Lord Freud has now spent over three years thinking, talking and planning for the next generation of welfare to work services. We saw much of his work clearly set out in the Conservative Manifesto, and then transposed into the Coalition Agreement.

I think there are potentially some enormously exciting opportunities created by his proposals. There is the potential for the extension of intensive assistance to far more people currently trapped in social exclusion as a result of their unemployment. By recognising the enormous costs of maintaining people long-term on benefits, and by creating a mechanism for using savings in those costs to fund service delivery, we are untapping considerable resources to extend the scale, the scope and the depth of our provision.

This is perhaps an opportunity to take out some of the unnecessary complexity in the ‘systems’ that surround unemployed people. Perhaps this is a chance properly to focus assistance on responding flexibly to the individual needs of people accessing welfare services. We could sidestep the agendas that so get in the way of people securing sustainable, independent futures. We could ensure that all the expertise in our frontline delivery is properly aligned, with real value derived from the money that is spent, with duplication removed and meaningful outcomes maximised. We could even start to see welfare to work finally join up, in funding and delivery, with associated services such as criminal justice, housing and health. Call me a dreamer, but we might even get some coordination between employment and skills.

There is a chance to create something here that brings public, private and third sectors into positive partnerships. Making that ‘p’ word work is, I think, dependent on how these services are contracted and subcontracted. It also requires a sea change in the transparency in this ‘industry’, with real performance data shared openly. Currently, Serco are the only prime contractor to publish weekly performance reports. How else can we drive up the quality and the performance of our services (and these two things are inextricably linked)? How else can we hold this provision accountable for the lives of the individuals we want to reach?