Health and Safety System
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Government are committed to a health and safety regime that is fair, balanced and proportionate. Sensible health and safety at work helps to maintain a healthy and productive work force and contributes to economic prosperity. The burden of health and safety red tape has, however, become too great, with too many inspections of relatively low risk and good performing work places, frequently poor health and safety advice to businesses from badly qualified consultants, and a complex structure for regulation. To address these issues, the Government are today publishing their plans for the reform of the health and safety system.
We will clamp down on the rogue health and safety advisers who cost industry so much money by providing advice which often bears little relation to the actual requirements of legislation. To achieve this we have launched an official occupational safety and health consultants register for those health and safety practitioners who are properly accredited to one of the professional bodies in the industry. Those who do not have the requisite expertise and experience will be excluded from the register, making it easier for employers to access reliable, reputable advice. I am pleased to announce that the register will be open for the use of employers from today.
We will shift the focus of health and safety activity away from businesses that do the right thing, and instead concentrate efforts on higher risk areas and on dealing with serious breaches of health and safety regulation. Those organisations which pose a lesser risk and which meet their legal responsibilities will be left free of unwarranted scrutiny. This will mean a very substantial drop in the number of health and safety inspections carried out in Britain. We will also shift the cost burden of health and safety away from the taxpayer, and instead make those organisations that fail to meet their obligations pay to put things right.
We will seek to clarify and simplify health and safety legislation, and in doing so ease the burden on business. We are today launching new “Health and Safety Made Simple” guidance to provide lower-risk small and medium-sized businesses with the essential information they need to achieve a basic level of health and safety management in their work place in a single, easy-to-use, package. We are also launching an immediate review of health and safety regulation overseen by an independent advisory panel chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, director of the King’s centre for risk management at King’s college London. The review will be asked to make recommendations by autumn 2011 for simplifying the current rules. We will also ask the review to consider whether changes to legislation are needed to clarify the position of employers in cases where employees act in a grossly irresponsible manner.
Further details are available on the Department for Work and Pensions website at www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/health-and-safety. The latest progress on the implementation of the recommendations of Lord Young’s report “Common Sense, Common Safety” can be found on the same website.
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council met on 7 March 2011 in Brussels. I represented the United Kingdom.
The first debate focused on Europe 2020 and the European semester. The presidency asked member states for views on social and employment measures that needed tackling urgently. The Commission reiterated the need for national targets in meeting the Europe 2020 headline targets and highlighted that not all member states had set a national employment or a poverty target. Some member states’ responses included setting a high level of ambition in the employment and social inclusion targets, while others argued for more realism. For the UK, I stressed that actions to remove obstacles to employment should be at the heart of policies to promote growth and that addressing the EU’s relatively low labour market participation required a mix of measures, including improvements to welfare policies, education systems and regulatory policies. The EU should focus on growth and reducing regulatory burdens, particularly for small and medium-sized companies. I explained the UK approach, prioritising welfare reforms aimed at helping people break the cycle of benefit dependency and ensuring that work was a better option than welfare. I also stressed that the UK was investing heavily in targeted interventions and in improving skills.
In the second debate, the Commission presented results of the Green Paper consultation on adequate, sustainable and safe European pension systems. Most member states agreed with the need for reforms, but many pointed to the need for subsidiarity, recalling the very different national situations and conditions across the European Union. There was broad support for continued use of the open method of co-ordination. For the UK, I explained the recent pension reforms in the UK and also argued against unnecessary changes such as the revised solvency rules which could cause employers to close their occupational pension schemes. This was an issue on which all UK stakeholders were in agreement.
The Council adopted a number of Council conclusions. These covered the joint employment report in the context of the annual growth survey 2011, the European platform against poverty and social exclusion, the further development of an electronic exchange system facilitating the administrative co-operation in the framework of the posting of workers directive, and the European pact for gender equality (2011- 2020). The UK abstained on the joint employment report as it had not cleared parliamentary scrutiny.
The Council also took note of the annual report on progress towards equality between women and men 2010. The report acknowledges areas where progress has been made, both at national and European level.
Under any other business, the presidency reported on the informal meeting of the Ministers for Employment, and provided an update on two legislative areas, “seasonal workers” and “intra-corporate transferees”. The Employment Committee and Social Protection Committee chairs provided information on their work programmes for 2011, and there was a presentation from the French delegation on plans for their G20 Labour and Employment Ministers’ meeting, which will take place in September 2011.
Welfare Reform Bill
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
This will provide my hon. Friend with an extra minute to conclude his remarks. We very much welcome the work of the Select Committee, and I assure him that the points that he and the Select Committee raise will help us to shape some of the outstanding issues and the Committee debates that lie ahead.
Mr Heald
I thank my right hon. Friend for that. One encouraging development is that many of the proposals in the recent Select Committee report on housing benefit change—proposals for improvements such as monitoring the changes as they are implemented—were accepted when the Government responded to it. It is particularly welcome that the original proposal for people to lose 10% of their benefits after 12 months has been abandoned. I see that the Chairman of the Select Committee is in her place, and she may catch the Deputy Speaker’s eye in a moment; we are all pleased that the Committee has been able to make a difference in that way.
Finally, let me say a few words about how the contracts for the Work programme are dealt with. It is important to have proper implementation.
Dame Anne Begg
Indeed. We heard on Monday, in Burnley, that the appeal process can take anything from a year to 18 months. There are real doubts about the ability of the tribunal system to cope.
Chris Grayling
At present, the appeal process takes 17 weeks on average. A year or more is absolutely not the norm. I would be happy to discuss the matter in the Select Committee, but I should grateful if the hon. Lady would note what I have said for the record.
Dame Anne Begg
Interestingly enough, a constituent of mine is having to wait for six months. I thought that that was ridiculous enough, but two or three weeks ago, when the Committee was taking evidence, we were told that someone was having to wait for between nine months and a year. Perhaps the Minister should talk to his officials, because it seems that in some areas, at least, the wait is much longer than 17 months.
I mentioned the withdrawal of contributory ESA after a year. Many of the people who will lose that benefit will not qualify for a means-tested benefit, particularly in my constituency, where there will probably be a partner or someone else in the household who has an income. Such people will lose all the money that they have.
We have heard today what has been said by cancer charities, but it is not just cancer sufferers who will be affected. Many other people may not have been given a diagnosis, or may have had a mental breakdown from which they have not recovered. It may take at least a year for those people to get anywhere near the Work programme, although they will be in the work activity group because their disabilities will not be severe enough for them to qualify for membership of the support group. They will be told to come back after another three months, because they will still not be fit for work. They may find that they have used up the whole year’s worth of contributory benefit before they are anywhere near even looking for a job. Many with other illnesses and disabilities will fall into the same category.
I was going to read out a letter from Heather Bennett that would have summed up the position far better than I have. Unfortunately I have no time to do so, but I ask the Government please to reconsider.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I should begin by declaring an interest: I am co-chair, with Lord Rix, of the all-party group on learning disability.
Members will not be surprised to learn that I intend to oppose the Bill and support the reasoned amendment. In the short time available to me, I shall speak in direct opposition to this Welfare Reform Bill, because if it is implemented it will devastate the lives of people who are sick, people with disabilities and many vulnerable people throughout Britain, not least in my constituency.
Since before I was elected to this House, I have firmly held to the principle that people with disabilities should have the same opportunities as everyone else, no less and no more, and I have to say that the election of this new coalition Government does not in the least diminish the need for a principled stand to be taken on behalf of people who require support. That is because of the highly punitive measures that are being proposed, and which have not been denied today, and I hope to have the time to address some of them later.
On Tuesday 30 November I secured a Westminster Hall Adjournment debate on Government plans to remove the mobility component of the disability living allowance for disabled people who live in a residential establishment. At the beginning of that debate, I said:
“To put that into context, it is important to establish which members of our society qualify for that benefit. The first, and by far the most common group, is where the claimant is unable—or virtually unable—to walk. The second group consists of people who are both blind and deaf. The third category comprises people with a severe mental impairment, and/or severe behavioural problems. In truth, we could not be discussing people who are more vulnerable or deserving in our communities.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 197WH.]
I also pointed out that of all the proposals on welfare reform, this is the most brutal and cruel. I have had no assurances on this issue during the course of the debate
Chris Grayling
It might be helpful to put on the record that we have been very clear that we intend mobility provision to continue for people in care homes. There is an overlap between a number of provisions however, and we have formed the view that it is better not to include a stand-alone clause in this Bill, but to include the issue as a whole as part of our review establishing exactly what needs to be done and through which channels.
Mr Clarke
So in place of the clear threats we had from no lesser a person than the Prime Minister and in the face of a lack of clarification today from the Secretary of State, we are expected to wait for a review. I am sorry to have to tell the Minister that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) said in opening for the Opposition, organisations representing disabled people throughout the country are simply not prepared to accept what appear to be assurances at the 13th hour, given what is written in the Bill and given the opposition to my colleagues’ amendment.
I urge the Government to consider the opinions of voluntary organisations and of the independent Social Security Advisory Committee, which obviously took the same view as I did:
“We consider that the proposal to remove the mobility component from people in residential care should not go ahead.”
That remains our determination today. I trust that the Government will take on board the view expressed by such an influential and informed body.
