General matters

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I am sure that I speak for everyone in the House in saying that this has been a most interesting and informative debate. I, for one, have learned a lot about subjects that I hardly knew existed as subjects, although I feel somewhat inadequate that my constituency does not have a race track or, indeed, a tyre factory—I hope that those things can be remedied as soon as possible.

I want to speak about unemployment levels, which is a subject that affects most hon. Members’ constituencies, and what I believe charitable organisations can do to help to alleviate it. I have done a lot of work on unemployment in Watford. At 3.1%, we do not have a particularly high unemployment level in gross terms, but we do have a lot of young people—the figure has nearly doubled in the past two and a half years. We also have quite a few people on incapacity benefit, many of whom wish to be taken off it and to move into work. I feel that the system has very much failed them. During the summer I commissioned a research project with some students to look into unemployment, speaking to young people in particular. We were quite amazed at how many of the 560 young people on jobseeker’s allowance were at home, demoralised and demotivated, making it difficult for them to go out and get work.

My central argument today is that we should encourage the charitable sector to help to alleviate the problem, because I believe that it can do far better than some of the commercial providers that are currently involved in the different job schemes. Last week I met a remarkable lady who is the mother of one of my constituents who is registered disabled. Lindsey Gibson has some problems with speech, but she is determined to get herself a job. She told me a tale of how firms such as Kennedy Scott are paid a lot of money by Government, with the best of intentions, to get people off jobseeker’s allowance or incapacity benefit. However, often people turn up and are told to leave after five minutes because there is no one there to teach them or because the computers are not working—they are given every excuse under the sun. It is quite disgraceful that such companies are not monitored, and my constituent is only one of a number of people who have mentioned this to me.

Let us look at the two new schemes that have been brought forward and how they use charitable organisations. Under the Work Together scheme, Jobcentre Plus encourages unemployed people to consider taking up voluntary work while looking for paid employment. Miss Gibson, whom I saw last week, was discouraged from doing that in the past, because people said that while she was doing voluntary work she was not able to look for work and would therefore not qualify for benefits. The Government are changing that, which is absolutely right. Doing voluntary work could mean working in a charity shop, which gives people confidence and allows them to network with other people. The hours are often flexible enough to allow people to go to job interviews and do what they really want to do. We have to encourage that. We cannot have rules that say that people cannot do more than 16 hours a week.

Work Choice, which is the other programme, is doing good work in Hertfordshire, and in Watford in particular, via the Shaw Trust, a charitable organisation that helps disabled people into work. Progress is being made. I would encourage the Government and charitable organisations to get involved in that work, because they can do it a lot better than private enterprise. If we had a race course or a tyre factory where people could work, things might be different, but we do not. We have to make do with Camelot—it is not involved in gambling, because people are playing a game—which employs 700 people. Camelot is a serious organisation; the reason I mention it is that it works in the community on helping people to get jobs. Some private companies are so fattened by the fees that they have received for training courses that I am reminded of that old advert—I think it was for Bran Flakes—in which people on a boat sang, “They’re tasty, tasty, very, very tasty. They’re very tasty.” This has to stop, so the more that we can deal with charitable organisations, the better.

I wish everyone a happy Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that hon. Members sympathise, as I do, with the Deputy Leader of the House, because how he will deal with all these different subjects between now and Christmas and the new year I do not know.