Oral Answers to Questions
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend is right, and younger people agree with that. When NOW: Pensions carried out research, it found that only 4% of its 22 to 29-year-old members opted out. Our “Automatic enrolment review 2017” set out our plans to make saving the norm by lowering the age of automatic enrolment from 22 to 18. When an employee pays in, the employer pays in as well, and the Government pay in the tax relief.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)
Private pensions have been transformed by automatic enrolment, which is a social reform of which all Members should be proud. It involves behavioural economics and nudge theory. In my hon. Friend’s constituency, 30,000 eligible jobholders have been automatically enrolled and 2,310 employers have done their duties.
Adam Afriyie
I am delighted with the Government’s progress in helping people to save for retirement, particularly through lifetime ISAs and workplace pensions. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the open banking initiative and the pensions dashboard, the FinTech industry can help to nudge people to save more and create greater competition in the private pensions sector?
Guy Opperman
The pensions industry can and should make the most of the opportunity presented by FinTech. We believe that if it is to succeed, it will be vital for industry and Government to collaborate in the development of the pensions dashboard. As others countries have shown, pensions dashboards are a fantastic way of giving people access to pension information in a clear and simple form, bringing together an individual’s savings in a single place online.
Amendment of the Law
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
Like the Chancellor’s previous five Budgets, this one does nothing to recognise or address the problems faced by my constituents and many others across the country. It is a Budget that yet again demonstrates how out of touch this Government are.
The Chancellor talks of a national recovery and an economic plan that is working. However, the reality is that thousands of hard-working people in my constituency continue to experience low pay and in-work poverty. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is right to say:
“There was little in today’s Budget to enable those on the lowest incomes to be part of an economic recovery.”
Indeed, about 18,000 of my constituents currently earn less than the living wage.
The Chancellor’s announcement of a 20p increase in the minimum wage will mean very little to my constituents. It is yet another example of a broken promise from a Chancellor who, over a year ago, promised to increase the minimum wage to £7 per hour. People in my constituency and across the country deserve better and it is clear that more needs to be done to help those on the lowest incomes. It was a Labour Government who introduced the minimum wage and it will be a Labour Government who go further and increase it to £8, because that is what people deserve.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
I have been listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s words. Will the Labour party raise it to £8 even if it should be higher than that?
Graeme Morrice
I think that is a possibility, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman acknowledges we will have a Labour Government on 7 May.
Throughout the past five years, people have come to my surgery to tell me that their benefits have stopped or that they are struggling to pay their bills, and what is clear is that, month after month, people are worse off under the Tories, as the prices of food, heating and travel rise faster than wages. Given the continued struggle faced by my constituents and many others over the last five years, it raises the question: who is this Budget for? The answer is that this is a Budget made by the rich for the rich.
The bedroom tax continues and so do zero-hours contracts, and retail energy bills do not reflect the fall in wholesale costs. There can be no getting away from the fact that working people are £1,600 a year worse off after five years of the Tories. Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is right to say that
“the poorest have seen the biggest proportionate losses”.
The Budget offered nothing to help families with children, who have borne over 70% of the impact of this Tory Government’s changes to tax credits and benefits. The Chancellor said they “choose families” but it is clear from the Budget that they choose millionaires.
The Budget also offers nothing to help our young people. It speaks volumes that there was hardly any mention in the Chancellor’s Budget speech of any real commitment to help our young people and their prospects. Our young people are the key to the future success of our country, and our young people deserve the chance of a secure job with decent pay.
I know from speaking to young people in my constituency that many feel a sense of hopelessness about their situation. Indeed, nationally youth unemployment remains high, with 743,000 young people currently out of a job. In my constituency, youth unemployment remains above the national average, with 3.6% of young people in West Lothian unemployed. Even when our young people do get jobs, many of them are insecure zero-hours contract jobs. There was nothing in the Budget to address any of these problems, and that once again demonstrates how this Government have written off our young people.
Young people need a Government who will listen to their concerns and ensure they have a better future. They need a Labour Government who will introduce a jobs guarantee scheme for all young people out of work for a year and over 25-year-olds out of work for two years, and I have no doubt that this scheme will be of enormous benefit to all young people in my constituency.
