Kickstart Scheme

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I can confirm to the noble Baroness that each region in the country has a regional director for Jobcentre Plus completely focused on ensuring that there are equitable vacancies across the country. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise the issue of the BAME community and the need for us to work very hard to ensure that they are not left behind. We are encouraging organisations that work with BAME young people to take part in the Kickstart scheme, which can include acting as a gateway organisation for employers in their networks. We understand the challenges faced, and our work coaches are working hard to use the £90 million investment that we are putting in to address the disparities in youth unemployment, especially in this group.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I encourage the Minister also to consider the 2021 cohort of undergraduates and combine their need for employment with the needs of SMEs. Would it not make sense to create paid internships of three to six months whereby those undergraduates work in SMEs and thus kickstart not just their employability but the SME sector?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The noble Baroness suggests a very good idea. Let me be clear: Kickstart is there to help young people who are disadvantaged and at risk of being permanently excluded from the labour market. I will take the option of undergraduates and SMEs back to the department and write to the noble Baroness. At the moment, there are no plans to change the eligibility for Kickstart.

Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the warm, albeit socially distanced, welcome that Members of this House have extended to me. It is an honour and a privilege to be here, but there is also a duty associated with our presence here.

It was a joy to have as my supporters the noble Lords, Lord King of Lothbury and Lord Owen. There were loyal friends to my late husband, Derek Scott. It was the closest I could get to him being there and sharing the occasion. I think he would have been proud of the three of us.

It would be amiss of me not to mention some of those who have gone before me. My old constituency of Birmingham Edgbaston has the proud record of having been represented by women for longer than any other constituency in the country. Dame Edith Pitt was elected in 1953 and was succeeded in 1966 by Dame Jill Knight, who entered this House in 1997 as Baroness Knight of Collingtree. She retired in 2016 after 50 years of parliamentary service. When I stepped down in 2017, I was succeeded by Preet Gill, the first woman Sikh Member of Parliament.

The last time I spoke in the other place I referred to Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in Parliament, who, on leaving, reflected that she would miss this place more than the place would miss her. That is true for all of us, but some leave a deeper footprint than others. In 1938, Birmingham Edgbaston was represented by the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. I have occasionally reflected on what he would have said had he been told that, 60 years later, his constituency would have been represented by a German woman socialist, born near Munich, and that it all came about by peaceful democratic means.

Last but not least, I come to this House after having shared a significant part of my life with my late husband, Derek Scott. He started public life as one of the first of the political special advisers to the late Lord Healey when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Callaghan Government, and served as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s economic adviser during the first term of the 1997 Labour Government. He foresaw many of the economic and political difficulties associated with the creation of the single European currency and the contradictions in the UK’s membership of the EU. He did not live to see the 2016 referendum, but his thinking and reasoning shaped many of the arguments.

I gave my first speech in the other place during a debate on social security. I told the House then that I entered politics in no small part because of my concerns about pension provisions in general and the unfair treatment of women in particular. In those days, it was not clear who owned the surpluses accumulated by occupational pension funds. I was about to write a PhD thesis at Birmingham University about the discretionary investment powers of pension fund trustees. I was ably supported in this endeavour by some excellent law teaching, which the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, reminded us about at the beginning. He was an absolutely brilliant company law teacher.

As I started this work, I met Jeff, now the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. He told me about the fate of pensioners of Lucas Industries. The company had accrued large surpluses, but, rather than increase the benefits paid to its pensioners, it raided the fund. A group of pensioners took the company to court. They not only lost their case but were told that if they appealed against his decision he would award costs against them. One day, I drove up to Fazeley, picked up the court papers and hoped to be at least able to incorporate their story in my PhD. Alas, the PhD was never completed. I became the university’s MP instead. The first committee I served on was on pre-legislative scrutiny of pension splitting on divorce, which the noble Lord, Lord Field of Birkenhead, may well remember, because I seem to recall he was the Pensions Minister at the time. Whenever challenged about my PhD, I say, “Never mind, I put it into law.”

