Recruitment agencies only have a limited role in helping long-term benefit claimants into work, Peter Hain, the work and pensions secretary, has told Recruiter.

Ironically Hain's comments came after he signed up Randstad UK to join the government's Local Employment Partnerships (LEPs) — a £1bn initiative to get 250,000 long-term benefit claimants into work by December 2010.

"I think recruitment agencies do a valuable job," said Hain. But he added: "This is complicated and expensive stuff. Very few recruitment agencies recruit people straight off benefits — it's a different kind of area." Although he said that agencies that were contracted out to work with disadvantaged groups "do a great job".

However, Lisa Gainsford, operations director for Randstad Inhouse Services, who signed an LEP with Jobcentre Plus at the event, said that an LEP in the Black Country had proved so successful that LEPs would now be extended to the whole of Randstad. "The signing-up today is absolutely about the whole of Randstad," she told Recruiter.

The process works by Randstad and its client agreeing that the client's opportunities are suitable for the long-term unemployed. Randstad then signs an LEP with Jobcentre Plus, so that when vacancies are notified to Jobcentre Plus they are tagged up as providing special help to make long-term unemployed applicants job ready, such as job trials of up to 15 days or training.

"For us it's to do with giving something back," said Gainsford. However, the company also expected business benefits. "If we help people for whom there is no way into the labour market, those people are going to work with us for a long time. Recruitment agencies have always given people a chance, but this is more structured."

Earlier Hain told the audience that while Jobcentre Plus was "not in competition" with private recruitment agencies, and "worked very closely" with them "we work with people who have more barriers [to getting into work]."