My constituents cannot afford another five years of the Tories, but it is clear that there would be further pain to come if they were to form the next Government. Indeed, the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that there is to be
“a sharp acceleration in the pace of implied real cuts”.
We need a Labour Government to ensure that that does not happen. We need a Labour Government with a plan for working people and their families and for our young people. We need a Labour Government who will stand up for the whole of my constituency and for the whole of our country.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Since this Government were elected five years ago, three mantras have been quoted by the Con Dems against the Labour party, and I want to debunk some of them. The first is the suggestion that, somehow, the global financial crisis was caused by the Labour party. [Laughter.] The second is that, somehow, that was because we had a light touch in our regulation of the banks. The third is that, somehow, our party is anti-business. Conservative Members started laughing when I mentioned the global crisis, but they perhaps need to be reminded that when Labour came to office in 1997 the national debt to GDP ratio was 43% but by 2002, five years later, it was down to 30% under Labour. So let us not have any lectures about our financial prudence.
The banking crisis occurred later—I expect more laughter—but Conservative Members should stop laughing because if the banking crisis was our fault, why were the USA, Japan and the entire world having the same problem? That is why it was called the global financial crisis. It was not the UK’s financial crisis; it was the global financial crisis, which we know started with the sub-prime mortgages in the USA, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the other things that happened. So it is wrong for the Government to have said what they have said for the past five years, and I hope that the British people, who know the truth, will reject them at the forthcoming election.
We keep hearing about our light-touch regulation, with people saying, “You took your eyes off the banks and you regulated them too lightly.” Yet this Chancellor and this Prime Minister were saying up until 2010 that the Labour party was far too stringent on the regulation; we were being accused of stifling business and of over-regulating the banks. So which way do Conservative Members want to play this: were we overly light or too strong? I would say that we regulated the banks properly. Again, the Government have collective amnesia and they need to be reminded.
The current national debt is £1.36 trillion, whereas when Labour left power in 2010 it was £0.76 trillion, about half what it is now. The national debt to GDP ratio is about 95% now, so we need take no lectures from Conservative Members about financial management and fiscal prudence. The reason there remains such a high debt, much bigger than when we left office, is that the Chancellor’s austerity measures meant he was not able to get the revenue receipts he needed to close the deficit.
Although jobs have been created, which we welcome, most are on zero-hours contracts, part-time jobs and poorly paid jobs. Many people still have to rely on working tax credits to make ends meet. It is worth remembering that, in 2007, the Labour Government borrowed £37.7 billion, but spent £28.3 billion on big projects, such as building hospitals and schools, which helped the economy. By contrast, when this Government borrowed £91.5 billion in 2013, they invested only £23.7 billion. The rest was used to bring down the budget deficit, so there has been no economic miracle.
Today’s debate is about jobs. We are told by Government Members that we are the party that is against business. Well, since 2010, it is Labour that has constantly urged the Government to fulfil the infrastructure projects that we pushed for and it took years for the legislation to be passed so that they could go ahead. We called for a reduction in VAT and in national insurance to help small businesses. We called on the Government to reduce business rates to enable start-ups and to allow local authorities to help small businesses. We have constantly argued that the banks were not lending enough money to small and medium-sized enterprises. We are the party that said we would build 200,000 new homes. We are the party that said that all 18 to 24 year olds who qualify would get apprenticeships, which is about 1 million young people. We are the party that said that it would create 20,000 more nurses training places and 8,000 more doctor and GP training contracts.
Adam Afriyie
The hon. Lady is saying that Labour is the party for all sorts of things, but was it not also the party that did nothing about zero-hours contracts when it was in power?
Yasmin Qureshi
When zero-hours contracts are properly used, which is rare, they are fine—I am talking about students who work part time—but we now have 1.5 million people on them.[Interruption.] I am sorry; I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted to intervene again.
Yasmin Qureshi
No, no. To say that we are a party that does not believe in business or enterprise is wrong. We are a party with a social conscience. Some years ago, when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition talked about producers and predators, he was said to be anti-business; he was not. We are the party that believes in fairness. We are the party that believes that if a person does a day’s work, they should be properly remunerated. We are the party that spent many hours in the previous Parliament arguing for the minimum wage when everyone in the Conservative party was trying to argue against it. We have a record of which we should be proud.
