not necessarily think about the ethnicity and religion angle, which they could do. Similarly, with childcare, we need the kind of childcare that will support carers more generally, but with an added twist that you have to make it accessible for groups that tend not to access it currently.
Chair
We are going to come on to childcare in a bit; we will probably hang on.
Ruth Cadbury
Yes, and we have covered the question about universal credit. The witnesses have already mentioned universal credit as a barrier.
Chair
Yes. Does anybody want to add anything, though? It was mentioned sort of in passing.
Ruth Cadbury
Will the changes to universal credit have a particular effect on economically inactive Muslim women? Have we already covered that?
Kirsty McHugh
I think I have already mentioned that. Yes, because universal credit takes a household and family approach, it does mean that inactive partners of people who make a universal credit claim do then become subject to the conditionality regime. Letters have been drafted by DWP; I do not know whether they have been sent out yet. Certainly, my team saw an early version of those. They will come through the post to particular homes and they will invite usually the female partner to come into the Jobcentre to talk about their employment opportunities. In many ways, that is a good thing. However, there is a conditionality element of it. In theory, that household could be sanctioned if that individual, the partner, did not take steps to improve their employability and move into work.
Jess Phillips
Will that happen even if they have small children?
Kirsty McHugh
It would be down to the individual advisers to make judgments.
Helen Barnard
If they do not engage in the process, even if the end of the process would be, “You do not need to do anything massive now,” they are going to be expected to engage. There will be something very interesting here. We are seeing a high proportion of people who should be on JSA not engaging at all already. Take‑up of JSA is about half. That is worrying both because that is people in poverty and because it means they are not accessing any other support. There is a real danger that we will potentially see that go up, because the main claimant could decide to disengage if it becomes too difficult for the family or they are just getting sanctioned and they do not really understand why—and we know that happens a fair amount already. People do not understand those things.
Chair
Supporting women to be economically independent must be a good thing. That has to be something that many of your organisations would be supporting. Why do you see this as being problematic? I am not sure I have heard why you think it is going to be difficult for this group of women to become more engaged and show some progress there.
Helen Barnard
I suppose it is the issue of whether the engagement works. For what is currently being envisaged in terms of calling people into Jobcentres, the question is whether that leads to real engagement and whether it is perceived as supportive and engaging—or whether it is either not understood or leads to further disengagement. Potentially, there should be a really important role for the voluntary sector and for civic society here. Many of the people we are talking about are engaged with different voluntary‑sector organisations in one way or another. If that is done right, those organisations could be a really important bridge to get people involved in this process, to build confidence and to build connections, so they can engage in the more official formal processes. However, there is an issue with the weakness of the voluntary sector now and many of those organisations going out of business and so on. There is a gap there.
Kirsty McHugh
There are still a good number, though. They tend to be micro organisations or small organisations. You are right: what would be ideal is if, through this process, Jobcentre Plus were then able to refer on to these specialist organisations to build a sort of holistic support. I suspect there will be a bit of a command-and-control type of approach and there will be a tick‑box approach—and that will not happen, which is a real missed opportunity.
Jess Phillips
Is the concern that if, for example, a woman does not go along and a family is sanctioned, that family will move away from universal credit entirely—child tax credits, free school meals and all of the things that would have been classically paid to a woman? Would it not increase the poverty rates of those women? I have a genuine concern about it all being paid to one person, because of domestic violence, which is not handled at all yet. Is that what you are saying—that you are worried that the entire family will disengage? I understood you to be saying that.
Helen Barnard
Yes. We have no idea, but that is definitely a risk.
Kirsty McHugh
We want to avoid sanctioning wherever possible.
Sarah Elie
I was interested in hearing the earlier talk about how education is power. It is about getting out to those families, working with organisations like mine, making sure the Jobcentre Plus does work with us—so that we can get out and educate the families and say, “This may seem overwhelming; it may seem like endless forms etc. Please, please do not disconnect with it.” It is about working with the organisations the communities trust to help them to help themselves. That is the key here. We do work with Jobcentre Plus, but we are very different animals. That is the problem. I do hear what you are saying. It can sometimes be very top‑down. We have had some great experiences, but, equally, we have had some quite naff experiences. It tends to be officer‑based; it depends on who you are working with. But if we can try to instil in them that the voluntary sector is a very powerful tool to use, that might offset some of the loss of resources and the loss of potential impact.
