W2W - Plenary speech by Alan Cave and Chris Humphries

Alan Cave (Delivery Director, DWP)
Alan's speech solidified the vision of DWP as market developers, and reaffirmed their commitment to the black-box approach and payment on outcomes. He sounded a note of caution on Purnell's announcement of the 'right to bid', pointing out that this doesn't give the DWP a 'duty to fund' and that the Treasury would need to approve funding as appropriate.

Alan also spoke about the performance and MI issues at the DWP. As was evident in the New Deal performance tables, overall performance is notably below target on DWP contracted employment provision at present. However, they now have a monthly report on performance in all provisions, with traffic lights and key performance indicators. Flexible New Deal and a new MI system should resolve these.

Chris Humphries (Chief Executive, Commission for Employment and Skills)
Chris explained the skills and productivity issues facing the UK with solid evidence in the form of a range of tables and graphs of the present and future skills levels of people in the UK and other countries, which showed that other countries had substantially improved their skills base in the past 20 years while the UK had only minimally improved, significantly reducing its place in the world rankings. This was also related to overall employment rates and the forthcoming shortfall in young workers entering the workforce. A range of projects to gain a better understanding of the actions needed to tackle this were outlined, including:
Labour Market Information
Mapping
Employability skills
Customer journeys
Employee Demand Study
Simplification
Skills utilisation

I'll put up a full report over the next couple of days, but have to go to the opening plenary now!