Mobile jobcentre vans won’t get Britain’s unemployed back to work

This solution to encourage jobseekers could be the daftest government policy idea since Theresa May sent poster vans into deprived areas to flush out illegal immigrants, says James Moore

Heading out on the road: the government hopes mobile jobcentres will tackle Britain’s rising unemployment (EPA)

Just when you thought we’d had enough stupidity from the government to last a lifetime comes another harebrained idea.

Last year, health secretary Wes Streeting was widely derided for suggesting the long-term unemployed could be given weight-loss jabs to help them back into work. So a new drumroll ... for the mobile jobcentre.

Live in an area of high unemployment? You’ll soon be seeing walk-in vans parked up on a street near you, full of work coaches who can offer expert support with job searches, CV rewriting and training courses. Stopping-off points will include shopping centres, mosques and (here’s where the stupid really comes in) football matches. No, really. Football matches.

Given the price of a ticket these days, I question whether you’ll find many, or even any, people in the stands who survive on benefits, even in those restricted-view seats in which half the goal is obscured.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re a jobseeker and your mates have stood you the price of a ticket. Do ministers really imagine that a jobcentre van parked outside the stadium is a place you’d be looking to visit before kick-off?

Picture the scene: “Hey, shall we get a quick pint in before the game? I’m buying. What’re you all having? Bob?”

“Um, maybe I’ll catch you up. There’s a mobile jobcentre outside the ground, and I want to go and see if I can get the help and support I deserve!”

“We’ll wait for you, mate. Maybe you can find a job coach who can do a better job than the idiot we’ve got picking the team!”

Sorry, but this positively screams “gimmick”. The sort of idea that gets floated during a ridiculous brainstorming session, or during an administration’s dog days, after two or three terms, when it is clear that ministers have run out of actual good ideas.

It’s scarily reminiscent of the “Go Home” mobile ad hoardings Theresa May had cruising the streets in 2013 when she was home secretary, in an attempt to scare illegal immigrants into calling up her civil servants for a ticket back to their country of origin. Needless to say, that one was deservedly trashed.

But the jobcentre vans idea has at least one thing going for it – a precedent.

We have become used to seeing mobile breast cancer screening vans outside Tesco and other easy-to-access places with high footfall. I’m told they offer a fast and efficient service, one that is infinitely preferable to the three-hour wait in a hospital waiting room; a potentially life-saving service, too.

But it’s hardly encouraging when you have employment minister Alison McGovern describing the mobile jobcentre as “an inclusive and accessible DWP solution that ensures no one misses out on the job support they deserve”.

Should McGovern ever lose her seat, she won’t need to drop in to a mobile jobcentre. There’s already a place for her corporate PR where they lap up this sort of mangled English.

None of this will do anything to help what is the biggest problem when it comes to getting people off benefits and into work: the precipitous fall in job vacancies, and the fact that companies are now firing instead of hiring, thanks to Rachel Reeves’s decision to plug the hole in the public finances by taxing jobs.

This policy has replaced one problem, that of labour shortages, by contributing to a worse one, unemployment, with all the ills that go with it. A bad economy is making the situation worse.

Mobile jobcentres aren’t a quick fix. They’re not any sort of fix. Solving those problems requires deeper thought and better ideas than what we’re seeing at present.