That makes this Bill a very good occasion for me to be allowed to give my maiden speech. The Government are right to uprate certain benefits for the 2121-22 tax year, even if earnings do not increase. As several speakers have said, one year may not be sufficient, and there is a real question about the intergenerational fairness of some of our arrangements. However, I urge the Minister to make sure that whatever mechanisms we set up, people who pay their contributions have a right to know what they can expect and to have a level of certainty about the deal the state enters into with them. We should never forget about the poorest pensioners, but we should also not forget about women. At the time when I first entered politics women were handicapped by not being able to affect their pension entitlement other than through earned income. Some of that has changed but it is not sufficient, as the WASPI women would be the first to tell us.

I thank the Committee for listening to me and giving me the opportunity to take part in this debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Let me start by welcoming my hon. Friend to the House as a new Member of Parliament. It is interesting to hear the conversations among those on the Opposition Benches. They do not like success stories, such as that of the business in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I commend her local business. It is important that the House recognises the vital contribution that employers like FCS make in offering young people apprenticeships. She touches on a very valuable point: they support young people in the transition from school to the world of work, which we know is challenging for young people, and we will support employers in that.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Having served an apprenticeship under a dual system of high-quality apprenticeships, I ask the Minister to accept that employers have to play a much larger role in providing the skills space for our apprentices, and that just expanding level 2 apprenticeships is not sufficient.

Amendment of the Law

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

Labour’s jobs guarantee would help 150,000 people get into work in the first year of a Labour Government. I am optimistic that we can transform the lives of young people and the long-term unemployed, unlike this Government, who have left them on benefits. Funded by a repeat of the bank bonus tax they abolished and by restricting pensions tax relief to 20% for people earning more than £150,000 a year, our compulsory jobs guarantee will help young people who have been unemployed for a year and older people out of work for two years. Should that not be our priority, rather than tax cuts for bankers?

The Budget also reforms the rules governing pensions and annuities. The Opposition have long called on the Government to sort out the failing pensions and annuities markets, which result in too many hard-working savers finding their retirement pots eroded by excessive fees and poor-value products. So we welcome more freedom for savers to choose how to access their money and plan their retirement. Just as with last year’s announcement, we find the same failure to ensure that savers and pensioners have the support and protection they need to secure a decent and reliable income and to avoid the rip-offs that are already threatening to create another mis-selling crisis.

Just this weekend, we learned that with fewer than two weeks before the reforms announced in last year’s Budget come into effect, there is still no telephone number for the promised advice service, Pension Wise, leaving hundreds of thousands of savers exposed to scams that could have a devastating effect on their retirement plans. Instead, we have the ridiculous spectacle of the Pensions Minister trying to wash his hands of the responsibility by warning of the rip-offs that will result—without doing a single thing properly to protect people from those risks.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Any decisions about annuities are extremely complex decisions to take. Failing to get the advice lines up and running is not just a fault on the part of this Government, it is negligent. It is negligent to allow people this freedom without providing them with any back-up to help them make the right decision. What is more, there is no thought given to the remedies if the decision they take is wrong.

[Rachel Reeves]

When the Chancellor spoke in the 2014 Budget he said that people would be given “advice”, which was then watered down to “guidance”. Now, with two weeks to go, we know that nobody has received this guidance, yet people will be making irreversible decisions about their retirement income.

This Budget has been more of the same from the same old Tories: more overspends, delays and missed targets on social security; and more big promises for savers and pensioners that are not backed up with the support and the protections we need to make these reforms work.

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[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), and I agree with a great deal of what he said about taxation and the importance of clamping down on tax avoidance, although I gently point out that this Government, having closed the tax gap and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) pointed out, made our tax system more progressive, have a better record than their predecessor.

I welcome the Budget, which is about securing this Government’s legacy of growth, jobs and recovery in the economy. It is about delivering on a plan, and a plan that is working. To see that, we need only look back at where we have come from. After the previous Government left the biggest peacetime deficit in our nation’s long history, the deficit has been halved and we have started to pay down the debt as a percentage of GDP. We are achieving record employment against Labour’s legacy of mass unemployment, and growth against its record-breaking recession. The number of apprenticeships has doubled, youth unemployment has been slashed, businesses are confident to invest and people are beginning to be confident to save once again.

