Queen’s Speech

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer]

My Lords, I would like to speak briefly about social exclusion. I do not think it is necessary to persuade the House of the need to tackle this issue. My right honourable friend Alan Milburn in the previous Labour Government, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Education Secretary in this Government, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, in an interesting and helpful speech today, have all made the case, which does not need to be repeated. Instead, I welcome and commend to Members of the House the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility which has been published in the past week. What I like about it is that it adopts what I would call an holistic approach to the problem. It recognises seven key truths about social mobility.

The report states that the point of greatest leverage is what happens between birth and three years old primarily in the home, through to education, emphasising the importance of good-quality teaching. It then looks at the after-school culture, the role of higher education and what are described as post-education pathways. Finally—this is the point I want to say something about today—the report looks at personal resilience and emotional well-being among those who are socially excluded in our community. The report reckons that this is an area which has not been fully explored and it asks questions about what might be done. I would like to offer some feedback in this respect.

The report suggests that the way forward is to try to replicate confidence in young people along the lines of fostering what it describes as “public school confidence”. I think that that is the wrong approach. What you have to do with young people who are struggling to climb the education or employment ladder is to work with individuals and with the community in which they find themselves. In other words, an individual’s confidence must be built up within the community they come from. To pull in something from outside, like “public school confidence”, in my opinion would be to send the wrong message.

I will never lose sight of the fact, particularly considering the area of the north-east where I come from, that these communities were once proud and confident. Now they have problems because of economic change and unemployment, but they are still communities and they do not want to be told what to do by anybody from outside. In their own way they are still proud, with their own culture, humour and way of life. What is important in helping to overcome social exclusion is to work with the grain of these communities on the things that the people value and understand.

In order to help gain confidence, self-esteem and ambition—all the things that we have all probably tried to help our own children to achieve—we need to emphasise the importance of people working together. There are organisations that could help a lot more than they do at present. I was thinking about the TUC—what a terrific track record it has of helping people to overcome social exclusion. Can your Lordships think of any other voluntary organisation where a man who began life as a postman could end up as a Cabinet Minister, or that a woman from my union, Jane Kennedy, who started out as a care assistant, could become a government Minister? That is a real pathway to achievement and success. If harnessed properly, the trade unions could be a great asset in helping to overcome some of the difficulties of social exclusion. I hope that colleagues and friends who are involved in this work will give that some thought.

I was also thinking about football clubs. The greatest cultural icon in a very deprived area of Middlesbrough—where, incidentally, I am the chancellor of the university—is the football club. If we can get footballers to go out to talk to young people and try to give them confidence and self-belief, even if it is only in being a good footballer, that will be massively important. Parliamentarians could engage in a dialogue with the owners and managers of football clubs throughout the country, certainly in the Premier League, to try to do something about social exclusion.

I thought about my time with Britannia Building Society after I ceased to be a trade union official, and what a great business it was and how hard it tried to give its employees confidence and personal growth and development. It was always trying to help people from Leek, a small town in Staffordshire, to become the best in the world. What a great thing to say to somebody who comes to work in Leek: “We want you to be the best in the world”. That is the sort of thing that we need to do. We do not need to look to the public schools; we need to look to our own organisations and communities, the things that are already around us, and we need to look at ourselves. There is a lot that people in this House already do, and a lot more we could do.

When I speak to the students at the university, I always tell them that they can be the best in the world. The fact that they did not go to Oxbridge or to a Russell group university, the fact that they come from poorer homes, the fact that they have really had to struggle to get to university is something that they should be proud of. They should be as confident and as proud of themselves as anybody from any other walk of life. That is really the message from that part of the social exclusion report.

Of course, social exclusion is about the whole seven-point agenda, but if you are going to focus on confidence, self-esteem and ambition, and building those things into young people who may not have the right mix at any time in their lives, it is important to do it with authentic organisations and people in the communities who they can relate to, so they can get some feeling that it is possible for them to achieve what they need to in order to do better in life.

Disabled People

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Thursday 5th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, for initiating this debate. I want to make a brief contribution. Unlike most of today’s speakers, many of whom have a distinguished record in this field, I am afraid that I have no special knowledge or personal experience of disability. As a trade union leader, however, I had responsibility over many years for representing members with disabilities, and I have always taken a serious interest in these issues—in particular, in the employment prospects of those with disabilities.

In the process of some work I was doing recently as a member of the scrutiny panel of the Sayce review of the employment of people with disabilities, I was reminded of the contribution made to the working lives of the disabled by an organisation that we all recognise by the name of Remploy. As noble Lords will know, it is a provider of specialist employment services focused on people with disabilities and health conditions who are furthest from the job market. Most of us will probably relate to Remploy through knowledge of its 54 factories, which I will briefly mention later, but may be less aware of the first-class employment service provided by Remploy, which helps those with disabilities to find work. It has an excellent record and had an outstanding year in 2010. The Remploy employment service was successful in finding more than 10,000 jobs in mainstream employment for disabled people and those experiencing complex barriers to work. That represents an increase of almost 40 per cent on the previous year. I hope that the Minister will join me in congratulating Remploy on that achievement.

There have also been considerable achievements in Remploy’s enterprise businesses. As well as providing employment for 2,800 disabled people in 54 factories, its business also supported an additional 600 people with barriers to employment with training programmes in its factories to prepare them for the world of work. The frontline Remploy business in 2010 secured and delivered an important £15 million contract from the Home Office to supply more than 20,000 specialist protection suits to 53 police forces in England, Wales and Scotland. That is just the sort of work that Remploy workers need to enjoy the satisfaction and dignity of contributing to our economic well-being.

Unfortunately, however, the recession and the government policy of cutting back public expenditure have had serious effects on Remploy’s order books in 2011, resulting in a lack of activity in the factories, with some having few or no new orders. I know that the previous Government and their Ministers supported the business and fully recognised its difficulties in times of recession. I should very much like to hear that Ministers in the present Government share that view, that there is no change in that position and that everything will be done to help the Remploy factories to be successful.

I know that there is a modernisation plan which covers the first two years of the spending review, which I understand will not be impacted. I believe that the Government have given that commitment, and I am very pleased about that. However, we need a way forward which secures job opportunities and meaningful work for people with disabilities, not just in the Remploy situation but across the whole of the economy. Again, I should like to know that the Minister shares that view and that his Government are committed to that aim.