Oral Answers to Questions
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Esther McVey
I am afraid it is the right hon. Gentleman who has soft skills. I have core skills in telling the truth: youth unemployment is down 200,000 since he left office. We do not need a job guarantee scheme, which does not work and costs an incredible amount of money. The work experience scheme we brought in is delivering better results at a twentieth of the cost. You bring in Labour, you pay a lot more for a lot less results.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
3. What assessment he has made of the effect of the benefit cap on long-term unemployment.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
8. What assessment he has made of the effect of the benefit cap on rates of employment.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
The benefit cap is having a positive impact on people’s lives. I believe it is encouraging them to find work. The statistics show that. [Interruption.] Yes, they do. Those affected by the cap are 41% more likely to go into work than a similar uncapped group. It is under this Government that we are seeing long-term unemployment fall to its lowest level since 2009. The employment rate, at 73.2%, has never been higher.
Adam Afriyie
I had good cause this weekend to reflect on where I grew up. It breaks my heart to think that so many people spend such a long time on long-term welfare and state handouts. In Windsor, the number of people claiming benefits for more than a year has fallen by almost two-thirds, to just 70 people. That lifts my heart. Does the Secretary of State agree that we have a moral and social imperative to ensure that people are able to make their way from welfare to work and have a meaningful life?
Mr Duncan Smith
So there we have it: an Opposition who think that they will govern by innuendo and clap-trap. What we have heard from them is a lot of nonsense from start to finish. Listening to the hon. Lady, I wonder whether she is even the slightest bit prepared for government—although she will not be lucky enough to get into government. We heard another little speech from the shadow Chancellor today, in which he did not lay out one single policy on welfare, the economy or anything else at all. What we have from the Opposition—this is why they will not get into government—is constant nonsense, cheap politics and a total waste of time.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
T5. I think we must all welcome the Institute for Fiscal Studies report last week, which said that household median incomes are almost back to pre-recession levels. Does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agree that that demonstrates that sensible, competent economic policies in government make the difference to people on the street?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is absolutely true. While the Opposition moan on about bits and pieces, the reality is that this Government have got on with getting more people into work, getting more stable incomes, and increasing incomes. The cost of living, petrol prices and food prices are falling, and people’s incomes are rising. This Government’s long-term economic plan is delivering a change and an improvement to people’s lives.
Mental Health and Unemployment
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
I was not sure whether I would make it to this debate, given my other responsibilities, but I am very glad that I have. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling the debate, and the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) for opening it.
This is an important debate, not only for those with mental health challenges who are unemployed, but because it is something that I think strikes at the heart of what we are all doing in politics. With millions of people affected—one in four people will be affected by a mental health challenge in their lifetime—this issue lies at the heart of what it is to be human, to be British, and to be part of a democratic society. Right now in this Chamber, across the House, in our offices and across the country, probably one in six or seven people is struggling with some form of mental health challenge. That says to me that it is part of the normality of the human condition, and surely as Members of Parliament and Government, and as law makers, we must bear that in mind when making the laws of the land.
Across the Conservative Benches, and perhaps across the House, it often seems that our objective in politics is to seek the greatest level of utility for the greatest number of people. It strikes me, however, that GDP growth, incomes, salaries, and the growth in physical goods and services that we consume, is not necessarily the best aim. Indeed, I am not sure that that is the fundamental aim we all share, and it seems that a better motto, modus operandi and objective—one that I suspect we all share—would be to create the greatest level of happiness for the greatest number of people. It is not that as politicians we can work out how to make people happy—that would be preposterous and ridiculous—but some things are certain to make people unhappy, or to create stress and the sense of a lack of control that leads to a greater prevalence of mental health challenges.
When I first arrived in Parliament in 2005 I co-wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Forgotten”. My chapter was on those with depression who, almost by virtue of that condition if they are going through an experience at the time of an election, are kind of disfranchised from society and the democratic process. One of my burning passions is to ensure that everyone, no matter what their background or mental health condition, is able to participate in the democratic process, and is also never forgotten.
We certainly do not know how to create happiness—I would be very nervous if anyone suggested that they know how to create happiness for somebody else. However, when it comes to public services and law making we can do a lot to remove the causes of unhappiness, depression, or the exacerbating factors that lead to greater levels of depression and mental health challenges.