Naomi Long
That is a fundamental concern. One of my constituents recently came to Parliament, on behalf of the mental health charities Rethink and MindWise, to give evidence to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions about the impact of the assessment proposals on people with mental health problems. Members who met her at the round-table session would agree that she presented her evidence in a professional, competent and effective manner, as one would expect of someone with a medical degree. However, her evidence carried weight not because of her degree, but because she receives disability living allowance. She is not fit for work, and is not permitted to practise as a GP as a result of serious mental health issues, which developed in her final year of study.
If a benefits assessor, even a medically qualified one, witnessed her performance in Committee, they would doubtless assume that she was fully fit to work. However, her condition is unstable, and in periods of ill health, she is unable to leave her home or interact with people at all. Even when well, she is reluctant to take on additional stressful responsibilities because of her history of instability.
Chris Grayling
It is important, as people are listening to this debate, that the actual situation is placed on the record. Will the hon. Lady confirm that the system that she is describing is the one that we inherited from the Labour Government, which we have taken steps to change through the Harrington review? In cases where we have made changes to the assessment, the work was done by the previous Government, whose recommendations we accepted. Finally, does she accept that, at the end of all this, there is a collective desire to make sure that the system works as well as possible and that there is a commitment to continue to improve it where possible?
Naomi Long
I would like to confirm, on the first issue, that I am not making these points as a member of the Labour party or of the previous Government but as a member of the Alliance party, reflecting the concerns of my constituents. Furthermore, I would hope that there is a collective will to ensure that people are dealt with fairly in the system. However, the doubts that I am expressing to the Minister have been expressed to me by my constituents.
A problem with single point assessment needs to be taken into consideration, and I urge the Minister to look carefully at the issue. The young lady in question, for example, had a dual point assessment by the British Medical Association on her fitness to practise. One doctor said that she was fit to practise, and the other said that she was not, because of the complex nature of her condition. Neither of them was wrong when they dealt with the person in front of them, but her complex mental health condition prevented them from seeing the same individual in the same way.
I do not believe that the problem arises solely with mental health issues, but with many other conditions. People can have good days and bad days, and they may need additional support. As the Bill progresses through the House, it is hugely important that we address that issue.
Much has been said about the removal of the mobility component of the disability living allowance for those in residential care, so I will not rehearse the arguments, but I have corresponded at length on it with the Under-Secretary, and from her most recent correspondence I am aware that there is a valid concern about the inconsistent way in which the needs of some of the most vulnerable people in society are being met.
There is ambiguity and considerable variation in the way in which local authorities take the DLA mobility component into account when making financial assessments, and organisations such as Disability Alliance acknowledge that point, but having identified the problem it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that the solution does not end up disadvantaging the benefit’s recipient, who did not create the difficulty in the first place. Independent mobility is crucial to well-being and to social cohesion, and it must be protected more clearly than it is in the current proposals.
Finally on DLA, I am concerned about the change to the qualifying period, and its move from six months to three months, which could have profound consequences for those who develop sudden onset conditions, such as stroke, or experience the debilitating effects of treatment for an illness, such as cancer. It could also affect those who give birth to a child with a severe disability.
At a time when people are genuinely in need, when their energy rightly needs to be focused elsewhere on coping with diagnosis, treatment and recovery, and when additional stress should be avoided, the financial pressure of dramatically increased outgoings to cover expenses, such as travel to hospital and so on, could push them into poverty if that issue is not adequately addressed. I urge the Government to look again at that unintended consequence of reform, and to take action to ensure that the personal independence payment is available to support people at a time of genuine need.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s assurance on employment and support allowance for those taking oral chemotherapy. I trust, however, that he will also consider those who receive radiotherapy, which, although not as debilitating as chemotherapy, can nevertheless be exhausting and preclude people from holding down work.
Another concern that I want to touch on briefly is the abolition of some discretionary aspects of the social fund. Often, families who are trying to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis find themselves pushed into financial stress or even crisis by significant, unexpected and unavoidable expenditure. The replacement of a heating boiler, a cooker or a fridge, or the need to purchase a school uniform, for example, will often leave low-income families in a situation where only those discretionary elements of the social fund, such as interest-free crisis loans, stand between them and being forced to engage with alternative high-interest and often unscrupulous money lenders. There is an ongoing consultation on that and I urge Ministers to await its conclusion before proceeding to legislate to remove those discretionary elements.
In conclusion, and as I said at the outset, these are far-reaching reforms with far-reaching consequences. The Bill is arguably the biggest change to the welfare state since its inception, and it warrants careful and detailed parliamentary scrutiny. Despite that imperative, much of what is intended remains poorly defined and will be ultimately defined not in this Bill or in any subordinate legislation, but in regulations that the Minister will lay, which in turn will reduce the parliamentary scrutiny of their effects. That extensive reliance on unpublished regulations will make it incredibly difficult for people to make a detailed assessment of the cumulative impact of these broad and sweeping changes. The Secretary of State was clearly frustrated, too, because he felt that at times people had misunderstood the thrust of his proposals. Were there more substance to the Bill, that would be less likely.
Furthermore, the inclusion of clauses relating to child maintenance, when that matter is still the subject of public consultation, and the as yet undefined provisions on child care costs, creates uncertainty in an area—the employability of lone parents and second earners in households—that strikes at the very heart of the Government’s objective to make work pay.
One of the most remarkable yet disappointing things that struck me on reading through the briefings that Members received in the run-up to the debate is that, almost without exception, those organisations that actively support and lobby in this area support the principle of the Bill. Disappointingly, however, we have not had the detail that would give people the confidence to commit to the Bill itself.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate.
With more than 2.5 million people unemployed, youth unemployment soaring to 20% and persistent levels of intergenerational unemployment, it is clear that the status quo is not working. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) cited Beveridge, but Beveridge and the Labour Government of 1945 envisaged the welfare state as a system that would redistribute not just wealth but power and opportunity. It was a welfare state built on reciprocity, but we cannot characterise the package of reforms in the Bill as being built on sufficient reciprocity. This is a Government who are introducing a Work programme that will help 250,000 fewer people than the programmes it replaces.
Chris Grayling
It is very important to deal with this point head on. That is absolutely not the case: every single person on JSA or ESA who needs and wants support through the Work programme will get it, and the total numbers will be higher than under the previous Government.
Mr Bain
If Members look at the details of what is being spent on the Work programme, they will see it does not match up to the initiatives of the previous Government.
We also foresee huge problems for the losers under these reforms. Labour supports a simplification of the universal credit system, but it must be a fair simplification. Yes, about 1 million households will benefit, but it is absurd that that is being paid for by 1.7 million households with incomes of between £16,000 and £24,000 losing out. The squeezed middle will not only be defined; they will be heard loud and clear in respect of the money they will lose as a result of this Government’s policies.
The Government have shown a bizarre lack of clarity regarding whether self-employed people hoping to start a new business will be eligible for the universal credit. The transition for individuals to the universal credit lacks detail and could create disincentives. The credit does not deal with transport costs to and from work, and the cash protection for individuals’ incomes will apply only until their circumstances change, which could be only a few weeks after taking up a job if their hours of work are altered. Changes to crisis loan alignment payments are also likely to affect many claimants. No work has been done to identify the costs of transferring delivery to local authorities, or to identify the most affected groups.
Labour Members know that one of the best means of reducing child poverty is to encourage more second earners to take on part-time work around their family or care commitments. It is extraordinary that the proposals in the Bill will reduce the work incentives for up to 330,000 second earners. This is not a strategy that will reduce child poverty in the short or medium term. Despite the Secretary of State’s statement today, there is a shocking lack of clarity about the provision of child care, the cost of which presents a huge barrier, particularly for women returning to the labour market. Council tax benefit is being devolved to local authorities in a completely unspecified way that lacks clarity and threatens to create new disincentives to work.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded that, overall, under the universal credit the incentive to work for low earners will be stronger for single people and for those in couples where one partner does not work, but that it will weaken incentives for couples to have both partners in work, owing to a higher withdrawal rate than the current tax credit system. It has also concluded that lone parents will lose out in the long term.
This week, the Social Market Foundation established that 400,000 families with children that currently receive tax credits will lose their entire eligibility for financial support under the universal credit if they have savings of more than £16,000, and that a further 200,000 families with savings of between £6,000 and £16,000 will lose some of their entitlements. As Ian Mulheim, the director of the foundation, said,
“The Universal Credit will punish working families trying to save for the future, such as those trying to get a foot on the property ladder.”
We urge the Government to reconsider the shambolic way in which they have designed the credit, and to introduce a more adequate Bill that is fit for purpose.
On housing benefit, the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) mentioned the incredibly harmful effects of the proposal to extend the shared-room rate from people aged under 25 to those up to the age of 35. Some 88,000 people across the country will lose out, with an average loss of £47 a week. In Glasgow, my home city, the impact will be to move people from the social rented sector into the private rented sector, with a resulting increase in rents.
The Secretary of State has not been able to give the House sufficient assurances on the disability living allowance. Yes, we hear of a review, but he has not taken back, nor has he had permission from the Treasury to recoup, the amount he proposed to save by withdrawing the mobility component. His own Social Security Advisory Committee has referred to the terrible impact of the loss of independence that people who lose the mobility component will experience. We therefore urge the Government not just to review these proposals but to withdraw them.
On the move to personal independence payments, we think it unacceptable to require a disabled person to wait six months—double the length of time under the present system—before coming eligible. Richard Hamer, director of external affairs at Capability Scotland, has said:
“The welfare benefits system is the UK Government’s strongest tool to promote equality for disabled people. The changes announced in the Welfare Reform Bill will instead push disabled people and those who care for them further into poverty.”