Karen Galen
Communication is absolutely key. Working with the voluntary sector is important, yes, but investing in the advisers at the Jobcentre Plus.
Jess Phillips
Most of the voluntary sector will have to be paid to do this.
Sarah Elie
Absolutely, yes.
Jess Phillips
You cannot expect the voluntary sector to do the job of the Jobcentre for free.
Mrs Drummond
We have talked about the services and approaches. The Government is putting another £20 million into ESOL funding. Similar programmes have been run in the past, but have they been sufficient and are they delivered in an effective way? Obviously, that is part of the communication issue.
Sarah Elie
I have worked in Somers Town Community Centre for 10 years now. When I first went there—I was talking about this earlier on—we used to have massive, massive ESOL classes. We had crèche with everyone. It was really popular and really well attended. I have seen a drop‑off over the years. To start with, we thought there was a lack of crèche and it was because the crèche was not there. Then we realised that, no, even when we had fought to get the crèche back, children were going out to extended families and mums were not using the crèches. Gradually, we have realised that the attendees want something different. We had conversational classes; we had all manner of different styles of classes. At the moment, we are still doing the standard ESOL classes. They can still come in, and we buddy up with Westminster Kingsway and City Lit, but we are doing community learning now. We are finding the women especially really like that. We are doing community learning in cooking. We have the literacy and the numeracy still in there. They were making Victoria sponge cakes the other week. The smell was divine. I did not get a slice, which was not great, but they were learning together. Not only were they learning English, because they were reading the recipes; they were learning numeracy—“That cake will be enough for four. How do we double it up?” We are changing the format of the ESOL. It is the same with the gentlemen. We found that we lost our gentlemen‑only ESOL class, because we needed so many in a class but they kept on going and getting work. We lost the funding to run the course. We were looking at it and saying, “Can we maybe run the class between seven and eight in the morning?” ESOL is still very much needed, but the concept of what ESOL is and what we need to deliver is very different. I have seen that change in the 10 years I have been delivering it. It is needed, but we have to use a different angle. The cooking class is phenomenal. The women love it. They really love it. I might get something to eat next time.
Mrs Drummond
It goes back to that idea of national leadership but with local input, as Kirsty was saying. Are there other examples of where it has worked well or whether there is sufficient funding?
Karen Galen
There is a challenge around providing vocational ESOL, i.e. not just ESOL in a conversational setting but, also, the kind of language you need in a work setting. Some of that is in shorter supply than is needed.
Helen Barnard
In the whole research programme we had for four years on poverty and ethnicity, ESOL came up in every research project—even though we did not try to research it particularly. It is worth remembering that the additional £20 million is very welcome, but it is a very small amount compared with the earlier cuts. In terms of the amount it is going to buy, it is not going to get that much. There is quite a lot of literature on ESOL, and it does seem very variable in terms of how effective it is. There has been an awful lot of not very good ESOL around over several years. Whatever amount of money is available, it is important to go back to the evidence on the effective use of it. There is something interesting about the work. One of the big issues is ESOL for people who are already doing low‑paid work. An awful lot of these people are in and out of short‑term jobs. Going to traditional ESOL classes is impossible if you are working agency and you are doing two jobs. There are people around trying to find models that work for that group. I know there are various things going on in London n, but trying to develop that is really important. The social side of ESOL is also quite interesting. In some of the research we have done around social networks, people are saying that one of the few ways they are able to make connections with people outside their own community is ESOL classes. That kind of shared space and people who can create bridges can be a really useful spin‑off in terms of getting people into broader ranges of jobs, for instance.
Jess Phillips
We have heard again and again throughout this Inquiry that there are barriers for Muslim families and parents in accessing childcare. It seems to be for a whole different variety of reasons. What is the best way to increase information about the provision of childcare? Will increasing information make any difference?