Under the previous Government, many people were afraid to go to the bank in case they could not get their money out. We took over in a crisis and at the end of five years of difficult decisions we will leave the country emerging into the sun. I remember, under the previous Government, walking down streets in Worcester where every third door displayed a repossession notice. Those streets now show none. I remember seeing unemployment in Worcester above the national average—well above 2,500 people. Now it is below a falling national average, more than halved since the general election, and long-term unemployment has fallen for each of the past 11 months in my constituency.

The number of people in work nationally is at its highest ever level and around 80% of the new jobs created have been full time. Opposition Members like to talk about zero-hours contracts and part-time work. Both increased hugely in the latter years of their Government, but they chose to do nothing about them. This Government have acted to ban exclusive use of zero-hours contracts and increased full-time jobs by well over 1 million. Labour Members also talk about a cost of living crisis, and it is true that over a long period wages failed to keep pace with inflation. This was the consequence of our economy being £112 billion smaller on their watch, more people being in competition for fewer jobs as a result of the 2009 crash, and the inflation caused by higher energy costs.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I shall not give way. I am sorry; I want to keep time for other Members.

However, this Government have presided over falling inflation, which is now at its lowest level on record, more jobs and, in the current year, above-inflation increases not just in the minimum wage, but in average wages and take-home pay. The crucial decision to cut income tax for the lowest paid contrasts starkly with Labour’s decisions while in power to scrap the 10p rate and to push up employers’ national insurance. Instead of driving up the cost of employment and taking more of people’s wages in tax, we have helped businesses to create more jobs and, crucially, let people in the lowest paid jobs—part-time workers and those on the minimum wage—keep more of what they earn.

As the Chancellor set out, families are £900 a year better off than they were in 2010 and the official figures showing this are borne out by independent research, which Opposition Members used to quote when it suited their arguments. The latest figures from the Asda income tracker show average family discretionary spending power at £185 per week—the first time since its records began in January 2009 that that figure has risen above £180, and an increase of £16 per week since the same time a year ago. In April 2010, before the general election, the equivalent was £172.

As a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee I welcome the fact that this Budget delivers further for business by cutting corporation tax to one of the most competitive rates anywhere in the world, incentivising the employment of young people and apprentices through further changes to employers’ national insurance liabilities, and launching the long-awaited reform of business rates. I welcome the extension of small business rates relief and the high street discount, as well as progress with the valuation system review but, as the Committee’s high streets inquiry concluded:

“The short-term tweaking of the Business Rates system is building up problems for the future and, instead, the....system needs fundamental reform.”

I look forward to supporting the case for fundamental reform. We need to look for a system that removes the bias against our high streets and town centres and rewards businesses that invest and expand. Business rates are currently the only area of taxation where there is not only no incentive, but a positive disincentive to take more people on, and this needs to change. I know that the British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses have warmly welcomed the commitment to reform, and I hope that both will be extensively consulted on how it can best be delivered.

I also welcome the continuing focus on investing in skills and helping businesses to do so. The Budget saw the launch of apprenticeship vouchers for businesses to manage their own schemes, and businesses such as Worcester Bosch, Yamazaki Mazak, Titania cyber security, Comco and Green Lighting, which I visited during national apprenticeship week, will welcome the Government’s focus on this aspect.

One of the best things about this Budget is its support for saving. As chairman of the all-party group on credit unions, I warmly welcome both the £1,000 tax-free allowance for savings and the administrative changes that will remove a burden from savings organisations, including credit unions. Last week I attended my local hospital to see the launch of a payroll saving scheme from the Castle and Crystal credit union, which expanded into Worcestershire at my invitation. Such schemes will benefit from the Chancellor’s efforts to make saving more attractive.

In an age where saving for the deposit on a first home has become ever more challenging, I particularly welcome the launch of the Help to Buy ISA. My late father pioneered the policy of right to buy which helped thousands of people to own their first home in the 1980s, and I am hopeful that Help to Buy, combined with this innovative savings scheme, can help thousands more to enjoy the security of owning their own home in the 21st century. Help to Buy has already helped 184 families in Worcester and more than 900 in Worcestershire to get on the housing ladder. With the Help to Buy ISA I hope we can make a difference for hundreds more.

I welcome this Budget continuing the increase in the basic state pension. On the doorsteps of Worcester I often hear from pensioners who are very concerned about the fact that they may be paying income tax on a small pension inherited from a deceased partner. The move to increase the income tax threshold to £12,500 in the future will take thousands of those pensioners out of income tax altogether, which will be an extremely positive reform.