I encourage Members throughout the House to seek a better Bill than the one the Government have proposed today. I urge Members to vote for the amendment and to seek a better Bill than the shoddy and shambolic effort the Government have proposed today.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
I am sorry to follow such a highly negative speech from the Opposition spokesman on an occasion when the Government are bringing before the House an historic Bill that lies at the heart of an historic set of reforms that will reshape the relationship between the Government, the citizen and the welfare system. The Bill strikes a balance between fairness and responsibility, and crucially, it sets out the framework for creating a more effective welfare system that is fit for the 21st century. Above all, the Bill puts in place many more of the building blocks that we will need if we are to tackle the blight of deprivation that affects too many of our communities and too many of our citizens. In the past 13 years, millions of our citizens were left on the sidelines of society, trapped by a culture of dependency, facing financial barriers to a return to work, and with inadequate support to help them to make a return to the workplace, even if their financial position made it sensible for them to do so. All that must now change.
We have had a good and lively debate, and I congratulate all hon. Members who participated in it. Time does not permit me to refer to all the points raised, but I will happily answer questions or letters, and indeed, those who serve on the Public Bill Committee can raise many of the detailed issues in the days and weeks ahead.
Not least among those contributions was a particularly disappointing start by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), the shadow Secretary of State. He and the Leader of the Opposition have both openly backed the principles of the reforms, and they even put some of the Bill’s measures, such as the housing benefit reforms, in their party’s manifesto. Yet what did we hear today? They have done a U-turn. They have been captured by the left wing of their party, and are reverting to the politics of type. That is a real shame, because the shadow Secretary of State was right to say that the reforms would benefit from consensus. It is therefore unhelpful to hear Opposition Front Benchers spend so much time seeking dividing lines rather than working with the Government to deliver reforms that will transform this country. The shadow Secretary of State may not realise it, but there is a great degree of consensus about the reforms out there in the country, among people who believe that it is time that we sorted out the mess that has built up around our broken benefits system—a mess that has left millions trapped in dependency.
One of the other disappointments of the debate was that so many Opposition Members reverted to type in the language that they used. Too many couched this debate in the kind of language that I thought we had left behind 20 years ago. Let us be absolutely clear. The reforms are designed to help those in our society who are struggling. The universal credit will help to lift hundreds of thousands of adults and hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. We are challenging for the first time in far too long the cycle of deprivation that incapacity benefit represents for too many of our fellow citizens. We are providing more individualised support to help people to move back into the workplace.
There are some tough decisions, but for what reason do hon. Members believe that we must take those decisions? It might have something to do with the fact that the Labour Government left us with the biggest deficit in our peacetime history and we must pick up the pieces. As the shadow Secretary of State so aptly reminded us, there was no money left when we took office.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Croydon North (Malcolm Wicks) for saying that the best social security policy is a job. He is absolutely right, and that principle—that simple premise—lies at the heart of our reforms and the change that we are seeking to deliver.
Let me also address the point about the gaps in the Bill, which was raised many times this afternoon. I remember being up against the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the shadow Minister, in Public Bill Committees when he was in government. Some of those Bills had virtually no substance at all to them. This is a bit like the poacher turning gamekeeper, but it is pretty ripe for him to turn round and say that not all the details have been included. What I would say to the House is this. As we work through the Bill in Committee, we will deliver detail to the Opposition at each stage on how we plan to put the measures into practice. We will answer questions and be as open as we possibly can, including in saying where work still needs to be done. The Committee will, I hope, be an exercise in discussion and debate, and we will inform it to the best of our abilities, because these reforms are vital. Making work pay will transform lives, especially for the poorest, through the universal credit, the single taper and getting rid of the complexity that has dogged our system. Members on both sides of the House will know about all the problems that we have had with tax credits over the years and all the constituency cases that have come to us. They should realise that this Bill sweeps all that away. A simpler system for our constituents and a simpler system for society—this is a better way of doing things.
Many of the clauses in the Bill are also vital to the conditionality changes that will underpin the delivery of the Work programme, helping to deliver much better back-to-work support for those struggling to get into work. We have always been clear that there needs to be a clear two-way contract between individuals and the state. We will provide much better back-to-work support and a system that makes work pay, but refusing that support cannot be an option for those with the potential to work. This Bill will place clear and firm responsibilities on their shoulders, and will bring clear consequences if they fail to live up to those responsibilities.
This Bill is about taking a step in the right direction towards a more common-sense welfare system that targets resources more effectively to the vulnerable, but also restores credibility in our welfare system. That is why we have tackled the insanity of a system that can pay housing benefit to people in quantities far beyond what those in work might expect to be able to afford when finding a house for themselves. That is also why we are introducing the benefit cap, so that we remove perverse disincentives to work. Last week I sat with an adviser in a Jobcentre Plus office who said to me, “The thing I find strange is this: why am I organising payouts to people who get far more money than I do, and I’m doing a job?” That is the kind of situation that we have to address.
That is also why we are getting to grips with reforming the disability living allowance, so that we can move away from an unsustainable welfare state and a system where we leave people for long periods, untouched, uncontacted and unchecked. We do not ask the question, “Is this still right for you?” That is what the changes are about, and they are necessary.
Despite the rhetoric, Opposition Members have said that they believe that it is time for reform, and this is why we are pressing ahead with it. We are also sorting out the mess that is child maintenance in this country. Finally, we are doing something that I am very proud of—something that Opposition Members called for, but which the previous Government did not do: putting an end to jobcentres having to accept adverts from sex clubs or lap-dancing clubs in a way that exploits the most vulnerable women in our society. In short, the Welfare Reform Bill is about putting responsibility, fairness and common sense back into the heart of the welfare system, while ensuring that we deliver value for money for hard-working taxpayers.
Chris Grayling
No, I am not going to give way.
Before I conclude, let me briefly touch on a couple of points raised by hon. Members. The Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), raised the issue of contributory ESA. I want to make two points to her. The first is that all those who move off incapacity benefit who fit into the contributory bracket will be given access to the Work programme regardless of their status. That is important in ensuring that they receive back-to-work support. However, I would also remind her that the changes to ESA simply bring it into line with JSA. It is a simple principle that, if someone has financial means in their household, the state will not support them. The state will be there to provide a safety net for those who do not have the means to support themselves. That is a sensible principle. We have extended the period beyond six months, so that we can deliver support to people with health problems, but it is sensible to have an aligned system. I will be happy to talk further with the hon. Lady in Committee or in the Select Committee.
Chris Grayling
No.
This is an important set of reforms and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council will be held on 7 March 2011 in Brussels. I will represent the United Kingdom on all agenda items.
There will be two policy debates at this meeting. The first discussion will focus on the EPSCO contribution to the European Council on issues relating to the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy, the European semester and the annual growth survey. The presidency will present for adoption the first joint employment report under the new European semester process together with Council conclusions that draw on the main messages from the report and the employment guidelines. The UK will stress the importance that employment policies have been given within the context of the annual growth survey and in particular the emphasis on activation policies for the unemployed and inactive. The Council will also adopt the opinion of the Social Protection Committee on the flagship initiative and its report on the assessment of the social dimension of Europe 2020. Finally the presidency will present information on the preparations for the tripartite social summit, due to take place before the spring European Council.
The second discussion will be on the pensions Green Paper. The Commission will present a progress note on the analysis of the Green Paper responses. The UK will emphasise the importance of this issue but highlight the need to avoid imposition of insolvency requirements for pensions, particularly on grounds of costs and regulatory burden.
The Commission will present its annual report on “progress on equality between women and men during 2010”. The report acknowledges areas where progress has been made, both at national and European level.
Ministers will consider a number of other Council conclusions. These cover a European framework for social and territorial cohesion, the further development of an electronic exchange system facilitating the administrative co-operation in the framework of the posting of workers directive, and the European pact for gender equality (2011-2020).
Under any other business, the presidency will report on the informal meeting of the Ministers for employment, and will also provide an update on two legislative areas, “seasonal workers” and “intra-corporate transferees”. The Employment Committee and Social Protection Committee chairs will provide information on their work programmes for 2011, and there will also be a presentation from the French delegation on plans for their G20 Labour and Employment Ministers’ meeting, which will take place in September 2011.
Cheque Replacement and Financial Inclusion
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Since taking office the coalition Government have been working to reform the welfare system, providing a fairer deal for customers and taxpayers alike.
Well over 98% of all benefit customers are now paid directly into an account. But there is a relatively small number who cannot be paid into an account of any kind or who choose not to be. These customers currently receive their welfare payments by cheque and in total this amounts to fewer than 250,000 people in the UK.
Welfare cheques have become outdated, costly and too open to fraud. As a result, and in light of wider changes in the financial world, the previous Government set the terms of and invited bids on a procurement for a product to replace this payment method.
Following a competitive bidding process I can announce today that Citibank, working in partnership with PayPoint, will be awarded a seven-year contract to provide the new service that will replace the current girocheque service. The contract value is estimated to be a total of £20 million per year, shared between the two providers.
This new service will be free of charge to customers and accessible over the counter at PayPoint outlets. PayPoint outlets are already serving many of our customers and can be found in newsagents, community stores, and other local outlets.
DWP will ensure customers are moved across to the new payment method as seamlessly as possible. Information and advice will be made available so that customers know what will happen and when the change will take place.