Sarah Elie
The community centre I run runs a 48‑place nursery. The two‑year old placements Camden are delivering—I think that is Government policy—are really well taken‑up by the BME community.
Jess Phillips
There are free two‑year old places. Are they full‑time?
Sarah Elie
Yes. We only offer them for 15 hours, because we are a community nursery, but that has seen a massive take‑up. Again, we have spent a lot of time door‑knocking, going out there and providing information. All of the information we send out is translated. We have bucked the trend with that. We have not incurred a cost for that because we have used our staff in Somers Town to translate the documents. We send information out; we hold open days; word of mouth is hugely important. We go into local schools and coffee mornings to advertise the nursery, for example. We connect up with Sure Start children’s centres; we connect up with faith groups. We are really embedded in the community. We do not have an issue with take‑up. We also connect it with the Job Hub. It is all interlinked. As I say, we have quite a good take‑up for that in the centre.
Karen Galen
Camden Council has been offering enhanced childcare support of 25 hours for two‑ and three‑year olds, and it will continue to do so. There is a challenge, though.
Jess Phillips
Sorry, what was that?
Karen Galen
It is an enhanced provision that is paid for by the council.
Jess Phillips
Again, you have to move to London.
Karen Galen
Again, the take‑up has been phenomenal, as Sarah has said. It hugely helps people get back to work, but the big challenge is childcare that can cover part‑time work, i.e. flexible provision. One of the things we have been doing with this work is working with Timewise, a national organisation that promotes flexible working opportunities for parents. Camden is one of the first Timewise councils in the country. Linked very closely to that is the ability to be able to have flexible childcare and affordable quality childcare. That is partly what explains some of the lack of take‑up: finding that childcare that is affordable and that allows you to take it up in a part‑time fashion.
Chair
Is your enhanced offer dependent on having flexible childcare, then?
Karen Galen
Yes.
Jess Phillips
Well done, Camden.
Kirsty McHugh
In general, information by itself probably is not going to be enough. We probably all understand that. It is the same issue primary carers have, just writ large. The average number of children for Pakistani‑born women is 3.82. There is an affordability issue around that. It is worse in the capital, of course, but it is going to be an issue across the country. Part of the answer is about information; part of it is about trying to make it affordable, and we know the challenges around that. However, there is also something about employers and job carving and supporting the development of working options for people in that situation. It is worth flagging up that quite a lot of informal childcare networks exist out there. A lot of women will use friends or extended family etc., which is just a fact of life. There could be some culture issues preventing the take‑up of formal, public‑ or voluntary‑sector childcare as well, which is a factor to bear in mind.
Helen Barnard
We funded a little bit of research looking at this. There was definitely an information gap, so there was lower awareness of the free childcare offer, for instance, among certain communities. However, there was also something quite interesting. Many of the communities that have very low take‑up have incredibly high valuing of education. There is also something interesting here. If the message that early education was educational and not just childcare could be got through, there are certainly suggestions that could help. However, that does depend on improving the quality of our childcare, because most of the childcare we have in the UK does not give those educational benefits—and there is no point pretending it does. The issues in our general childcare system really impact quite heavily on some of these communities in terms of the affordability, the quality and the lack of flexibility. There is probably something here. If we can get some of those basics right—we have put together a plan with the Family and Childcare Trust on how that could be done—you could then have something you could really sell to those communities much more effectively.
Jess Phillips
The education gap is not something we have heard about. We have heard lots in the Inquiry about the cultural problems of people leaving their children with other people and attitudes towards women in work etc. However, that is not something we have heard about. It is interesting. Does anyone else on the panel have any examples—aside from door-knocking everybody in the country, which we all feel like we are doing at the moment—about tackling some of the cultural problems with regard to childcare?
Karen Galen
This is not about childcare, but I was just going to mention that one of the best points to engage with some of the communities we have been working with is at primary school. Again, that lends itself to that thing about education. Quite often something that has come up with mothers who are at the primary school and talking about issues is how their children’s educational performance inspires them to want to do more in terms of getting a job or doing other things. There is a very strong link there between educational achievement and aspirations for the whole family. That is worth pointing out.
