Employment

Lord Peston Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My noble friend is right to concentrate on specifics, and I am happy to assure him that we have campaigns to get the disabled into work. We have just launched the two-year Disability Confident campaign for employers, and in December we issued the disability health employment strategy. As for youth, I am pleased to be able to say that JSA for youth has now fallen for 18 consecutive months. The number of young NEETs is the lowest for a decade. We have 1.5 million apprenticeship places. The key measure that I have used in this House before is the number of young out of work and out of education, which rose under the previous Government, even though we had the biggest boom. We have now got it under control and it is beginning to fall. The number is now down by 100,000 since the election.

[Lord Peston (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that quite a few people in full-time employment are in jobs below their qualifications and abilities, so the figures need to be looked at more carefully? Much more to the point, is he aware that if we look at the present state of the British economy, to cite that great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes, it is nowhere near full employment and the Government’s policies will never get us there?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the leader of the Labour Party said in 2010 that we had a programme that would lead to the loss of 1 million jobs. In fact, we have had a programme that has led to an increase of 1.2 million jobs. We have the right policies to get this country back on the move.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Peston Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one of the things that has changed in terms of looking at young people is that we are getting some real figures that are not disguised, as they were, by people going into training and coming back again. We are counting people who are long-term unemployed as long-term unemployed, and the figure in the country as a whole for those unemployed for more than six months is currently 163,000. That figure is too high but, if you compare like with like, only about 10,000 more than it was when we first came into power.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that unless and until we get a Government who place the restoration of full employment as a central aim of government economic policy, the young people of this country have no hope substantially of returning to work? We need a policy of full employment and not the kind of Elastoplast policies that the Minister is talking about.

[Lord Freud]

I am sure that the noble Lord will agree that the lump of labour fallacy is not how one should run an unemployment policy and that a competitive employment approach is the right approach. The way that one achieves that is by skilling up the workforce so that people can take jobs. That, in itself, expands the economy by more than it would otherwise expand. I am sorry that the noble Lord does not agree. I know there are noble Lords on the Benches opposite who dislike the lump of labour fallacy as much as I do.

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Peston Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, it was shocking that the other place left so little time for the important amendment concerning the disability addition for children. It received scant debate. I strongly support the current amendment for the reasons that I gave at Third Reading, and trust that the Minister now understands the damage that the Bill will do to disabled children unless action is taken.

[Lord Peston]

I start from the position that when your Lordships pass an amendment, it is for the Commons to consider it reasonably and make up its own mind. I am coming up to the 25th anniversary of my being here and my experience is overwhelmingly that that is what happens. It happens for one very good reason—namely, courtesy.

For most amendments, once is enough. For rather more important amendments, the Commons may come back with a reasoned argument and we may decide that we need to argue it through a second time. Overwhelmingly, I take the view that for virtually everything, except matters that would subvert our constitution, twice is absolutely enough. In all cases, I expect a reasoned, thoughtful reply from the other place. I hope that is not an oxymoron. When I was told what was happening over the amendments that we are currently debating, at first I just did not remotely believe that the Commons would behave in such a way. I regarded it as an insult to your Lordships’ House that the Commons had behaved in that way. The Leader of the House did his best somehow to persuade us that there was no other way. I sat here listening and thought, “How do I feel about this?”. I felt and feel as though I was being bullied. Those of us who have some experience of bullies know that there is only one way to deal with them—to fight back. That is why I sit here, not as an expert on constitutional matters but simply as a Member of your Lordships’ House, as we debate an amendment that is of great ethical importance, as I pointed out last time. The Minister has certainly said that he would like to respond positively if he possibly still can. I think I am right; perhaps he will nod if that was his intention to get that impression across to us. However, I do not remotely see how he can do that, given the way in which the Commons has responded. The Commons has not responded in any way in which reason was uppermost in its mind. Reason was the last thing on its mind. Essentially, the Commons stamped its foot and said, “No way”. I cannot advise the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on what she ought to do. I just got up to place on record—on a matter that is of the utmost ethical importance, as I explained when we debated this previously—that, in getting its own way, the other House has chosen a means that we should not lie down and accept.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, many specific points have been made and I shall try to deal with them. We have debated this issue a lot and perhaps I may gently remind the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that we actually voted both ways on very similar issues. I recall that we had a plus two and a minus 16 on this issue—I think it was this issue. When we talk about the message coming from the Lords to the Commons, there were a number of votes in this area.