Customers will still be able to collect their cash from the Post Office if this is important to them, either by switching to the Post Office card account or by using one of the many commercial bank accounts that are accessible at Post Office branches.
This Department values its relationship with the Post Office and we are working closely with them as we design the delivery of our future services. In particular we are setting up three pilots in partnership with the Post Office: verifying identity as part of the national insurance application process; support for those jobseekers who live in more rural areas, and verification of supporting documents such as birth and marriage certificates for customers of the pension service.
In addition, this Department will continue to work with the Post Office to explore further opportunities for them to support new ways of delivering welfare, including playing an important role in supporting the delivery of universal credit—building on the work on pilots already underway.
We also see real opportunities for the Post Office network in building closer links with credit unions. Credit unions have made great progress in recent years in bringing affordable financial services to people who would not otherwise be able to access them. I want to see credit unions—in partnership with the Post Office—providing more services, more efficiently, to more people.
I am therefore pleased to announce this Department’s continuing support for credit unions, building on the existing growth fund, and providing the new funding required for further expansion. This modernisation fund, worth up to £73 million over the next four years, will support those credit unions who are ready and prepared to step up to the plate—to expand their service to benefit more customers.
My Department will work with the credit unions to look at ways in which the future progress of this sector can best be supported. This includes the possible development of a shared banking platform, for which funding has already been set aside. Subject to successful feasibility studies, this will open up opportunities for many more people to access credit union services, including through the Post Office network.
Making credit union services available to more people who could benefit from them is an important part of our welfare reforms: making work pay; reforming crisis loans; making people better off for every pound they earn through universal credit; and simplifying the benefits system.
Sickness Absence
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
I wish to inform the House that, today, the Department for Work and Pensions, together with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be launching an independent review of sickness absence in Great Britain.
It is estimated that around 300,000 people (approximately 1% of the employed population) move on to sickness-related benefits (incapacity benefit or employment and support allowance) each year. These individuals make up a sizeable proportion of long-term sickness absences and around half of the total flow on to ESA every year. They constitute a significant cost to taxpayers, in addition to the costs incurred by employers covering absences, and the opportunity costs to the economy in missing out on the contribution of these individuals.
In conjunction with the Minister responsible for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey), I have invited Dame Carol Black, the national director for health and work, and David Frost, current director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, to co-chair an independent review of sickness absence to establish how we can mitigate the economic losses, as well providing effective support for those who would benefit from our help. The report will be jointly sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Work and Pensions. The review will explore how the current system could be changed to help more people stay in work, thereby reducing costs. In addition, the review will examine whether the balance of these costs are appropriately shared and make recommendations for reform.
The coalition Government are committed to reducing the burden of regulation of business in line with the objectives of the growth agenda. The sickness absence review will be conducted in this context, as well as informing the work of the existing employment law review. As such, the sickness absence review will complement the Government’s ongoing welfare reform agenda.
Youth Unemployment
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
For the record, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that last month’s unemployment figure in this country was 2.498 million, and that this month’s is 2.492 million?
Mr Byrne
The unemployment figures are getting worse, not better. This morning I heard the Minister quibble on the BBC that somehow unemployment in our country was stabilising, but the truth of today’s figures is that private sector employment is dead flat, and the number of announced redundancies is growing by the day. [Interruption.] The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) carps from a sedentary position, but he would be better off reverting to the advice that he gave to the Conservative party before the election about the importance of taking further steps to help get young people back to work.
Mr Byrne
Before I give way to the Minister, let me finish this point, as I want to put a question to him.
As I said, the rise in the dole bill makes the deficit not easier, but harder, to pay down. Although the Chancellor likes to pretend that the welfare cuts are somehow hitting shirkers not workers, will the Minister confirm that once we factor out the lower uprating the truth is that more than half the cuts in welfare spending are hitting working families?
Chris Grayling
As the one who is intervening, I think it is my job to ask the right hon. Gentleman questions. Will he confirm that one of the bits of good news this morning is that, for the second month in a row, job vacancies in the economy have increased significantly? Does he agree that that is an encouraging development?
Mr Byrne
Any increase in vacancies is good news, but 40,000 is not an enormous increase, and when private sector employment is dead flat and public sector redundancies are mounting, I am afraid that it poses serious questions about whether unemployment will continue to rise over the next couple of years.
Mr Byrne
I will give way to the Minister in a moment, but first I want to talk about the recession. As this afternoon’s interventions show, it is perfectly natural for Government Members to want to pray in aid figures from the beginning of 1997 and figures from the height of the recession. This point cuts to the heart of the debate we need to have this afternoon. When the recession hit, of course unemployment and the number of young people out of work rose, but we were not prepared to stand idly by and simply watch that happen, because we remember all too clearly the lessons of the 1980s when youth unemployment in this country spiralled up to 26%. Instead, therefore, we chose to act: we chose to expand student numbers and apprenticeships and the chance to work. That is why in the final two quarters of our time in office youth unemployment was falling, not rising, and by 67,000 or 9% by the time we left office. When the Minister intervenes, perhaps he will explain why, all of a sudden, that has now gone into reverse.
Chris Grayling
I am puzzled by a couple of points, and I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman can answer them for me. First, he keeps referring to the claimant count. Can he confirm that on the claimant count measure youth unemployment is 75,000 lower now than it was at the general election? He also talks about the period before the recession. Why did the OECD publish a report in 2008 saying it was profoundly concerned about youth unemployment in the UK because it was rising here but falling in every other developed country?
Mr Byrne
I would expect the OECD to express concern about youth unemployment. Youth unemployment is a serious issue, which is why we are having this debate. We do not think the Government’s plan is adequate to deal with the problem. That is why youth unemployment is not falling at present, but is going up, which is what this morning’s figures said.
Youth unemployment in the final period of Labour’s time in office, which was also a time of economic difficulty, fell by 67,000 or about 9%. Now all of that hard work has been undone. Since we left office, youth unemployment has not continued to fall. It has not even held steady; it has gone up and up and up. We cut youth unemployment even in the face of the economic storm, yet the current Government have failed to do so even with the winds of recovery at their back. They have watched it rise while the economy is growing. That takes some doing.
Mr Byrne
I think the answer is simple: despite good intentions, the Prime Minister has let the Chancellor get the upper hand. I am afraid that is a negotiation the Department for Work and Pensions has lost, which is why its back-to-work programme is being slashed with such dangers for the future.
I pay tribute to Steve Houghton, who was the leader of the local authority in Barnsley and did so much to pioneer the future jobs fund that has worked so well there. The Barnsley scheme is widely acknowledged to be one of the best in the country; it has 600 places for up to 12 months, a mixture of long-term and youth unemployed and a good track record on getting people into work. Barnsley, like other parts of the country, faces a future where that assistance is being pulled away.
The challenge for our young people is that they now confront a triple whammy. Education maintenance allowance has been cut, tuition fees have been trebled and the future jobs fund is a thing of the past. Without the chance to work, without the chance to study, what are our young people supposed to do? Can Ministers tell us? There is not even a big society for young people to retreat to. Three quarters of youth charities are actually closing projects; 80% say that is because targeted support for young people is ending.
In January, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), decided to act. I commend him for that. He introduced a work experience scheme. It was only for eight weeks, not six months, it did not pay the minimum wage and it did not cover people leaving higher or further education, but at least he was getting the idea. A fortnight ago, we learned that he was stepping up the pace—moving up a gear: at the Tory party’s black and white ball we had the spectacle of an auctioneer selling prized internships at top City firms to the highest bidder. What started as a crusade against poverty has in just nine months become an auction of life chances for the wealthy. No wonder the young people of this country feel that they face a lottery, and the Minister is selling the tickets.
Five people now compete for every job opening, and this morning we heard that things are not getting better. According to the Library, in more than 120 of our constituencies, there are more than 10 people competing for every job. Those people would yearn for a ticket to the black and white ball. [Interruption.] We have just heard something very important: the Secretary of State is putting a ticket on the sale block.
If there was something better to replace the future jobs fund, we might more easily comprehend its abolition. After all, this is what the Prime Minister promised when he told the BBC on Sunday 4 October 2009:
“I want the new Conservative Party to be the party of jobs and opportunity and at the heart of it is a big, bold and radical scheme to get millions of people back to work.”
I am afraid that last night we learned the truth from the BBC, when it reported:
“The government’s new ‘work programme’”,
described by the Prime Minister as the “biggest and boldest ever” plan to get people off benefits and back to work,
“will actually help fewer people than the existing schemes that ministers are scrapping, the BBC has learned.”
The Department for Work and Pensions has revealed that it expects 605,000 people to go through the Work programme in 2011-12, and 565,000 in 2012-13, but the Department admits that 250,000 more people, around 850,000, went through the existing schemes in 2009-10.
Mr Byrne
I will give way to the Minister in a moment. The whole House wants an explanation of why the promise to get more people back to work has been broken by the Prime Minister, because the Department for Work and Pensions has lost yet another battle to the Treasury.
The Office for Budget Responsibility says that the claimant count next year will be 1.5 million, the same, by the way, as this year. The problem is undiminished, yet the help is being cut away—the Minister’s Department is projecting 250,000 fewer places. When the correspondent from the BBC checked the figures this morning, she was told by a DWP official that she was right. So how is the Government’s scheme the biggest back to work plan ever? Is not the truth that the Minister has been done over once more by the Chancellor? Let him explain.
