Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 7
60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025
Published 9 Jan 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We asked the Department about the merger of jobcentres with the National Careers Service and specifically about how it would do better at giving advice to young people about what their wishes and skills were best 7 Machinery of Government – Skills, HCWS930, 16 September 2025 8 HM Government, Post-16 Education and Skills, CP 1412, October 2025, p 6 and 12-13 9 Qq 19, 22 10 Qq 19, 22 11 Q 21 12 Q 20 8 directed towards. The Department said that there would be no change to the current arrangements whereby, for many young people, the first conversation with a careers adviser happens at school at the point where young people make important life choices about what qualifications to do. The changes would be to post-19 support for careers where the Department’s aim would be to enhance and develop the offer and embed it into everything else that is done at a jobcentre.13 The Department said it was excited about the prospects for the new integrated service, which would allow it to take a careers conversation with a customer through to a skills conversation and then through to an employment conversation.14
From: Public Accounts Committee, 60th Report - DWP follow-up: Autumn 2025 (HC 1447), 9 January 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 April 2026 (deadline 9 March 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with four of the Committee's five areas of recommendation and disagrees with the recommendation to publish regular jobcentre-level performance data.
- On integrating skills into the Jobs and Careers Service, the government agrees, naming "a key milestone" as bringing the National Careers Service together with Jobcentre Plus from 1 October 2026, with an update due in Spring 2026.
- On the shorter first work coach meeting, the government agrees and says it "will be undertaking a qualitative research project" to gather claimant insight, including feedback on the length and content of the meeting.
- The government disagrees with publishing jobcentre-level data, saying its view "remains that the right level to monitor performance is at a district and local authority level", and points to its quarterly Labour Market Insights publication.
- On PIP claim times, the government agrees and says it "will however write to the Committee to provide the information available as requested, by the end of March 2026".