[Lord Peston]

Is the noble Lord saying that we are being unreasonable for expecting some reasonable arguments from the other place?

Welfare Reform Bill

Lord Peston Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I congratulate my old friend the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on her excellent introduction to the amendment.

I have two points to make. First, regarding the excellent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, I used to be an expert on cost-benefit analysis; indeed, I did the very first piece of cost-benefit analysis ever done in the Treasury, and I am talking about a very long time ago. I have not the slightest doubt that if the Government were to conduct such an analysis—I am too old now to do it for them—of what they are doing in this area, it would show that there will be no net economic saving nor net financial saving from what they are doing now. Nor do I have the slightest doubt that there are plenty of very good economists in the Treasury who already know that.

My main point is that the question before us is an ethical one and should not be treated primarily in economic and financial terms. Your Lordships’ House is the best suited place that I know of to discuss such matters; indeed, I believe that we have a duty to consider the ethical aspects of what the Government are doing with regard to disabled young people. My main intellectual hobby is philosophy, and I know no philosopher who has ever written on the subject of ethics who would be other than appalled at the notion that we are discussing which group of disabled should bear the burden. Those philosophers would regard that as a rather sick formulation of policy-making and would be equally appalled that such burdens should fall on two of the most vulnerable groups in our society. The first group is the young disabled, about whom their view would be that if the Government cannot find the money, we taxpayers should meet the cost. That would be the correct ethical response to all this. The second group we ought also to bear in mind, as various contributors have mentioned, is carers and the burden placed them. I thank goodness that I have never had to be a carer in that sense. As has been pointed out, those carers worry about whether they dare die as their disabled people have got older.

The Government simply should not be going down this path. I say in terms to the Minister that he should be ashamed of himself in trying to defend such unethical behaviour.

Unemployment: Young People

Lord Peston Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Peston]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect the level of youth unemployment to begin to fall.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

The most recent forecast from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility is for unemployment to level out and then fall from the second half of 2012. There is no separate forecast for youth unemployment, but this would be expected to follow a broadly similar trend.

[Lord Peston]

Am I to understand, when thanking the Minister for that Answer, that the Treasury does not look specifically at youth unemployment when considering its policies? Is it the case that no Minister in the Treasury, no official and none of its excellent economists or statisticians has a view on when the rate of increase in unemployment, especially for young people, will become a rate of decrease?

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, the forecasts have now gone to the Office for Budget Responsibility and are the basis for planning. Clearly, the forecast that I have just given noble Lords is somewhat out of date and we are looking to have another later this month. Clearly, the implication of what the Governor of the Bank of England has just said is that growth will, on his forecast, run at 1 per cent this year and next, and this will be built into those kinds of forecasts.

Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission

Lord Peston Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, there needs to be a massive programme to improve both poverty and social mobility. It needs to be done right the way from foundation years, through school years and the transition period, and even to adulthood. The particular programmes that we will see will come out of this general approach. I cannot give any assurances on any particular approach at this stage, although I am personally most sympathetic to the concept of mentoring.

[Lord Peston]

Does the Minister recall Scott Fitzgerald’s remark to Ernest Hemingway many years ago? “The rich are different from us”, Fitzgerald said. “Yes”, Hemingway replied, “they’ve got more money”. There is no mystery about child poverty, is there? What children need if they are not to be impoverished is more money, which means that a policy of cutting public expenditure benefits is not the right way of setting about helping them.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, regrettably, I was not there when that remark was made. However, I absolutely insist that income transfer is not the way to solve poverty; we need a much more comprehensive approach. Recent research tells us that in-kind support is more effective than income transfers for children in poverty. We are making a sustained, long-term attempt to lift people out of not only poverty of income but poverty of aspiration and poverty of outcomes.