Employment

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the simple fact is that the number of people working part-time who want to work full-time has had the largest but one drop over the last 12 months that we have ever seen—down 1.7%. Clearly, one needs an economy recovering. We have had a terrible shock to this economy—it went down 6%. We are now pulling people back and, as the Bank of England Governor said, what will get everyone working to the extent that they want to work will be improving productivity in this economy.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that I have often raised the issue of carers, who are grossly underpaid because they are paid only for the jobs they do—going in for 15 minutes or half an hour—and nothing for travel between jobs. Is he also aware—I have met such cases—that there are people who have worked as carers for all their lives but when their client dies and they go for re-employment, because they have been so loyal to them over many years they are told that they must take voluntary work? What they desperately need is an income to live on and they have to take voluntary work before they will be considered even for a job paid at the very poor rate of something like £2 an hour, which they get because they are considered to be self-employed. Does he not think that that is an abuse of this whole employment system?

[Lord Freud]

We are most concerned that people should be able to work as much as they want to. We are creating a new system to allow that, supporting people as they progress, in universal credit, into full-time work. We have extensive in-work progression trials right round the country, to find ways in which we can most effectively support people to work the amount that they want to and get the earnings that they need.