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[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

It is great to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice), who has reminded me that when Labour introduced the minimum wage, it was fiercely opposed by the Conservatives, who said it would bring about the end of the universe as we knew it. Also, unless I am much mistaken, that was when we had our last all-night sitting in the House. We kept the debate going until 8 o’clock in the morning, with a full house on the Labour side all waving their Order Papers as we brought in the minimum wage. That was one of our proudest achievements, and one that we should never forget. We should never take any lectures from the Conservatives on that subject.

Today, I want to talk about the dog that did not bark—the thing that was not mentioned in the Budget. According to the latest news from Asda Mumdex, 70% of women think that it is the most important factor affecting their lives. It is called the NHS. I am not sure whether its omission from the Budget was the logical extension of the Government’s trying to take politics out of the NHS, which the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) tried to do with dubious success. However, to try to do that now would be to deny the fact that the NHS is deeply political because it is a service that is dependent on an annual decision on what percentage of the tax take we should spend on it.

I do not know whether the Conservatives want to take politics out of the NHS by moving to an insurance model, for example, but if they do, I would have to warn them about making comparisons with what is happening in the United States of America. The US spends 16.9% of its GDP on health but produces only 3.1 hospital beds per 1,000 of population, whereas we spend 9.3% of our GDP on health and produce three hospital beds per 1,000 people. So ours is an extremely efficient system. My constituency has some of the best in NHS provision, as well as the second largest number of doctors and life sciences professionals in the country. If something cannot be done in Edgbaston, in the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, then it cannot be done.

I have set up an NHS tracker service for my constituents, and in the past month, 400 of them have come forward with responses which show that 17% said that either they or a member of their immediate family had been to accident and emergency in the previous month, of whom only 78% were seen in under four hours, with 16% waiting longer to be seen. Also, 67% of the respondents said that either they or a family member had seen a GP in the previous month, with 34% being seen on the same day and 24% being seen in one or two days. However, 11% had to wait more than a week to be seen, and 8% waited more than two weeks. This tells us that the service is being stretched to the limit.

We also know that the Government have tried to delay a number of decisions until after 7 May. For example, when Monitor tried to arrange the tariffs for specialised hospitals, the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust faced a potential deficit of £60 million because of the funding structure, but when a number of hospitals objected, all that happened was that Monitor delayed the decisions. We will now have to wait until the end of May or early June and hope that the problem will go away.

The problem will not go away, however, because the botched £3 billion reorganisation that the Tories and the Lib Dems saw through not only cost us a lot of money but created unnecessary structures. We now have about 440 new bodies and administrative layers. They have not improved patient care, but they have diluted accountability and made it even more difficult to find out who is actually in charge.

In addition, there has been an increased reliance on agency staff in our hospitals, and people have been made redundant only to be rehired. We have ended up with a Tory Government who are trying to make us believe that the NHS is fine and things are working, but even in the best areas, such as mine, things are about to be stretched beyond their limits. The dismantling of some of the state structures that has taken place over the past few years will become worse if there is another Tory Government. In three areas—local government, education and the health service—state structures have been dismantled in a way that makes some services simply undeliverable.

So what I want in my patch in the NHS is: a return of the 48-hour GP guarantee; a stop to the closures of the walk-in centres, because the ones we have are being used; and a better use of our pharmacists. Above all, I do not just want an extra 20,000 nurses and 8,000 extra doctors to be recruited—I want more of them to be trained. Although the Chancellor forgot to mention the NHS, it is still extremely important. However, it is currently not funded and structured in a way that is sustainable, and that is one of the most important omissions of this Budget.

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[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Last week, we had the Budget announcement and the eclipse. One plunged the nation into darkness and the other one was a rare and important astronomical event. [Interruption.] I got one laugh, thank you.

The Chancellor claimed that Britain was walking tall again, giving the impression that our economy was booming, that well-paid jobs were being created, and that voters were better off now than they has in 2010. But are voters really better off, because that is not what they are telling me in Heywood and Middleton?