Chris Grayling
The right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything he hears on the television. It is absolutely clear that the Work programme will offer places through contracted-out providers to more people than was the case under the previous Government, and there is not one single person receiving JSA or employment and support allowance who wants and needs support through the Work programme who will not get it.
Chris Grayling
If the shadow Secretary of State wants a briefing on the Work programme from the DWP, we will be delighted to offer him one. I suggest that he does not take his information from the media.
Mr Byrne
That was not a straight answer to a simple question, which was why a DWP official confirmed the figures to the BBC yesterday and again this morning. The conclusion that the House can draw is a point that was made by the Office for Budget Responsibility—that there is not enough confidence that the Government have a plan in place to get people back to work. Indeed, the OBR has so much confidence in the Government’s plan to get people back to work that it is forecasting a declining rate of employment for the rest of this Parliament.
I do not claim that the future jobs funds was some kind of celestial design. I am sure there are aspects of it that could be improved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) mentioned a moment ago, it was labelled “a good scheme” by the Prime Minister on his trip to Liverpool. The evidence on which it was abolished was simply not there.
In my constituency we have the highest youth unemployment in the country. The leaders of my jobcentre on Washwood Heath road have consistently said to me that the future jobs fund was one of the best programmes they have ever administered. Overwhelmingly, they say, the young people they send on the programme do not come back and join the dole queue. In their first months the Government rushed out some hasty research on its expense. This is what the Work and Pensions Committee had to say about that scribbled bit of analysis:
“A robust evaluation of the FJF has yet to be undertaken…insufficient information was available to allow the Department to make a decision to terminate the FJF if this decision was based on its relative cost-effectiveness.”
That is an extraordinary indictment of the Government’s rationale. The report says that half of future jobs fund graduates get benefits at seven months, but that is because the programme ends at six months.
The Government dispute the claim that the scheme created real jobs. I am not sure what Jaguar Land Rover would say about that and the places that it created on the future jobs fund, but surely the point is that when people do not have a job, any job is a good job.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Following Mr Speaker’s ruling last week, it is clear that it would be utterly unparliamentary to accuse any other hon. Member of being a hypocrite. I therefore give an absolute assurance that I will not do so this afternoon. It is clear, though, that the Opposition Front-Bench team is suffering from a bout of collective amnesia. We should be concerned for their welfare. I looked up the symptoms of amnesia, and it looks like an open and shut case to me. Amnesia is a condition in which memory is disturbed or lost. In some cases it is described as almost total disruption of short-term memory.
What other possible explanation could there be for what we have just heard? I can only think that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) cannot remember his time in office, so let me remind the House what happened. He and his party stayed in power for 13 years. One of their great missions was to tackle youth unemployment. Their former leader, his former boss, the former Prime Minister and Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), made his maiden speech on the subject back in 1983. When, 14 years later, he took office and became Chancellor of the Exchequer, he said that the problem was a “human tragedy”, “sickening” and “an economic disaster”. He had a mission for change.
What happened? Nine years later, in the middle of one of the biggest booms that this country has seen—let us remember that that was at a time when the then Chancellor was saying he had abolished boom and bust—the youth unemployment rate had gone up compared with 1997. It was higher than it had been when the Labour Government took office. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly said from a sedentary position a few moments ago, that was despite the billions of pounds spent on the new deal. In total, £3.8 billion was spent on new deal programmes to get more people into work, yet in the end youth unemployment had increased.
Chris Grayling
Well, we are still waiting for an apology from the right hon. Gentleman for his Government’s record. If he wants to quote colleagues, let me quote one of his, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field)—sadly no longer in his place—who is one of the wisest figures in the House. When the statistics were produced in the latter part of the past decade, he said of youth unemployment:
“We made huge gains at the expense of the Tories in 1997… and now we are not just back to where we started, but in a worse position.”
That is not from someone on the Government side of the House, but from one of the shadow Minister’s right hon. Friends. That was not the half of it, because after that things got worse. More money was spent on more programmes to get more people into work, but youth unemployment continued to go up and up. If he wants to intervene, perhaps he can explain why that was.
Mr Byrne
I am grateful to the Minister for his kind invitation. Will he accept that between 1997 and the beginning of the global financial crisis, the claimant count for youth unemployment fell by 14%? To return to my previous question, why did Lord Freud, the Minister responsible for welfare reform and his colleague in the Department, describe our progress as “remarkable”? Was he deluded?
Chris Grayling
I think that the right hon. Gentleman should listen to his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who said in 2006 that youth unemployment was worse than when Labour took power, and it carried on getting worse after that. By the time of last year’s general election, youth unemployment was still 270,000 higher than it had been in 1997, and still they remained in denial—they remain in denial to this day. The greatest brass neck of all was that two months ago the previous Prime Minister had the effrontery to claim:
“Tragically Britain is entering yet another decade of youth unemployment.”
Just what does the Labour party think had been happening for the past 10 years when it was in government?
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman also does not remember that during the last disastrous years of the Labour Government he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. For those who do not know, that is the person in Government responsible for keeping spending under control. It was not we who built up the biggest peacetime deficit this country has ever known, but him. What did he do to stop his Prime Minister promising to spend money he did not have and making promises to the unemployed that he could not keep? Of course, there was the notorious letter to his successor:
“Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there is no money. Kind regards and good luck!”
What characterised the period that he and his colleagues have so conveniently forgotten is that the Labour party spent more and more money and made less and less difference. It is no wonder amnesia has set in.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Will the Minister explain why the Conservative party committed itself to the previous Government’s spending plans when in opposition?
Chris Grayling
We are taking decisions in the interests of the country. When I look back to 2005 and 2006, we always knew that Labour was making a mess of things, but we never imagined that they could do it quite so spectacularly.
Toby Perkins
If you realised that they were making such a mess of things, why did you agree to follow those plans? Is it not the right hon. Gentleman who has the amnesia?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Members should not be using “you”—I have no responsibility for this and am certainly not guilty for the unemployment figures.
Chris Grayling
We spent years warning the Labour Government that their spending was getting out of control and that they were mismanaging our economy, and now we see the consequences of what they did. What are we to do about the mess they created? Let us start by debunking some of the myths that they are peddling. To listen to them, one might think that it was all the fault of the coalition. Only last night the shadow Secretary of State stated in a press release:
“Labour’s legacy was falling youth unemployment and a pioneering programme to get 200,000 young people back to work. The Tories scrapped that programme and now youth unemployment has escalated to a record high.”
What a load of complete tosh.
The programme to which the shadow Secretary of State referred is the future jobs fund. Listening to him, one would think that we had scrapped that programme last May, but as we sit here today, young people are still being referred to placements through the future jobs fund. Although Labour’s attempts to support the unemployed had largely proved to be expensive failures, we decided early on that we would not remove them until our alternatives were in place. If the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill is right and things are getting worse, even though all the programmes we inherited from his Government are still running, what on earth does that say about the quality of provision he put in place?
Mr Byrne
It says that this Government have put the recovery in the slow lane. That is why the figures we saw this morning show that private sector employment is dead flat and public sector employment is falling. It is clear that the Government now need a plan B for the economy. It must start with a proper tax on bankers and the Government must use the money to do something to get young people back to work.
Chris Grayling
I just do not think the right hon. Gentleman is listening to what I am saying. We have left in place the support programmes that his Government left to support young unemployed people, and as of today they are all still there. As he keeps pointing out, youth unemployment has risen, so what does that say about the quality of provision he left behind? It says that it was not much good.
Mr Byrne
If the Minister was so dead against it, why is the right hon. Gentleman leaving it in place until the end of March? Since the Government took over, youth unemployment has started to rise, even though the economy has now been in recovery for five quarters. We were bringing youth unemployment down at a time of economic difficulty; since things have got easier, youth unemployment has gone up. How on earth did the right hon. Gentleman achieve that?
Chris Grayling
What we know is that the programmes the right hon. Gentleman left behind were not fit for purpose.
Chris Grayling
I happen to think that youth unemployment is a significant issue and would rather retain for a few months a programme that is underperforming while we prepare something better than do nothing at all. The right hon. Gentleman seems to think that we are doing nothing at all, but the truth is that we are doing just the opposite. It was his party that did nothing at all for a long period of time.
Let us deal with the argument about the future jobs fund once and for all. It costs around £6,500 per start—net of benefit savings, just under £6,000. That is far more expensive than Labour’s other programme for young people, the new deal for young people, which costs around £3,500 per job, and several times more expensive than other elements of the young person’s guarantee. It is twice as expensive as an apprenticeship, which I happen to think is of much greater value. Even when we net off all benefit savings, the future jobs fund is still much more expensive than any other option that the previous Administration put in place, and it did not work.
Colleagues may disagree, but to me a future job is one that lasts and on which a young person can build a career and sustain an opportunity for a lifetime. The future jobs fund did, and does, create temporary short-term placements, mostly through the public sector, where young people did not end up getting the kind of sustained work experience and training leading to a long-term career. The grants that funded the future jobs fund included no incentives whatever to move people into permanent jobs.
Chris Grayling
The latest information I have received from my colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who are responsible for this, is that apprenticeship vacancies are currently over-subscribed by both employers and employees. We are making good progress towards delivering on that target and will obviously publish full figures in due course. I am confident that we are making inroads in the apprenticeship market and creating opportunities for young people that will last a lifetime, not just six months.