On the causes of mental health challenges, there is certainly a degree of genetic propensity—that is becoming ever clearer as scientific research progresses. There are also specific causes of such challenges in life, such as bereavement, certainly of a close family member. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his comments on the fact that in troubled zones during times of war or conflict the incidence of mental health challenges rises immediately because of changes to what is going on around people. Mental health challenges can be brought forward or exacerbated by accidents, or by the loss of a job or a divorce. Those are known causes or accelerating factors for mental health challenges, and are things for us to consider when making policy.
One area is almost entirely within our control—this is why I am delighted to participate in the debate today—because we can have an impact on the welfare and benefits system, and on how the state enables or helps people to find employment, or to get training or education. I was particularly mindful and supportive of many of the comments made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) about the systems we introduce for getting people back into work, or identifying whether they have challenges. One of the greatest forms of stress and pressure—which can cause depression and trigger other mental health challenges—is a feeling that our life is out of our control. We have a complicated benefits system, and people have to jump through many hoops to achieve recognition within it.
Mr Kevan Jones
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to tailor-make back-to-work programmes and recognise that on some occasions it might take longer to get people capable of working? We also need a system that allows people with long-term mental health issues who are not going to work at least to make some positive contribution to society.
Adam Afriyie
The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head—that is precisely it. The distribution of traits within mankind and the British population is like a bell curve. Every person is unique. There are very few identical twins. Certain mental health conditions require a longer period of adjustment before people are able to participate in the workplace or in voluntary activities that make a contribution to society. Any system must be flexible enough to recognise that difference.
On the feeling that one’s life is out of one’s control, let us imagine—I will create a caricature here—someone from a tough background with literacy difficulties, perhaps dyslexia, who has just gone through a divorce and is presented with forms up to 70 pages long when trying to get some form of support from the state. The idea that someone who is in a very difficult state can navigate this incredibly complex system is tantamount to mental cruelty. There have been cases in the press recently where parents of children with difficulties have had to deal with a stream of health workers, disability benefit support staff, jobcentre workers and council workers knocking on their door. That can create a huge amount of stress and a sense that life is beyond one’s control. We have to be mindful of that and ensure that public services fit people who are going through a mental health episode.
I want to say some positive things about mental health, unemployment and employment. Mental health challenges are part of the normal human condition. Probably one in four of us here will struggle with a mental health challenge at some point in our lifetime. I am sure that all MPs have seen people in their surgeries who present with a problem—for example, they are unemployed and are having difficulties finding work and navigating the benefits system—and realise that there is something more behind the initial problem. Sometimes it will be depression, bipolar or paranoia, and they will need further assistance and support.
If we are to have a society that is at ease with itself, the stigma of mental health conditions needs to disappear. It is part of our job—not just in this debate, but in our daily lives—to ensure that we are relaxed about talking about mental health conditions, no matter what they are. In many cases, I welcome the idea that people joke about mental health conditions. I do not mean that people should do so in a derogatory way, but that jokes are part of our normal discourse. Whether in Parliament, in Westminster or in a business, people stand by a coffee machine and talk about so and so breaking a leg when they were skiing. Everyone has a laugh about it, asks the person how they are and then writes their name on the cast. I do not want mental health challenges to be part of a sort of corridor whisper. We should be able to laugh and talk—“so and so is having a bit of trouble at the moment”—and be very relaxed about them, because they are part of our human condition.
Another positive thing about people with mental health challenges in the workplace is this: yes, British Telecom has recognised the benefits of employing people who may have challenges, but a raft of smaller firms have also recognised those benefits. In my working career in the world of business in the 20 years before I entered politics—I suppose this is work as well—I came across many enlightened small businesses that, on many occasions, competed for people with mental challenges such as depression or bipolar. I will try to put this subtly. When somebody is struggling with bipolar and is in a good period, they can be exceptionally creative and productive. That is very useful, provided one recognises that when they are in a down period they need flexibility and understanding. A lot of small businesses would benefit from recruiting people with certain mental health challenges for particular roles in their organisation.