Many of my constituents work in the public sector where they have seen their pay frozen since 2010 or have been subjected to below-inflation pay rises. Some NHS workers have seen their pay fall by as much as 30% through the withdrawal of recruitment and retention premiums and reductions in out-of-hours pay on top of flatlining basic wages, not to mention additional pension contributions.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

At the same time as people on regular employment contracts are undermined, our hospitals are spending extraordinary sums on agency payments, destabilising the labour market even more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right. We are warning people to be extremely wary. In general, they should not get their money out before they reach the age of 55, except in the event of, for instance, terminal illness. Trustees need to be wary, and participants need to be wary. Those who spot fraud should report it, and we will continue to crack down on it.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

19. Some £400 million has been liberated illegally from pension funds, and all that the rather incurious Minister is saying is that he has produced some rather catchy literature. Is that sufficient?

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We published these figures two months ago, but if the hon. Lady really wants to press me, I hear anecdotally from those in the Work programme that it is even better.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State may be interested to hear that Birmingham Labour went into the local election campaign promising work experience, so it is wrong to say that the Opposition are against it. However, the purpose of all this is to get people into work, and that requires a skills base. Has he assessed how much of the extra training of some people within companies is merely replacing what they are already doing, and how much is genuinely new commitment by companies to the training of young people?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We believe that the programmes brought forward to us, and which these young people are volunteering for, constitute genuine experience that they will gain and that the companies were not necessarily providing before. Of course, I fully accept that we want to ensure that those are high quality, and I congratulate the hon. Lady, not for the first time, on genuinely looking at this issue from the point of view of the problem and how we solve it. I wish there were more people doing that, but the trouble is that Opposition Front Benchers absolutely do not attack those who spend their time trying to destroy the work experience programme.

Unemployment

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will in a moment, but first I want to make one point about the Work programme.

The Work programme is a new scheme that builds on the flexible new deal. We have said that if it works and delivers value for money we will keep it in place, but the Minister must accept that worries about the programme are growing. [Interruption.] I am delighted that the Secretary of State has been able to join us to hear this important point. The Minister for unemployment has repeatedly told the House that he cannot produce statistics on how well the Work programme is doing, and I completely understand his caution. I think that he is the only Minister who has been formally warned by the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, who last year said that the Minister’s use of figures was

“likely to damage public trust in official statistics”.

No doubt he has repented for that sin and is seeking redemption, and I understand that he apologised and is certain not to repeat the offence. If the Work programme was working, surely the Department’s statistics would show that more and more people were flowing off benefits and into work. That is a simple test we can apply, but the problem is that the figures do not show that.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

On that basis, how does my right hon. Friend, as a fellow Birmingham MP, react to the fact that in the past year, between November 2010 and November 2011, the number of young people in Birmingham claiming jobseeker’s allowance increased by 19%, which is the worst figure for all core cities in the country?

[Mr Byrne]

That is an extremely serious problem for Birmingham, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to it, but there is a more widespread problem if the rate of people flowing off benefits into work is not rising. Research by the House of Commons Library for my office, which we are publishing this afternoon, shows that fewer people are flowing from benefits into work than at any point since 1998. That fall coincides with the Government’s decision last year to cancel the flexible new deal and the future jobs fund. Since January, when the future jobs fund ended, the percentage of people flowing off benefits and into work has fallen by a fifth. Between May and August last year, when the new scheme was being worked up, 86,000 fewer people came off benefits and into work than the year before. Surely Government Members would accept that that is simply not good enough.

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[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman will know that in order for a private sector organisation to participate in the future jobs fund, it had to set up a special purpose vehicle to work around European Union state aid rules. The result was that virtually all placements under the future jobs fund were in the public and community sector. In putting in place additional programmes, providing apprenticeships and providing a subsidy through the youth contract, we are focusing support on roles in the private sector.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

I will focus not on the over-50s, because I would have to declare an interest, but on 18 to 24-year-olds. In Birmingham, 15,600 of them are claiming jobseeker’s allowance. If the Minister is so focused on private sector job creation, will he give me one example of how he is encouraging the private sector in Birmingham to get jobs for that lost generation, rather than providing a programme of aid?

[Chris Grayling]

I will set out in a moment how our work experience scheme, for example, is succeeding in helping young people to move into work in the private sector.