Amendment of the Law

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Liam Byrne

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I would rather have written a bad joke in public than a bad Budget in public.

Now we know—and now the Secretary of State has been forced to admit—that unemployment is not going to fall below 2 million. He will remember, just as we remember, the last time that happened. For those with long memories, what has happened is all too familiar. The last time the Tory party was in office, it took a couple of years to get unemployment above 2 million, but after that it did not fall below 2 million for 18 years, until the Labour party was elected in 1997. Now the Government have decided that that record of the 1980s is worth a rerun, or something of a repeat, because there is one thing that has not changed: the Conservative party still believes that unemployment is a price worth paying.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I am listening carefully to him. While we are discussing the figures, does he welcome today’s news that construction grew by 2.3% in quarter four, and that productivity was also up?

[Mr Byrne]

Of course, and the hon. Gentleman will also recognise that, despite the fact that we are some way out of the recession, today’s figures also confirmed that in the last quarter for which records are available, the economy shrank. I am not sure that that is a record of which he can be proud.

In the circumstances, I would have thought that the House could expect to hear rather more from the Secretary of State about what the Budget would do to get people back into work. The Office for Budget Responsibility is well aware of the Secretary of State’s Work programme and the Chancellor’s tax breaks on offer for business, yet its conclusion was the cold fact that unemployment will continue to rise. Every time the Chancellor stands up at the Despatch Box to deliver a Budget, he revises down his forecast for growth and revises up his estimate for the number of unemployed people in our country. He is costing this country a fortune.

What, then, did this Budget offer for jobs? Incredibly, it said that by the first quarter of 2013, unemployment would be 200,000 higher than was forecast just last October. What a triumph! Under the circumstances, we could have expected a rather bigger push from the Secretary of State and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to get people back to work. After all, his Minister for the unemployed, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell, told the Select Committee on Work and Pensions on 14 March:

“If there was a very substantial change in the labour market, one way or the other, frankly, that is the kind of circumstance in which we might need to revisit some of the assumptions.”

Well, 200,000 more people on the dole sounds like rather a substantial change to me.

What is the Government’s response? Some £20 million for work experience. This morning I had a look at the Secretary of State’s accounts for January. It would appear that his new work placement scheme, which was so proudly trumpeted this morning, will cost less than his Department spends on stationery every year. At the very least, we would have expected more resources for the Work programme. The Prime Minister is fond of telling us that the Work programme is

“the biggest back-to-work scheme this country has seen since the 1930s.”—[Official Report, 16 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 951.]

In fact, as the BBC has shown, there are 250,000 fewer places on it than Labour had last year, when unemployment was lower. The association of bidders for the Work programme now has so much confidence in the Secretary of State’s plans that it says:

“the design of the Work Programme is fraught with risks which may impact significantly on the number of unemployed people who can benefit from it”!

That is hardly a vote of confidence. When my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) asked the Secretary of State how much extra he had received from the Treasury to get people back to work, he refused to give her a straight answer, and we all know what that means: that he asked for nothing and he got nothing. With unemployment now forecast to rise, the very least that we could expect from this Secretary of State is to stand up for his Department, fight his corner and get some extra help to get this country back to work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

We have made it quite clear that we support reform of DLA, but what we do not support is a top-down, cuts-driven agenda that will deny support to 170,000 disabled people in this country. That is the wrong approach; the Secretary of State needs to think again.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The right hon. Gentleman is most generous in giving way. I have just listened, as has the rest of the House, to a whole host of numbers that he reeled off relating to where cuts would be made, but he has not said where those cuts would be made, or what exactly would be cut. Will he enlighten the House?

[Mr Byrne]

The deficit reduction plan that we put in place is spelt out in 38 pages of the March 2010 Budget. Will the hon. Gentleman tell me whether he has read it? [Interruption.] No, obviously not.