It is my experience, from having observed businesses over the years, that those that recognise these challenges and show flexibility actually perform exceptionally well. So even being less altruistic, this is a great opportunity to create work forces that are up to the mark, dedicated and loyal and which go the extra mile in the good times, because people with mental health challenges are a great resource on which to draw. As others have said, however, it would be helpful to have guidelines or suggestions, perhaps from the public sector but certainly from bodies such as Mind and others, on how to work with people with mental health challenges, particularly for small businesses.
I hope that Opposition Members will bear with me for a moment, because I want to touch on the coalition’s welfare changes, many of which were initiated under the previous Labour Government. In many respects, we should take our hats off to the direction of travel. One of the greatest pressures is to be young and unemployed and to feel unwanted, as it can exacerbate the feeling of isolation from society. However, although the welfare changes that the coalition has made or is seeking to make might not be perfect, they do represent the correct direction of travel. I know that many Opposition Members agree. If we can help somebody into work—not in a brutal way—we can give them that sense of meaning, control and well-being that comes from knowing that even if they have a mental health challenge they are still welcome in the work force. These are positive things that MPs can do to enfranchise the large minority that struggles from time to time.
Mr Jones
I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman—if it is the right type of help. However, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and I mentioned, for someone suffering from a long-term mental health condition, this merry-go-round system we have is pretty brutish and needs refining. Otherwise, it will not only waste taxpayers’ money but create a lot of unhappiness and fear among people with long-term mental health issues.
Adam Afriyie
I think we agree. Indeed, I was about to focus on how we could significantly improve the way the system works for people with mental health challenges. First, on public services, particularly welfare-to-work arrangements, we need to be very finely attuned to the processes undertaken. Somebody with a mental health challenge might initially appear to be absolutely fine, but if they are put through a very mechanistic—the hon. Gentleman said “brutish”—process that makes no allowances for such challenges, it can do more harm than good.
Mr Jones
I do not disagree, but one of the fundamental flaws that I and others have been raising for several years is that Atos assessors are not mental health trained. Having assessors with expertise in mental health would be a huge step forward in helping those individuals, yet the Government have ignored the matter for the last few years.
Adam Afriyie
I am not sure the Government have ignored it. I have been in meetings where it has been carefully discussed, so it is certainly on the agenda. I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s general point, however, and I am sure we will get to it on the other side of the upcoming election. Thus far, the focus has been on shaping the overall system in the right way, but unquestionably it will need refinement to ensure that in the first level of interaction the system quickly identifies people who might require a greater focus on their mental health and well-being than the average person.
I can give the hon. Gentleman the commitment that once we are through this short period before the election, and if we are both fortunate enough to be here afterwards, I will be happy to work with him and others in the Chamber to ensure that mental health conditions are better recognised or integrated within the process. We had a huge mountain to climb just to change the system in the first instance, but greater sensitivity is certainly needed now.
Four or five years ago, in Windsor, I knocked on the door of a very elderly lady. She had found in her letter box a form connected with a consultation on whether a local development should proceed. She was clearly struggling with a mental health condition at the time, and was agonising over whether she should fill in the massive form. There was another form from the council, and another relating to planning. I almost did not have the heart, but just about had the heart, to say to her, “The form is merely about a consultation, and, given the hundreds of forms that will be sent back, what you write on this one may have only a very small impact on the outcome. You might be better off seeing your family, having relatives to visit, and actually enjoying your life.”
What I gleaned from that encounter was that having to deal with lengthy forms and deeply bureaucratic processes may—unnecessarily, in many cases—take away the quality of people’s lives, particularly when those people are unemployed. That, I believe, should be a secondary focus for us, and for any future Government. We should think about the way in which we ask people to participate in our bureaucratic procedures to obtain assistance and return to work. We should ask ourselves whether the length of forms is a problem, and whether matters could be dealt with a little more quickly on the telephone or face to face, given that that some people might be struggling with a challenge at the time.
I know that we are having a quiet afternoon in the Chamber today, but I think that we have a responsibility to continue to talk about this issue—not only in debates such as this, but in the context of every brief that we may hold, every Committee in which we may participate, and every Bill that we may examine. We must keep at the forefront of our minds the fact that a very large proportion of the British population are struggling with mental health challenges. Every policy that we create must be designed to reflect that, and to accommodate such people.
