Pledge Watch: Mobile job centres

By Justin Parkinson Political reporter, BBC News

Politicians love announcing new initiatives. In this series we pluck a pledge from the archives. And see what happened next...

Job centres have become more hi-tech in recent years

Six years ago Gordon Brown declared war on "unemployability".

In a speech in Birmingham the then chancellor promised a "street-by-street, estate-by-estate" effort to bring the long-term jobless into work.

Part of this would involve mobile job centres touring unemployment blackspots, alerting people to the vacancies and offering advice.

Mr Brown drew attention to Tottenham, in North London, where there were 3,500 men were out of work, alongside more than 4,000 registered vacancies.

'Destructive culture'

He told the government's Urban Summit on 1 November 2002: "This will be an onslaught against the unacceptable culture of worklessness that grew up in some of our communities in the 1980s and early 1990s.

"Because we must break the destructive culture that 'no one around here works', we will extend access to the help available through the New Deal in those areas.

"But in exchange we will expect the unemployed to take up the jobs that are available."

If you have a vehicle that pulls up in your area, which could have a level of stigma attached - a bit like a soup kitchen - people tend not to go into it Andrew George, Lib Dem MP

Conservative work and pensions spokesman David Willetts dismissed the whole series of announcements as "one more bogus crackdown on the workshy".

However, the "street-by-street" attack on the benefits culture was all over the press.

Mobile job centres had already been tried in high-unemployment areas of eastern Germany, shortly after the reunification of the country in 1990.

But did they ever take to roads across England?

It seems not.

When asked about mobile job centres by the BBC, a Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman did not offer a specific comment on them.

She said: "Action Teams and Ethnic Minority Outreach initiatives were set up in 2002 and together achieved their key goal of helping over 150,000 people in some of our most deprived communities to move into work.

"Having achieved this we wanted to further direct our cash to help those most in need and so we replaced Action Teams with a new scheme called the Deprived Areas Fund, which pinpoints areas of deprivation and provides help and support to those communities."

'Full potential'

The