Jess Phillips
I wonder, as well, about the change in childcare that is proposed for 2017, which says that you will only get the excess 15 hours if you are in 15 hours of work or whatever is £107. Will that make a difference?
Karen Galen
Again, in the work we have done, we find that when people do get into jobs they are very likely to use their informal networks to provide childcare. The motivation is more about getting a job—and a job that is going to lead somewhere. They will work their way around childcare. That is what we have found in our projects, which is interesting.
Kirsty McHugh
As an example, we have a member working in Bradford who does introductory courses for newly arrived immigrants, which includes ESOL, confidence‑building, communication skills, personal finance, and accessing health, housing and education services, including childcare. There are some examples out there. They are not uniform, however.
Sarah Elie
We connect up the dots. Basically, we have somebody coming into the Job Hub. If they have children, they will be automatically referred to the nursery or, if they have slightly older children, we have youth provision—and so on and so on. However, it is interesting that, in the beginning, we did not see a huge take‑up of the free two‑year old place offer. We did not have huge take‑up, but when you start to get a few, shall we say, strong role models from within the community, you cannot underestimate the impact that word of mouth has. It is far more than in white or in any other culture, if you get a few mums in there.
Jess Phillips
We have heard that again and again.
Sarah Elie
It is huge. We have seen a change shift. Last year we had 17 ethnicities in our nursery. That is in one nursery. When I first started doing it, it was a real thing. We had mothers‑in‑law turning up and saying, “Actually, that child is not coming,” whereas now we have seen a gradual change shift—especially when it is only 15 hours. It is only two days, and mother‑in‑law can still have the other time. You balance it out. However, you cannot underestimate the impact of extended families. We have seen a change, and we are working with the women, as well. We did a delightful project a few weeks ago around raising confidence, but it was a make‑up class. We got the women coming in. The children were downstairs having fun and doing whatever it was they were doing as part of the curriculum, foundation stage, yet the mums were upstairs having a make‑up class. It was confidence‑building. It was talking about them. They all had access to information around welfare and benefits. They could access the ESOL cookery class, but the children were safe downstairs. It was a safe, comfortable environment in their community—but that takes time. It takes time to build that trust and that relationship up.
Jess Phillips
I would like to stand up for mothers‑in‑law in the childcare sector. That is my entire childcare.
Chair
Ruth wants to come in. Just before she does, it is very helpful to have Sarah and Karen here from Camden and to hear about the Job Hub and the increase in the childcare. What would be very useful, though, would be for you, as a particular council, to see what impact that has had on employment. Have you seen an increase in employment among the Muslim population, both among men and women? If so, would you be able to supply us some data on that so we could look at that further?
Sarah Elie
We can supply some data on that.
Karen Galen
On headline figures, we submitted two projects as evidence to this Committee: the Somers Town Job Hub and Camden Parents First, which is delivered by Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre. The engagement figures are very high. For Somers Town Job Hub, 18% of women go on to get jobs. The current Work Programme figure is 8%. For Camden Parents First, we have 12% of women going on to get sustainable employment.
Kirsty McHugh
What is the 8% Work Programme figure?
Karen Galen
That is the general delivery of the Work Programme.
Kirsty McHugh
It is about 29%—and it is higher in London.
Chair
It would be useful to be able to compare that information there. I know you have given us some information in the work we have already, but, if there were some broader impact work, it would be really helpful to be able to include that.
Karen Galen
Yes, of course we can provide broader figures.
Chair
Then maybe I can ask the committee clerks to look at that versus the current impact of the current Work Programme, because I have to say I recognise Kirsty’s figure there.
Kirsty McHugh
That is the actual outcome figure—i.e. people who have been in work for six months—but that includes people who have only just started the programme. The job‑start figure is over 50%. That means one day in employment, but it may not go on to a long‑term job.
Chair
The long‑term figure is about 28%, though, isn’t it?
