Tax Credits

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and David Lammy

Thursday 29th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman]

No, I do not. That is a pertinent point. I know that we will be challenged to find the money that is needed to reverse the change. We could find it through changes to pension tax relief or, very quickly, by reversing the changes to inheritance tax that we opposed and to which we remain opposed.

I want to illustrate the points that I have made in the limited time I have left. We have had quite a high-level discussion so far, but this debate is about real people. It is rare to find a constituent who is willing for their name and personal information—particularly on a financial issue—to be shared in the House of Commons, but I had no difficulty finding people in Darlington who were willing to share their names and details, and to become the poster people for this campaign because they are so angry about what the Government are trying to do to them.

Becky in my constituency lives on Red Hall estate and earns around £16,500 a year. She is a single parent, and her son is eight years old. She stands to lose £1,951 in tax credits per year. She told me that she is already struggling and has difficulty paying for essentials such as heating and electricity. Her salary will not change when the minimum wage increases, and she will not benefit from changes to childcare because her son is eight years old. I can tell the Minister that an eight-year-old is no cheaper to support than a four-year-old.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Amen!

[Jenny Chapman]

Becky has already had to cut out extras. She can no longer buy herself clothes, and the reduction in income will have to come from money that she spends on food or heating her home. She said:

“The Government told us that working was the way forwards out of poverty, yet these changes will put myself and my son into poverty.”

Her very real choice will be between heating and feeding her son. Many people will also have to choose between working and not working, and that is what concerns me most. I want everybody who can work in my constituency to get out and get a job because that is good for them, and good for their kids. People should never be better off on benefits than they are in work, yet that will be the effect of this change.

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend’s speech follows in the tradition of Eleanor Rathbone who was one of the earliest female MPs in this House from 1929, and campaigned for family allowances. Some of the anger that my hon. Friend is conveying via her constituents is because in this country successive Governments have topped up incomes, understanding the position of poor people and children. Churchill extended the system of family allowances. My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech, but, on her last point, does she also accept that people will take one, two or three jobs, and that we will have latchkey kids raising themselves?

Apprenticeships

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and David Lammy

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

In contributing to this debate, I think back to 2008 when I launched national apprenticeship week as Minister for Skills. I recall debates in the Department at that time about why anything that we said about higher education would run right across the national newspapers and broadcasters, whereas it was very hard to get journalists to write even a small story about the importance of apprenticeships. That is largely because people in that sector, as is now the case with many politicians, have not experienced apprenticeships themselves. It has also been the case that many middle-class people in this country have not considered apprenticeships to be a preferred option for their children. For that reason, apprenticeships have languished behind.

I therefore welcome the cross-party nature of at least part of this debate, despite its being an Opposition day debate. I congratulate the Government on continuing to hold national apprenticeship week and on maintaining the National Apprenticeship Service, which I launched. It is important that the minimum length for an apprenticeship has been set at a year. All that progress is welcome.

It is important to introduce some fundamentals to this debate—otherwise, many young people searching for apprenticeships in our country might think that we have gone mad, and parents who are concerned about apprenticeships might feel that we are out of touch. At the heart of our system is the understanding that we must be there not only for our own children but for others. In a sense, we act in loco parentis, and navigating young people through a journey into work is important and necessary. For so many—indeed most—young people, going on such a journey alongside studying is essential.

We must remember that teachers spend time working and studying, just as I did when I was a young barrister. Across many job areas, the apprenticeship—an idea as old as the human being—is necessary. Why do we still have a fundamental problem? Largely, it goes back to the central debates of our times: what is growth; what is the industrial policy in this country; and where are our jobs to come from? I think we have some problems with those issues.

We should be concerned that when we talk about apprenticeships, a significant bulk of what we mean are level 2 apprenticeships—GSCE level. If we are serious about giving people the necessary life chances, and replicating what we see in countries such as Germany, Sweden and elsewhere, we need to do considerably better and have more apprenticeships at level 3 and beyond. Are we in this House content that when we look at growth over the past years, 100,000 of the new apprenticeships are in administration, more than 60,000 are in retail and fewer than one sixth are in engineering and construction? What does that say about the underlying problems in our economy? Many of those listening to this debate want to know that when we talk about apprenticeships, we are serious about what they are.

Given that 55% of young black men in this country are languishing as unemployed, we should be hugely concerned about the ethnic minority profile within apprenticeships and—when people do get apprenticeships —about where they tend to be. Given levels of unemployment among young people, we should be concerned that so much of the growth—75%—is among those older than 25. All parties can be guilty of playing politics, but I was Skills Minister with responsibility for Train to Gain, Unionlearn and Skilling up, and 70% of these new apprenticeships are taken by those who were already employed, and that is not progress. Those people already had jobs and—let us be serious—rebadging those jobs as apprenticeships is not actually progress. It is of huge concern that we are now using the term “apprenticeship”, when we are talking about the Train to Gain programme.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a superb speech and indicating that early decisions made by young people and supported by their parents and teachers are not going in the right direction for our economy. Is one main problem the lack of decent advice that young people receive?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and we will not sort out that issue unless we get to grips with a serious problem in careers, information, advice and guidance. We struggled with that in government; we had the Connexions service but we got rid of it. I think it worked in certain parts of the country but not in others, and it was certainly good for more vulnerable young people. The situation now is that many schools with responsibility in that area are totally out of touch with the sectors into which we need young people to go if we are to be serious about apprenticeships.

The indication of decline is also significant. When Labour left office, my Department was spending about £2,400 in direct payments for each apprenticeship start.

That figure has now fallen to £1,600, and is part of the dressing up of what constitutes an apprenticeship.

I hope we will begin to get serious about what an apprenticeship is, and recognise that young people are concerned that they will just go round and round in circles and not end up with a proper job. A proper job is where we need to get to, and we should keep a close eye on both completion rates and success rates. If we go back in time, the legacy of a former Government was an apprenticeship that one did not finish, and one did not get a job at the end of it.