21st January 2025
This report recommends a major structural change to getting economically inactive people into work, based on decades of evidence from Scandinavia and recent success in the Netherlands. Localised and place-based employment support services are more effective than centralised systems to help the unsure and discouraged back into sustainable jobs.
It recommends devolving employment support and adult education services, but leaving benefit administration where it is, at the centre. On a 2022/23 basis, this would mean transferring around £6bn from Whitehall to local government, but crucially not spending any more overall. The report also contains best practice on managing key relationships, partnership networks and industrial strategy within this. The Government may struggle to reach its 80 per cent employment target without taking on board these recommendations.
It is an idea that can help regional inequality too. Carefully planned devolution to locally elected mayors and combined and local authorities over a sensible time horizon and with differential trajectories for different places can drive future development. There would need to be financial liabilities, policy delivery accountability, and imposed checks and balances, but all would be achievable within a robust rulebook and within the existing financial envelope.
A summary report containing the main findings of Going Dutch can be downloaded here.