Here is one more idea that may be of use at some point in the future. I love the idea of the market. I love the idea of businesses competing to hire employees, and I love the idea that competing small businesses—as well as one or two larger ones—that are desperate to hire staff at a time of low unemployment will one day place an imprimatur on their websites and recruitment pages, declaring that theirs is a mental health-friendly working environment. Indeed, it would be curious if they did not do so. I believe that if small and medium-sized businesses—indeed, all businesses—do not take that route, they will be hamstringing themselves and preventing themselves from taking advantage of the best employees that they can recruit from the marketplace.
This is my vision for politics. I want to see a country that is at ease with itself, and with people from different backgrounds and different walks of life. A country that is at ease with itself must acknowledge that, at any one time, a large minority of its population will face mental health challenges, but that those people are equally part of society. The policies that we create in this place must be user-friendly, and take account of people from all sorts of backgrounds and with all sorts of conditions.
I am optimistic about the future. Why? Because there is no doubt that Labour, Liberal Democrat, Independent and Conservative Members all recognise that the issue of mental health represents a serious challenge for a large proportion of the population, and I am confident that any future Government will pay more attention to it than we have in the past.
Compulsory Jobs Guarantee
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Lady. She has tortuously wound her way around all these figures, but I come back to the simple point that the work experience programme, at a twentieth of the cost of the future jobs fund, ensures that over 50% of those who enter it will go into work. By the way, I did not invent the work experience programme—it was invented for me by somebody on the floor of the job centre because young people were saying, “Can’t we have more time for work experience than the last Government allowed us to have?” I do not know if she has seen the really interesting figure that the claimant count in her constituency is down by nearly 50%. That is a very good story. I know she will want to write that up as well, as an excellent statistic.
The record jobs figures under this Government stand as a testament to our success, with more people in work than ever before, up by 1.75 million, and more people in private sector jobs than ever before, up by nearly 2.2 million. Since 2010, two thirds of the rise in employment has gone to UK nationals—the Opposition never achieved this—thereby reversing the damaging trend of Labour’s last five years in office, when the majority of jobs went to foreign nationals. What is more, we now have more women in work than ever before, more lone parents in work than ever before, and more older workers than ever before—and employment for young people and disabled people is up on the year as well.
Let me now deal with the suggestion that these people are moving into part-time, low-quality work. That is not true. The Opposition constantly harp on about a figure that has no basis in fact, so let me give the facts. Full-time employment is up by over 1.3 million since 2010—over 80% of the rise in employment in the past year alone. Permanent employees are up by 1 million since 2010—nearly 80% of all people in work. Three quarters of those in employment since 2010 have come from managerial, professional or associate professional jobs. The Opposition constantly put about the nonsense that there are nothing but zero-hour, no-value, low-skilled jobs, but that is simply not true.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
It seems to me that with the DWP reforms we have brought through and with the changes to the tax system and regulation, we have created the greatest job creation engine this country has ever seen. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this motion is completely redundant, just as the Labour party’s measures in the previous Government created so many redundancies?
Mr Duncan Smith
I do agree. I also remind my hon. Friend that my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) said that under the previous Government youth unemployment did not, as the right hon. Member for East Ham claimed, rise only because of the great global recession that somehow crept up on the previous Government, but was rising steadily from 2004 all the way through.
Oral Answers to Questions
Adam Afriyie Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Esther McVey
My hon. Friend is right—it is about building relationships between businesses and schools, and that is what we have done with some of the biggest businesses. We set up Movement to Work, which created 100,000 work experience schemes. Another scheme, Feeding Britain’s Future, provided another 15,000 work experience places and, in the west midlands alone, there are more than 16,000. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education created the new careers support scheme, which is also working with companies, schools and individuals.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
23. It lifts my heart to see so many more people in employment across Windsor and the country. All hon. Members share the vision of a country in which the circumstances of our birth do not determine where we end up. I commend the Secretary of State on his work on welfare reform, and does the Minister agree that we must continue to push on with those changes so that social mobility in Britain is boosted once again?
Esther McVey
My hon. Friend is right about social mobility. He is also the living embodiment of it, as he comes from a council estate in south London, son of a single mum with many mouths to feed. He then set up a multi-million pound business and won young entrepreneur of the year from Ernst and Young. The Government have provided support and encouragement, creating the sort of environment in which people like my hon. Friend can develop their businesses and employ other people.