Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts
Monday 26th January 2015

(9 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Iain Duncan Smith Portrait Mr Duncan Smith
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The interesting thing about this development, which I hope has support on both sides of the House, is that these social investment bonds have advanced dramatically in the past four years, making the UK now a world leader in this, with lots of different Governments coming to ask how to implement it. With the tax relief that we have granted to social investment bonds, the future funding in many of these projects will involve more and more decisions being able to be taken by local government; it will be able to set individual projects up and fund them, without recourse to government, but with a return. So we will be paying for things that happen rather than things that might happen—that is the key.

Andrew Gwynne Portrait Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
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But ending the wage incentive part of the Youth Contract eight months early was a tacit admission of its failure. Only 10,000 young people completed the contract, whereas 160,000 were budgeted for. Can the Secretary of State tell us what went wrong?