Pete Wishart
Will the right hon. Gentleman please take no lessons from the Labour party on apprenticeships? Some 25,000 were offered in the Scottish budget last week, but Labour, for some reason, voted against it. The Conservatives supported it, so does he know of any reason whatever why Labour cannot support an increase in apprenticeships in Scotland?
Chris Grayling
It makes no sense at all.
I have a theory. The hon. Gentleman and I agree that apprenticeships are by far the best way of delivering long-term, sustained career opportunities for young people, but the future jobs fund was introduced a few months before the general election, and it was designed to move a large number of young people into temporary placements. He will form his own judgments as to what might have motivated that decision.
The reality is that, in early tracking—and I accept it is early tracking—of outcomes from the future jobs fund, the very first data showed that a substantial proportion, about 50%, of people who had been on the scheme were already back on benefits seven months after they started; and that did not take into account the fact that in many areas local authorities had extended future jobs fund placements by two or three extra months. In April, we will get a sense of the scheme’s real impact, but the first evidence suggests to me that it has not proved to be any more effective than previous new deals or other similar schemes that cost much less money.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
On that point, do the Government honestly believe that for 50% of young people to be in work a full month after their future jobs fund placements—
Pamela Nash
My point comes from the same statistics. Do the Government honestly believe that 50% of young people being in full-time work a month later is a failure? In our opinion, it is a great success for the fund.
Chris Grayling
If that were the case. In reality, we know that a number of placements continued for seven, eight or nine months after being funded by local money, so the first indications are that the final outcome of the future jobs fund will be no better than other employment programmes, but involve a much higher price.
Mr Byrne
The Minister is helpfully rehearsing a series of his uncertainties about the effectiveness of the future jobs fund. Why will he not therefore back the part of our motion which says that a proper evaluation is needed before a further decision can be taken on what is put in place in the future?
Chris Grayling
I fully accept that there is a difference between us. The right hon. Gentleman believes that the future jobs fund—six-month placements in the public and voluntary sectors—is the right approach. I happen to believe that apprenticeships—two years of training and the possibility of a longer-term career at half the price—is a better one. I am fully prepared to accept that that is a difference between us, but in reality our approach—tens of thousands of extra apprenticeships, which the Scottish Administration have also chosen but, I am surprised to discover, the Labour party opposes in Scotland—is a better route to follow.
Albert Owen
I, too, have supported apprenticeships over the past decade, and they have been a great success, but companies in my constituency, and one in particular, say to me that they cannot take on apprentices because they are faced with a consumption tax rise of 2.5 percentage points in VAT. Is that not one reason why businesses are not taking on apprentices? Indeed, the Minister is unable to tell us how many additional apprenticeships there have been in the past eight months.
Chris Grayling
Does the hon. Gentleman honestly think that businesses in his constituency would have been better off with a 1 percentage point jobs tax rise, as the previous Administration planned? That would have caused more of an increase in unemployment than anything else the Government could have done.
The right hon. Member made one point, however, which is absolutely right and with which we absolutely agree. Youth unemployment is a major problem for our society and one that absolutely must be tackled. The failure to tackle youth unemployment with schemes that work contributes so much to many other issues that we have to deal with on streets and in neighbourhoods throughout the country.
Endemic worklessness is underpinned by an ever more complex benefits system that traps people in unemployment. Inter-generational poverty is fuelled by welfare dependency, involving generation after generation of people who have not worked. There is a lack of aspiration, especially among young people who lack role models in a country where almost 2 million children are growing up in workless households. Worst of all, the young people who escape welfare dependency and poverty will still carry the economic scars of unemployment for years afterwards, in terms of lower wages and future employment gaps. That is the harsh reality of Labour’s legacy for our young people.
Dame Anne Begg
I worry about the either/or in the Minister’s equation. He says that the answer is either apprenticeships or the future jobs fund, but it should be both, because the young people who go into apprenticeships are not the same cohort who suffer the inter-generational worklessness to which he refers. They need extra support, and that is where the future jobs fund has been very, very effective.
Chris Grayling
I accept the principle but do not agree with the detail of what the hon. Lady says. I shall come on to discuss the Work programme and how I aim to use it to deal with the problem that she rightly highlights.
Opposition Members should remember that over the years they made lots of promises about apprenticeships but consistently under-performed on them. Our job is to make sure we do not do that.
Mr Byrne
The right hon. Gentleman surely accepts that the number of apprenticeships increased from about 63,000 in 1997 to more than 250,000 by the time we left office. Surely that is a record of success in backing apprenticeships, and I am glad that it is a point of consensus on both sides of the House.
Chris Grayling
I remember the right hon. Gentleman’s former boss standing in this House and promising about 400,000 apprenticeships. When Labour left office, the actual figure was 240,000, so I shall take no lessons from the Opposition about delivering promises on apprenticeships. We plan to deliver, and are already well on the way to delivering, 50,000 extra apprenticeships this year, 75,000 extra by the end of this Parliament and more apprenticeships for young people between 16 and 18 years old. Those apprenticeships will cost about half that of each future jobs fund placement, but they will deliver the skills that last a young person a lifetime, and the opportunity to progress on to a secure career path.
Alison McGovern
I thank the Minister for giving way, because this is a truly important point. When I have asked parliamentary questions about targets for the number of apprenticeships, the Government have told me that they no longer set such targets, so will the Minister make clear the status of the pledge that he has just made?
Chris Grayling
We fund a certain number of apprenticeships, and there are 50,000 extra this year. They are being filled at the moment, as we speak. We will fund 50,000 extra apprenticeships this year and 75,000 extra throughout the course of the comprehensive spending review. A few days ago BIS set out a clear goal to increase the number of apprenticeships in this country to 350,000. We have been in office for nine months; the Labour party was in office for 13 years, and it consistently under-delivered on apprenticeships throughout those 13 years.
Mr Lammy
The Minister has been extraordinarily generous in giving way, and I am very grateful, but he has not been able to tell the House how many apprenticeships he has delivered in the past nine months. I set up the graduate talent pool, which involved internships for graduates. Alongside the internships that were offered at the Conservative party event recently, how many internships have been delivered for our graduates in the past nine months?
Chris Grayling
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman what we are doing to get young people into the workplace for the first time.
One of the first things I received on entering government was an e-mail from the mother of a young woman who had arranged a month’s work experience for herself but been told by Jobcentre Plus that she could not do it, because the rules, which the previous Administration put in place, prevented her from doing so. We have therefore changed things.
We now encourage work experience. Through Jobcentre Plus, we will actively find work experience for young people, without their losing their benefits, and give them the opportunity to solve the age-old problem whereby, if someone cannot get the experience, they do not get the job, but, if they do not get the job, they cannot get the experience.
We have also strengthened volunteering opportunities for young people, and we will have Prince’s Trust representation in every job centre, so that we can steer young people towards voluntary work and take advantages of the trust’s skills to help unemployed young people.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend as incredulous as I am at the Opposition’s faux outrage? They are members of the party that, during 13 years of government, imported low-wage, low-skilled people from eastern Europe—more than 1 million of them—and pushed thousands of young people into welfare dependency and on to the dole. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is collective amnesia among those on the Labour Benches. One of the things they have also conveniently forgotten, which was revealed by one of their number, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, is that over the course of those years nearly 4 million new jobs were created in this country, the vast majority of which went to people coming to the UK from overseas. The Labour Government completely failed to make a serious inroad into the nearly 5 million people on benefits, or to get British people into what was once described as the goal of the previous Prime Minister—British jobs for British workers.
Chris Grayling
No, I have given way enough, and I am going to make progress. [Interruption.] When Labour Members have some useful contributions to make, I might give way again.
We now need to talk about what we are going to do about this. The Work programme, which we will introduce this summer, will, I hope, go a significant way towards dealing with some of the problems to which the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) referred. We have huge challenges in the labour market, with young people who face huge difficulties in their backgrounds. For them, the Work programme will deliver specialist intervention after just three months in the dole queue—much earlier than it has ever been done before. It will be a revolution in back-to-work support in Britain. It will provide a level of personalised support that we have not seen before, because in order to survive in a payment-by-results regime, the providers will need to cater for the individual. It is the kind of revolution we have needed for years—the kind that was promised in Labour rhetoric but never delivered.
Mr Byrne
It is curious that the Minister’s colleague Lord Freud noted in his report:
“The New Deals have been enormously successful”.
He also said:
“The creation of Jobcentre Plus…is…seen as…a model for effective public service delivery.”
He further commented:
“The Government has made strong, and in some respects remarkable, progress over the last ten years.”
I hope that those are lessons on which the Minister can draw.
There has been some dispute about the numbers that the BBC published. Will the Minister now set out for the House his assumptions for this year, next year and the year after about how many people will flow through the Work programme? If he is disputing the figures, let us hear it from him—what are they?
Chris Grayling
We published those figures in December. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman read the invitation to tender for the Work programme. I will tell him, however, that the number of people who went through contracted programmes in the last year of the Labour Government was well under 600,000, and that next year’s projections for the Work programme are over 600,000. As for my noble Friend Lord Freud, if he thought that the Labour Government were doing so well, why does the right hon. Gentleman think that he joined us?
The Opposition were in government for 13 years, during which they systematically delivered for this country a higher level of youth unemployment than they inherited. They spent almost £4 billion on new deal programmes, much of it aimed at getting young people into work. Even while all that money was being spent, we saw youth unemployment grow between 2005 and early 2007 and rise steadily in the run-up to the recession. Back in 2008, the OECD published a report raising concerns about what the British Government were doing and stating that only in Britain was youth unemployment rising, while everywhere else it was falling.
