Minister for Employment Alison McGovern visits Blackpool
This week I visited the Job Centre. I wasn’t signing on this time, but I have done before, so I know how hard the staff there work – going above and beyond to help people in Blackpool, where one in four people claim out of work benefits, into employment.
I was there to welcome my Westminster colleague and fellow North West MP Alison McGovern, the new Minister for Employment in the Department for Work and Pensions. Together we met work coaches and users of the Job Centre to discuss the specific challenges to employment in Blackpool and how they can help inform government policy.
It’s nearly 15 years since former Chancellor George Osborne launched his series of systematic cuts to the benefits system. The Conservatives and the mainstream media set about demonising those who rely on them and scapegoating them for the challenges the country faced. But along with our NHS, the welfare state is our proudest institution. Based on the Beveridge Report of 1942 it set out to abolish the five evils of squalor, want, disease, ignorance and idleness. In 2024 it is clear that, like the NHS, the welfare state is broken.
Despite the hard work of Job Centre staff there is no getting away from the feelings many people now associate with visiting. Alison said the box-ticking culture of attending appointments needs to end. Work coaches are keen to get away from this too and the consensus was that staff need to be closer to the community – available to talk to in safe spaces to help engage with those who have a fear or distrust of the service.
Staff from the Job Centre with myself and Alison McGovern (second left)
During my election campaign I made a pledge to host a jobs fair for Blackpool. Over the past few weeks I have been busy building relationships with employers and other partners to ensure it will bring together the best opportunities for people to get back into work or develop their careers. The minister expressed her support for the event and senior staff at the Job Centre agreed to work with me to make it the best it can be. The event will be held in February and I look forward to sharing more details with you in due course.
After the Job Centre we drove across town to visit The Grange – a fantastic community centre in the heart of Blackpool’s biggest post-war housing estate. Dating back to the Thatcher era, housing estates were another victim of the Conservatives’ war on the poor but when they were built en masse by the post-war Labour government they had a transformative impact. My grandparents were proud to receive their keys to their council house on Grange Park – this was good quality housing where, as housing minister Nye Bevan put it, “the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to one another”.
This sense of community is thankfully still evident at The Grange where we met with members of Blackpool’s Co-production Team who fight for system change and social justice. Representatives came from the NSPCC, Blackpool’s Better Start, Citizens Advice, Blackpool’s Integrated Care Board and parents.
Alison told them just how important their lived experience is in forming policy and asked them what they would like to see from this government. Tracy Hopkins, CEO at Blackpool Citizens Advice, told us that long-term investments rather than sporadic injections of cash are what’s needed to make a difference. Every single day she hears from people who don’t have a voice – marginalised groups who are at the sharp end of poverty and who aren’t being listened to.
Staff from Blackpool Family Hubs described how parents are unplugging their fridges because they can’t afford to keep them on. And how they felt forced to use the top up in benefits they received for food during the summer holidays to buy school uniform instead. That Blackpool schools insist on branded items, that are only available at great expense from one or two select shops, creates a stigma among children whose families can’t afford them. Some children aren’t going to school because they’re embarrassed they don’t have branded uniform, they said. The Family Hubs gave out thousands of pounds worth of free uniform over the summer and there was a big take up, but some schools weren’t represented and this is a service they want to improve.
Alison said she doesn’t want to write a strategy about how to end child poverty. Instead she wants to write a strategy about how our kids can have a good childhood. I have said repeatedly that Blackpool has the solutions to its own problems – we just need the investment to ensure we can implement them. Alison agreed. She recognised that our town has a lot of opportunities. The challenge for the state is to work out how to make the most of them.
The minister made a clear commitment to Blackpool, which she feels the rest of the country can learn a lot from. The DWP is determined to listen to those with experience on the ground here. This local approach instead of a top-down “Westminster knows best” attitude, which is completely broken, she said, is vital. Under the new Labour government the DWP is not a department to be feared – one that punishes and scapegoats people who have the least. It’s one that will lift people out of poverty and take care of us when we need it.