Kirsty McHugh
Yes.
Jess Phillips
That is not for Muslim people, though.
Chair
No, but Karen was just saying—
Kirsty McHugh
You have to compare like for like, exactly.
Karen Galen
I was not under the impression the Work Programme had been that successful, but the figures I am quoting are just to give a broad indicator. Obviously, the percentages I am quoting are in no way comparable with the Work Programme cohort.
Chair
It is a different group of people.
Karen Galen
It was just to give an indication.
Chair
It is useful for the Committee to look at the facts. One of the things we have had throughout this Inquiry is a problem with data and data sets. Where we do have a data set, we are really keen to look at it and look at it alongside those national data sets as well. I am sorry, Ruth; you wanted to come in.
Ruth Cadbury
I had a smallish thing. Making the connection between work and childcare reminded me that my first childminder was a woman of Pakistani origin in Somers Town. This was 21 years ago. It is only one type of job, but is there an opportunity and support for women who might consider childcare so that women of the same community can feel confident leaving their children with somebody they know?
Sarah Elie
We work with City Lit. Basically, we have just done an introductory childcare course. One of the issues we did have with that—this goes back to ESOL—was that we had 16 women turn up and we needed about eight of them for the course to progress, but there were real literacy and numeracy issues. That is why this community learning is so important. We had to take a step back and we are re‑doing that course next term to get these women through. We did not want to say, “Okay, you have not passed. Next.” We wanted to remain working with them to get them to a point where they could do it. However, we work with City Lit in terms of childcare. Basically, whatever they say they want to do, the Job Hub is there for them. If they say they want to do a course on floristry, we will try to achieve it. It is their hub and their space, but, yes, we do try to put the courses on.
Helen Barnard
Some of the research we funded suggested there was unmet demand for, particularly, childminders within communities and women who wanted to do it. The only word of caution I would say is that childcare is a very low‑paid profession with very poor progression routes. I have always felt slightly uncomfortable about the idea that we should be encouraging lots of women from these communities to get into childcare. If we could change childcare to make it a better profession with better pay and career progression, that would be great for everybody—and that would make it a much better solution.
Maria Caulfield
I wanted to focus on progression within the workplace, once people are in employment, and whether there are any particular challenges for Muslims in low‑paying roles. What could be done—either from the Government’s point of view or from employers’ point of view—to try to increase progression in work and routes into different types of employment that are perhaps better paid?
Sarah Elie
Job Hub has anecdotally found this out, anyway. It is quite interesting, because Camden is working with Jobcentre Plus to look for models to take across a two‑year programme, I believe.
Karen Galen
We have just commissioned an in‑work progression support package with Jobcentre Plus. We have only just started that work, but it is about looking at people in work and how we can provide more on‑the‑job support for them to progress. Some of the work we have commissioned as part of this, working with Women Like Us, has shown that people who have been supported while in work have managed to increase their earnings by, on average, £100 a week. That is just a bit of flavour of what being able to provide some intensive support while people are in work can do to help people’s confidence in terms of increasing their work chances.
Kirsty McHugh
Generally, the evidence on what works in terms of in‑work progression is fairly low. DWP has been doing a series of pilots generally around that. We know there is something about the flexibility of ability to access FE courses around work. Generally, if you are in an FE course and you move into work, you have to stop the FE course because it is not flexible enough for you to continue learning. People being forced to choose is a big issue. The example was given about ESOL as being one of the things people need to choose, which is obviously not a good way of doing it. To go back to the statistics confusion earlier, I have checked the Camden figures. Unemployment for Camden is 8%. That is what the 8% is. However, I lied to you. The job‑outcome figure at the moment is 26%, but that does include people who have only just started the programme—so it will actually be higher.
Chair
Is that post six months?
Kirsty McHugh
Yes, it is. For everyone who has been referred to the Work Programme in Camden, at the moment the job outcome rate is 26%. Of course, however, some people have only just started and will not have had enough time on the programme to qualify for a job outcome.