So let us have no more accusations from Labour Members about the coalition’s record. We have been in office for nine months. We inherited from them 600,000 young people who left school, college or university and have never worked. We are moving ahead with plans that will make a real difference to those young people—through the Work programme, through apprenticeships, and through the schemes we are introducing at Jobcentre Plus level to help them into employment.
Chris Grayling
No, I am going to wind up now.
The Opposition were in government for 13 years, and they failed abjectly. They spent billions; they delivered nothing at all. They left youth unemployment as a national challenge and a national disgrace—part of a legacy of chaos and failure from a Labour Government who ran out of money and ran out of ideas. It is time that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill and other Labour Members recognised the damage that they did to this country, and time they realised that it will be a long, long time before the people of this country even start to consider the possibility that they might ever be fit to govern again.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early in the debate.
In 2002, the unemployment statistics for my county of Denbighshire showed that out of its 34 wards, 50% of the unemployment was in two wards alone—Rhyl West and Rhyl South West. Rhyl South West contained the council estate where I grew up and lived for 26 years. Many of those unemployed people were related to me. Over the past nine years, it has been a personal crusade of mine to do something about that. In 2002, I established an unemployment working group, with people from the college, the Department for Work and Pensions, Jobcentre Plus, the police, economic regeneration bodies and the Welsh Assembly Government getting together around the table to create jobs for people, including young people, in my constituency.
In 2007, the DWP agreed that Rhyl could be one of 15 city strategy pilots for the whole of the UK. Although it is not a city but a town of only 27,000 people, Rhyl was included mainly as a pilot scheme for 52 seaside towns in the UK. Since then, we have made great strides in putting young people back to work in my constituency. The leader of the people who have administered the future jobs fund for the Rhyl city strategy is Ali Thomas, a dedicated professional in getting young people back to work. This is what she said about the Government’s decision to abolish the future jobs fund:
“The subsidy enabled employers to consider taking on long term unemployed people, many with multiple problems. They were able to do this because of the subsidy. The employers were taking a risk with these young people but the subsidy made the risk worthwhile.”
She went on to say:
“It wasn’t a one way street. Employers gained well motivated young workers. Nearly 60% of those that completed the placement scheme went on to gain long term employment with the employer.”
Apart from those 60%, a further 10% to 20% went on into full-time education at the fantastic Rhyl college, built by the Labour Government—the first college we have ever had, and a £10 million investment. A 70% to 80% placement rate in full-time education or full-time employment is not bad by anyone’s standards.
I ask the Minister, who is chatting away down there, what targets he is setting for his new Work scheme: 50%, 60%, 70% or 80%? I hope that he will intervene and tell me. He did not know the figures on the number of apprenticeships or internships but can he tell me his target for full-time employment placements of young people on the schemes that he is going to put in place?
Chris Grayling
The Deputy Speaker does not want extended interventions, so I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the invitation to tender for the Work programme, which will give him some of the details he wants.
Chris Ruane
The Minister does not know.
From my perspective as a constituency MP, and from that of young people affected in my constituency, the decision to end the future jobs fund is nothing short of political spite. The Work and Pensions Committee report said that the DWP
“should conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the Future Jobs Fund and publish the results.”
This obviously should have been done before the closure of the FJF. That is common sense, but it was not done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
We are, as the House knows, committed to improving the work capability assessment so that it is as fair and accurate as possible, including for people with variable conditions. It currently provides for variable conditions, but we are implementing all the recommendations of Professor Malcolm Harrington’s independent review. I have asked Professor Harrington to take forward the next review, which will include a detailed look at how the assessment deals with fluctuating conditions, to see whether we can make further improvements.
Mark Pawsey
The Minister will be aware of the concerns of people who have conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, who have good days and bad days. They are anxious to ensure that they receive fair treatment through the work capability assessment, taking account of their ability to complete activities on a regular basis. Can the Minister provide an assurance that the variable nature of such conditions will be fully considered, and that the assessment will identify the appropriate level of support for individuals to enable those who can to get back into work?
Chris Grayling
I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. Indeed, I have asked Professor Harrington to work with people who specialise in ME as part of his review. I do not want us to write off everybody with a particular condition. It is important to identify who can potentially work and who cannot, and to provide them with the appropriate support. That is the goal of our policy and what we will seek to do, and I am mindful of the concerns that my hon. Friend raises.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The sharp increase in job losses forecast this morning by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development will make it harder still for people with health conditions to find jobs. Last week, the Minister tabled regulations that modify the mental health descriptors in the work capability assessment, but at the same time, following his acceptance of Professor Harrington’s recommendations, to which he has referred, an alternative set of descriptors is being drafted by Mind, Mencap and others. Should he not wait until he has received their advice before he makes changes?
Chris Grayling
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we ourselves had one review carried out last year by Professor Harrington, and we also inherited a set of recommendations from an internal review carried out by the previous Government. I considered carefully the recommendations left to us by the right hon. Gentleman and his party, and the internal review recommended changes that would increase the number of people with mental health problems who go into the support group and receive unconditional support. His party was right to make that recommendation, and I am pleased to accept it, but we will take all further steps necessary to ensure that people with mental health problems are treated fairly and properly by the system.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
3. What assessment he has made of the likely effect of the introduction of universal credit on the level of the couple penalty.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
8. What steps he is taking to increase the number of apprentices employed by his Department.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Department continues to be actively supportive of the apprenticeship programme and believes that it represents excellent value for taxpayers’ money and helps people progress in their career. There are 316 people currently working towards the qualification in the Department. Last year, we adapted our recruitment processes to target young unemployed people without work experience and created 23 apprenticeships in our corporate IT directorate.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister will be aware of the great work done by the last Government, which led to that programme of bringing young apprentices in, and rescued apprenticeships from withering on the vine. Will he commit the Department to carrying on the work that I undertook as apprenticeships Minister, along with people such as Lord Knight of Weymouth—as he is now—to ensure that young people, and not just those in work, are recruited to the Department and given apprenticeship opportunities?
Chris Grayling
I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. One of the sad things about the previous Administration was that they never actually supported the number of apprenticeships that they announced. We intend to make a difference and to deliver more apprenticeships—we have announced an extra 50,000 already this year. I can give a clear commitment that the Department will continue to support the apprenticeship programme, both practically and through our relationship with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
I have been written to by a 16-year-old who has done the right thing by taking an apprenticeship, but having done so, she has found that her family’s benefits have been reduced by £90 a week. Will the universal credit address such discrepancies and this discrimination against those who want to work and take up apprenticeships?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend highlights the chaos that we inherited in the benefits system that can lead to perverse incentives that often mean that work does not pay. The universal credit is designed to ensure that work always pays. I would be interested to meet my hon. Friend to talk about her constituent’s case, so that I may understand more clearly what has gone wrong, but we are clear that work must always pay.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The recession has now been over for a year. Unemployment should now be falling, and the whole House is worried that it is in fact rising, especially among young people. One of the ways in which we tackled that was with the “Backing Young Britain” campaign, which created thousands of job opportunities for young people, including apprenticeships and internships. One of those schemes was a paid internship in the private offices of every Minister in the Department. Is that scheme still in place?
Chris Grayling
As I have said, we already have 300 apprenticeships throughout the Department and we intend to continue to deliver that support to apprentices. We inherited from the previous Government a collection of programmes that simply were not working. The future jobs fund, for example, cost twice as much as apprenticeships. We believe that expanding the number of apprenticeships—50,000 extra this year and 75,000 extra by the end of the Parliament, plus additional apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds—will move us to the place we should be, and out of the mess that we inherited from the previous Government.
Mr Byrne
I am grateful for that answer and I will try to decipher it later.
I was interested to hear the Minister talk about how he is now using the Department’s resources wisely. At some point, he will no doubt tell us why in December his Department spent more on stationery than it did on employment zones or access to work programmes. I wonder whether that is part of an innovative new approach that includes getting more people into study by cutting education maintenance allowances and getting more young people into work by cutting the future jobs fund. I see now that the Conservative party is piloting new ways of helping young people get into internships, by auctioning them for £5,000 a time to Tory party donors. Did the right hon. Gentleman choke on his pudding when the auctioneer’s hammer came down, and when will this worthwhile scheme go nationwide?
Chris Grayling
I will not take any lessons on spending from a previous Administration who spent money like there was no tomorrow. We were shocked to discover how the Department for Work and Pensions under the previous Administration spent money as if there were no limits. This Administration have removed the absurd restrictions on work experience that meant that young people lost their benefits if they did more than two weeks’ work experience. We have changed that and are actively finding experience opportunities for young people, not standing in their way and preventing them from accessing those opportunities.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
9. What assessment he has made of the likely effect of universal credit on incentives to work.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
14. How many new businesses he expects to be created as a result of the new enterprise allowance in the first 12 months of its operation.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Over the first two years of its operation, the new enterprise allowance is due to support the start of around 40,000 new businesses. In its second year, we expect the majority of those start-ups to take place in the first few months, when the new enterprise allowance is being rolled out in those parts of the country that are particularly affected by unemployment.
Stephen Metcalfe
The best way to deal with unemployment in my constituency is to build businesses, and I therefore welcome the introduction of the new enterprise allowance. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the allowance will provide unemployed people with mentoring, as well as financial support, to enable them to start their own businesses?
