Welfare Reform

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, for concentrating on the important issue of what good health and ill health are, which is extraordinarily difficult to pin down. I am sure that he believes as I do that the well-springs of health are around basic social skills and a sense of meaning and community. When we put people on inactive benefits, we are taking away from them the well-springs of health. It is vital that we help people back into work, which is such an important contributor to their psychosocial well-being. We will watch the WCA very closely to make sure that it does its job, so that we can have the opportunity to get people back to work.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister for missing the beginning of this Statement, but I have listened with great care to what he has said in response to questions. I think that all of us in this House will share the objective of supporting back into work those who are able to work. However, all this is predicated on jobs being available. The Minister spoke about 600,000 jobs having been taken out of the economy already. The Government’s own policies, particularly public service expenditure cuts, are destined to lead at a conservative estimate to about half a million jobs being lost, with an equivalent knock-on effect in the private sector. There is some difficulty therefore in encouraging people to go back to work while the Government are taking away the very jobs that they can do. What discussions has the Minister had with ministerial colleagues? What discussions has the Secretary of State, Iain Duncan Smith, had with his ministerial and Cabinet colleagues not on job cuts, which we know have taken place, but on job creation?

[Lord Freud]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. The state of the economy is a fluid entity in terms of where jobs are. While jobs may be lost in some areas, new ones are created elsewhere. We have already seen a good pick-up: 280,000 people went back to work in the last quarter. Independent forecasts for the next couple of years from organisations such as the IMF and OBR are for 2 to 2.5 per cent growth. That would create net new jobs. The jobs will be there, but they may be different jobs.