Helen Barnard
On the progression question, we have had a couple of projects looking at that. We found, basically, three layers of issues. There is a layer of issues that is about low‑paid workers generally and progression and the fact there are now very few progression routes. A lot of employers do not think about progression for low‑paid workers at all. Then there is another layer of issues. For many people from ethnic minority backgrounds, they have all of that plus issues around racism and discrimination, both intended and unintended, and social networks within the workplace. We have found a lot of stuff around informal workplace cultures. You would interview the HR team, who would tell you about their wonderful policies, and then you would interview low‑paid workers and their managers. It was clear that there was a clear disconnect between those two things—and the HR team, where there was one, did not know that. There was something very important about the gatekeeper role of line managers, particularly quite low‑level line managers. They are the people who will let you know about development opportunities, if they are out there. They are the people who can connect you up. A lot of people get their careers advice from their line manager, if they are getting it from anyone. It is incredibly hit and miss as to whether you happen to get a line manager who is good, who likes you and has any interest in your development. However, there is also some good practice out there. If you have organisations that take a strategic view and, at a very high level, care about progression for their low‑paid workers, they put career paths in place. They put it into their managers’ objectives that they should be getting their staff developed and that it should be equal across different types of staff. There are quite a lot of pockets of good practice around in the public sector, where people have done this using talent pools, traineeships and so on, i.e. quite structured programmes. However, there are also broader things like equality‑proofing and thinking about positive action programmes or looking at equalities training for managers—not just once but repeated training. All those things can really make a difference, but they do not happen consistently—and the data is not really collected to see whether they are happening and whether they work.
Sarah Elie
We are seeing that a lot of the gentlemen, particularly, who are accessing the Job Hub are off the sphere of jobs anyway. They are in low‑paid restaurant jobs with zero‑hour contracts. All of these practices and policies do not even register on that radar. The model we are going to put forward for this money that is available is almost taking 10 steps back from that. They have come straight into the country, walked into their uncle’s restaurant, and they carry on talking in their mother tongue and they have not even learned English. Through our networks, we are going to try to go out and say, “What is your own solution? Putting an ESOL class on or talking to you about higher education or talking to you about good employment‑law practices does not even relate to you. How can we help you? How can we help your children? How can we help you help your children?” You want to avoid creating another generation of people who think, “That is okay. I can work 60 hours a week below minimum wage.” It is about education, but also educating the family. That model is what we are trying to do at the moment.
Kirsty McHugh
It is worth flagging self‑employment generally. According to figures from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 25% of men from Pakistani origin are taxi drivers; they will be self‑employed.
Helen Barnard
We funded a project looking at self-employment and ethnicity to try to pull it apart, and it was quite interesting. Self‑employment among Indian and Chinese communities has been going down a lot. It has not been going down for Pakistani men. The research we funded suggested that it is basically about what jobs are available. As Indian and Chinese men are getting access to better paid jobs, they are not driven into low-paid self‑employment to the same degree, whereas that is not happening for, certainly, the Pakistani community to the same degree—and to others. There are also massive levels of over‑qualification. There is a real balance. Of course we need to improve qualifications, but something like 40% of black African graduates are overqualified for their job. The same figure is a quarter for white British graduates, which is pretty bad, but it then goes up for other ethnic groups. Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black African groups are quite high on that. There is quite a lot of potential there, which employers are not aware of and are not unlocking. If we can get those qualifications used a lot more, it could be very good economically as well as socially.
Chair
However, some of the data would suggest that there is a difference as to whether you are a first‑generation or second‑generation immigrant. What we are hitting on here is that data is really important and breaking down that data is really important. Certainly, we would be most grateful to see any further data you have on the efficacy of your policies, because we are not data‑rich in this area on the scale we would like. Are there any more questions from colleagues? No. Can I thank you very much indeed for your time today? It was an incredibly interesting session. Again, can I apologise for the fact that we started late and we have run late a little? I hope that does not inconvenience you for your other commitments. Thank you very much. We will now go to a private session. If I could I ask our witnesses and those sitting behind them to leave, I would be most grateful. Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Employment opportunities for Muslims in the UK, HC 782 21