Recommendation 6

The Department told us that, at one level, machinery of government changes were straightforward because one could announce them; but, at another level, there was a lot of detailed delivery work that needed to happen. It said that it was bringing over officials from the Department for Education into the Department for Work and Pensions, and the two departments were creating a joint unit to support the Minister for Skills. Budgets would formally transfer at the main estimates for the next financial year, and the Permanent Secretaries for the two departments had shared letters to clarify accounting officer responsibilities while they worked through the detail. The Department noted that a key thing to work out would be how it could ensure that Skills England focused its work on the needs of the economy, and how it could use labour market initiatives to underpin that.12