The space around skills, employment, benefits, and work-related health is a messy one, and as such it has been subject in the recent past to a range of initiatives and ideas that attempt to bring these strands together – with limited success.

It’s a popular policy space precisely because it is so central to solving the twin puzzles of productivity and growth. But, on a more tangible level, it addresses numerous pain points experienced by young people and their families around the shift from (compulsory) full time education to employment.

In England, we have three systems with overlapping offers that don’t really talk to each other as well as they could. On the education side of the equation sits the National Careers Service, on the work and pensions end we have Jobcentre Plus (with links to benefits availability). Both offer support, give advice, and highlight opportunities – both primarily focus on those currently outside of the education system and generally sit separately to the third strand of careers support hosted in schools and colleges.

While every end of the careers sector boasts stories of success and employs talented and passionate staff (don’t worry, the government has a plan to train more of them!), it’s clear that as a whole the service isn’t working as well as it needs to. Most notably, the link to employer needs (especially local needs) is inconsistent, and employers tend not to use Jobcentre Plus to recruit the staff they need.

Central to the Get Britain Working white paper is the rationalisation of careers services into a single body working across the whole of Great Britain. The watchwords are flexibility (even as a centralised service it will work flexibly to meet local needs), personalisation (it will address individual needs rather than compliance), and digitalisation (for example, it will no longer be required to meet careers coaches in a job centre, and a new data sharing agreement between DWP and DfE will bring more of the insights into skills needs that Skills England has been generating).

It’s early doors at this stage, but consultation with employers and local government will help shape a pilot due in 2025 – with a full service following in due course.

However, what is not clear is the link to what we might call the “education” end of the Department for Education. As above – schools, college, and (yes) universities all run careers services. These link very well to other parts of the education system, and sporadically well to employers (especially those who offer apprenticeships): however, they appear to sit outside this grand national service.

There’s a lot to be welcomed with a focus on those not in education. Those who end formal education without qualifications or a firm destination in mind tend to have worse outcomes than pretty much anyone – any intervention that can support them, and others seeking work, in moving on is a wonderful thing. But the vast majority of people go on to another educational destination after school, and it is a careers service that points them in that direction. Likewise, it may well be provider-based career support that drives the uptake of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.

Both Liz Kendall’s statement in the Commons and the appearance of Jacqui Smith and Alison McGovern at the Lord’s Industry and Regulators Committee saw questions that repeated the assertion that young people were being steered towards the academic higher education route by staff who had never experienced the alternatives. Though the perception is that younger people do not consider apprenticeships or vocational pathways, the reality is that the problems are at the supply side – as the slow rollout of T levels has demonstrated it is very difficult to involve employers in the training of school leavers.

That’s the end of things that Skills England, and – locally – the Local Schools Improvement Plans (LSIPs) is meant to address. Matching employer demand for skills, employer willingness to train, and state support for skills provision in the broadest sense will also filter into the new single national careers service.

The strategy is ambitious – the white paper also links into improving health support for those who are able to re-enter the workforce, and to the industrial strategy that contains the wider government perspective on the future of employment and industry. Also in the mix will be a strategy on post-16 education, and something of similar scope dealing with higher education: both due in the new year. There are a lot of moving parts – today’s white paper sees a bigger picture starting to emerge.