Jobcentre Plus (JCP) has three key functions: providing a public employment service for unemployed people; supporting a flexible market; and protecting and enforcing benefit claimants’ rights and responsibilities, including through conditionality and benefit sanctions.
This inquiry will examine JCP’s effectiveness, and consider how its role may need to change, within the context of current and ongoing welfare reforms, including the introduction of Universal credit to replace a number of working-age benefits and tax credits and the implementation of a cap on the total value of benefits which can be received by a household. The effectiveness of JCP’s core employment services and its role as a “gatekeeper” to contracted-out services will be considered. Recent changes to the governance arrangements for JCP and options for more radical future changes are also within the scope of the inquiry.