Chris Grayling
I can indeed confirm that. What makes the new enterprise allowance different from all its predecessor schemes is that it will offer people who are seeking to start new businesses specialist support from people who have been there and experienced enterprise. We want to see voluntary sector groups that already offer mentoring become part of the scheme, and we want experienced business people to come forward and become mentors, perhaps through their chambers of commerce. This could make a huge difference to getting people off benefits and into self-employment.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
15. What plans he has for collaboration between jobcentres and voluntary organisations.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
16. What account his Department takes of the effects of the level of the minimum wage in its business planning processes.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Departmental business planning processes take account of the minimum wage in the potential effect on the future pay bill and in departmental contracts. For some years, the Department for Work and Pensions has targeted pay awards towards our lower paid staff, and the lowest level of pay for directly employed DWP staff is currently £7.27 an hour compared with the 2010 national minimum wage of £5.93 an hour.
Chris Grayling
I have to say that I do not share my hon. Friend’s view. What I would say to employers up and down the country is that I hope they will take advantage of the increased numbers of apprenticeships that are paid at special apprenticeship rates in order to allow people to develop the skills they need to build future careers.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Will the Minister assure the House that during internal Government discussions he will support the minimum wage that the Labour Government introduced and make sure that for each year over the next four years it rises by at least the level of inflation?
Chris Grayling
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, Conservative Members have supported the national minimum wage for many years—and will continue to do so.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
17. What recent representations he has received on his proposed review of housing benefit reforms.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
I am pleased to inform the House of two things. First, the Work programme bidding process closed this morning, and we have had a substantial number of bids, which is very encouraging. It looks as if the Work programme is going to go ahead according to plan, which is good news. I would also say to the hon. Lady that, shortly before the start of these parliamentary questions, I placed a written statement before the House, giving details of an extension to the welfare-to-work contracts under existing programmes through to next June. I have also written to the hon. Lady and her Committee, setting out the details of those changes. We believe that we have now put in place all the mechanisms needed to ensure a smooth transition through to the start of the Work programme, which remains very much on track.
Dame Anne Begg
I am glad to hear that my letter has had some effect, but will the Minister confirm that the contractors who are currently delivering Pathways to Work and whose contracts are due to expire at the end of March will not have to issue redundancy notices to their staff in the next couple of weeks, because they will be able to continue until they know whether they will be part of the Work programme?
Chris Grayling
Transitional arrangements will involve the existing providers in all programmes except Pathways to Work. In that instance, we are setting up an interim support programme which will be more substantial than such programmes have been in the past. As the hon. Lady will know, Pathways to Work was severely criticised by the Public Accounts Committee. Our interim arrangements will cover those who would otherwise have received support through Pathways.
Mr Speaker
I call Mr Douglas Carswell. He is not here, so I call Mrs Mary Glindon.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
20. What plans he has to tackle recent trends in youth unemployment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
Over the past few months there has been a fall in the number of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance. However, we remain extremely concerned about youth unemployment. We are introducing measures through the Work programme and our work experience plans, and other measures through Jobcentre Plus, in order to provide the best possible support for young people who are struggling to find employment.
Mrs Glindon
Nearly 25,000 18 to 24-year-olds are claiming jobseeker’s allowance in the north-east, and young people account for more than 30% of the unemployed population in the region. Can the Minister assure me that there will be enough funds in the Work programme to guarantee that those young people will be helped into employment?
Chris Grayling
I share the hon. Lady’s concern. The fact that 600,000 people who left school and college under the last Administration have yet to find work is a huge problem that we must address. We are providing specialist back-to-work support through the Work programme, earlier than has been the case under previous programmes, and after three months for some young people with the most challenged backgrounds. I can assure the hon. Lady that that will remain a priority for the present Administration.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
T5. On Friday, I visited the Reeltime youth and music group in my constituency, where I met three young men who had got their jobs through the future jobs fund. They feel that the FJF is a great success for them, and so did the group. The Scottish Labour party agrees, and has today announced that it will create 10,000 places if it wins in May. Will the Government reconsider scrapping the FJF, or do they still believe youth unemployment is a price worth paying?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
I sometimes think Opposition Members simply do not listen. First, as we have just heard, the Labour party left behind for us the most monumental financial mess, so there are not large amounts of money in the kitty to pay for the best support we could possibly deliver or all the things that we would like to do. The reality is that we have chosen to divert the money that we have into paying for apprenticeships. We have announced tens of thousands of extra apprenticeships, as we believe that they are a much better way of delivering support to young people. There are huge numbers of opportunities for young people to take advantage of an apprenticeship and build a proper career, and there will be more and more such opportunities as the spending review goes by.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
T6. It concerns me when I meet constituents who have given away quite sizeable chunks of money to their children just as they approach retirement in the hope that the Government will then support them through their retirement. What steps are the Government taking to encourage people to save more for their retirement?
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
T9. Recently, a constituent contacted me regarding his Atos Healthcare assessment. Three specialists had considered him to be unfit for work, yet it was suggested that he could be a bingo caller or a car park attendant. My local citizens advice bureau has identified many such cases which are resolved in favour of the claimant after an expensive review or appeal. Are there any plans to review Atos Healthcare’s delivery of medical assessments?
Chris Grayling
As the hon. Lady will know, soon after taking office we commissioned Professor Harrington to conduct a full review of the work capability assessment and the process around it. He has recommended a number of changes, which we are implementing as quickly as possible. I stand by the view that the assessment is the right way of helping people who have got the potential to get back into work. It is much better for those who can be in work to be so, rather than sitting at home on benefits, but we obviously have to make sure that the process is fair, just and proper and that we get the most accurate results possible.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
T7. Given the news that there are more than 150,000 illegal immigrants claiming sickness benefits and maternity pay and that Europe is now threatening legal action under human rights legislation against this Government for planning to restrict those benefits, can Ministers give a clear assurance that the Government will stand up against Europe on this matter?
Chris Grayling
I can give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance on that. It is clearly absurd that illegal immigrants can access our benefits system. It is another example of the chaos we inherited from the previous Administration. I am the person who represents the Department for Work and Pensions and the Government in the European Employment Council, and my hon. Friend has my absolute assurance that I am fighting our corner to maintain the integrity of our welfare system, and will continue to do so.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
T10. Some 21% of the young people in Erdington are unemployed, the Connexions office in Erdington high street has closed, projects funded by the working neighbourhoods fund and the future jobs fund now face closure, and 13 advice centres also face closure as a consequence of council cuts. There is therefore increasing despair among young people. Some years ago, the Secretary of State made a journey to a housing estate in Glasgow. Will he agree to receive a delegation of the young unemployed from Erdington, so that he can hear from them first hand just how mistaken his Government’s policies are?
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Despite all these fine words, have Ministers seen the complaints that have been much publicised in the past few days that the people being targeted are those with multiple sclerosis and other very acute disabilities? Some of those people have said that if their allowances and benefits are taken away, so severe is their illness that they wonder whether life will be worth living. It is a disgraceful state of affairs that people with the most severe illnesses are being targeted in the current campaign.
Chris Grayling
I would say this to the hon. Gentleman: our goal is to do the right thing by people who can make more of their lives. This is not about taking support from people who need indefinite support. We will make sure that people on incapacity benefit who need support and cannot work will continue to be in the support group and will receive a higher level of benefit payment than at present. For those who have the potential to work, we will give them the specialist help they need to do so.
Welfare to Work Contracts
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Government have previously announced their plans for radical reforms of the welfare to work system, starting with the nationwide implementation of the Work programme by the summer of 2011.
Until the Work programme is implemented in June 2011, DWP’s top priority is to ensure that claimants are properly supported during the transition. I am therefore pleased to announce we intend to extend referrals to existing mainstream support for jobseekers (new deals and flexible new deal) until June 2011.
Jobseekers referred to existing contracts up to this point will receive a minimum 13 weeks provision and will subsequently be able to volunteer for early entry to the Work programme.
We will also be extending progress2work contracts, taking into consideration current performance when agreeing the extensions.
We will also be putting in place a new system of flexible and personalised support for ESA claimants to cover the interim period.
As current support is a patchwork of contracts, across different dates and contract areas, transition arrangements will inevitably need to be tailored to local circumstances. However, the contract extensions we are aiming to agree will mean nobody will be unsupported in the transition to the Work programme.
Office for Nuclear Regulation
Lord Grayling Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)
The Government intend to bring forward legislation to create a new independent statutory body outside of the HSE to regulate the nuclear power industry. The new statutory corporation would be known as the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and would take on the relevant functions currently carried out by the Health and Safety Executive and the Department for Transport.
The ONR would be a new independent regulator, formally responsible in law for delivering its regulatory functions. The creation of the ONR would consolidate civil nuclear and radioactive transport safety and security regulation in one place. The proposal will not affect the current regulatory requirements or standards with which industry must comply, and the vast majority of the costs of the regulator would continue to be recovered in charges from operators in the nuclear industry rather than funded by the public purse. Additional organisational costs will be entirely met by the nuclear industry.
Pending the legislation, the Health and Safety Executive is taking steps to establish the ONR as a non-statutory body from 1 April 2011, signalling our commitment to securing an appropriately resourced and responsive regulator for the future challenges of the nuclear sector. The Government will review the functions and processes of the interim body in order to inform their planned legislation.