Remploy

Debate between Anne Begg and Anne McGuire

Thursday 15th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs McGuire]

My hon. Friend is correct. I do not blame Liz Sayce for that, as her report dealt with principles and the direction of travel, but we can criticise the consultation for lacking fundamental details on some of the questions affecting the disabled people who currently work for Remploy.

If the businesses are to be transferred, what provision will be made to safeguard terms and conditions? Will they be guaranteed under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, or will people be sacked and rehired under inferior terms and conditions? Liz Sayce complimented Remploy on delivering good terms and conditions for its workers, but again, the consultation says nothing about that.

The consultation mentions a comprehensive package of support, which is one of the Sayce recommendations. What does the Minister have in mind? What kind of support will it be? How will it be delivered, and by whom? Has she factored the costs of that support into her budget for the winding-up of Remploy? What assessment has she made of the costs involved in selling off the factories and winding up Remploy enterprises, including all the calculations relating to redundancy payments, liabilities and creditors, a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes? How do they relate to the current budget, and how much money will actually be transferred to other Government support programmes after all those issues are taken into account?

[Dame Anne Begg]

On the Government’s Work programme and their desire to get more disabled people into work, without the factories, there will be fewer opportunities for work experience to give people the skills, expertise and background that will allow them into open employment. We cannot do away with the factories if we are serious about getting people with severe disabilities into open employment. The only employers likely to be able to give them that experience are those such as Remploy factories.

[Mrs McGuire]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that has been echoed by other colleagues in this debate. The Remploy factories have changed how they operate, including working with local special needs schools. They open up opportunities. She will know that they are not a destination but a stepping stone to the world of work. Disabled people can work in a range of industries and with a range of skills. I support the opening up of opportunities, with the support of trade unions, workers and management, as part of modernisation. At a factory in Causewayhead in my constituency last week, I was told how many people were coming to the factory through the training annexe. Training opportunities were being opened up to a range of disabled and non-disabled people. She makes a good point.

I have left one important issue until the end. Why has the Minister decided effectively to renege on a deal made with people who decided to stay with Remploy under the modernisation programme? I refer her to page 19 of the consultation document, which says:

“The implication of the recommendations in the Sayce Report is that, if accepted”—

she has already said that she is minded to accept them—

“Remploy in its current form would not exist…The Government will therefore not be able to give undertakings that staff”,

who are covered by protection of their working conditions, salaries and pensions,

“will not be made compulsorily redundant as a result of such changes, including the modernisation group.”

Modernisation came about as the result of protracted and difficult discussions. I will be disappointed if the Minister and her Government run away from the decisions and agreements made and accepted by her party when they were in opposition to maintain terms and conditions even for those who chose not to or were not in a position to move into other full-time employment. That was our deal with people who had given a lifetime of service to Remploy. Frankly, if my interpretation of her consultation document is accurate, I am disappointed.

The Minister cannot distance herself from the economic situation in which we find ourselves, a situation underlined by yesterday’s unemployment figures. Does she accept that even if she is minded to make that decision, making it in the current economic environment looks almost like abandoning her duty of care to the disabled employees who have given many years of service to the company that she effectively owns?

The Minister cannot hide behind the views of the disability lobby to justify her actions. Indeed, one leading disability organisation, Scope, while accepting the principle of closure, says on page 101 of the Sayce review:

“However, given the harsh economic climate, we recognise the need for transitional protection for the 3,000 employees currently located in the Remploy factories and suggest that full closure is deferred until the employment environment has recovered.”

Even one of the organisations supporting the direction of travel says that now is the wrong time to make that decision.

During the past two hours or so, the Minister has heard the passion and commitment expressed by hon. Members from all parties. I hope that she will seriously consider those points of view. I hope that her phrase that the Government are “minded to accept” was an unfortunate slip of the pen and that her mind is still open. Not only do disabled people fear unemployment, they experience fear every day due to negative media headlines about disabled people and their lives in the community. I think that she is an honourable lady, and I hope that as a result of this debate, she will take away some of the points made and see that there is a flexibility of approach and that nobody is tied to a model of Remploy that is stuck in the past. We want a network of supported factories in local communities and linking into local networks that deliver good-quality jobs and experiences for many young people for many years to come.

Scotland (Poverty)

Debate between Anne Begg and Anne McGuire

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dame Anne Begg]

Until they retire, which is what the position is at the moment. If they are in the support group, they will keep it for ever.

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention has given me the opportunity to raise something that he can discuss with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions. The way that the national insurance system works is that if someone has not made a NI contribution for the previous two years, then they do not get the contributory benefit. I tabled a written question to ask what happened if someone had been in the work-related activity group for two years and then got worse, particularly if they had a degenerative illness, and found themselves in the support group. They would not have the national insurance contribution to go back on to the contributory element. Would they be able to get the ESA? The reply from the Minister was unequivocal—yes, they would be able to go back on to contributory ESA if they had moved from the WRAG to the support group after two years.

However, in correspondence with an official, some doubt has been cast on whether that is indeed the case. It is not clear from the Welfare Reform Bill, and it is certainly not clear from the debates around the Bill, whether someone who has been on WRAG for two years will get their contributory ESA back again should they get worse. This is very important for people with conditions such as multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s. If someone has a really bad episode and goes straight into the support group, they will be able to keep their contributory ESA for the rest of their working life, whereas, if they have a slowly progressing disease and go into WRAG for a couple of years, but then end up just as ill and disabled as the other person, they do not get it back. It seems unfair and arbitrary. The Government must get this right and be clear about it, or large numbers of people, potentially those with some of the most profound disabilities and ill health, will be disadvantaged simply because they fall the wrong side of the line when they go for their work capability assessment.

[Mrs McGuire]

Is that not why it is faintly ridiculous, at this point in the legislative cycle, when the Welfare Reform Bill has completed its passage through the House of Commons and has completed most of its stages in the House of Lords, that we do not yet know what the regulations will say on something that could have a massive impact on the lives, not just of disabled people but of the poorest people in communities in Scotland?

[Dame Anne Begg]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of my concerns as Chair of the Select Committee is, when there is parliamentary scrutiny of those regulations, to make sure that there are no unintended consequences. I hope that this is an unintended consequence on the Government’s part—I do not think that they would be so hard-hearted to be that unfair, and I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that they realise that, in some areas, they have simply got it wrong, because they are trying to take money away from people who have paid into the system all their life.

I am conscious of the time, so I will not say a great deal more. We will move from disability living allowance to the new personal independence payment, and the Government say that they are going to cut 20% from that budget. I could go on at length about that but, in summary, all those things taken together will mean that the income of the poorest people in our communities—those who have the hardest time because of ill health or disability—will be drastically cut. They will bear the brunt of many cuts in Government spending. They are the ones least able to cope, and it will be their communities—if the money had come into their hands, at least they would spend it in local shops—who suffer. Those shops and facilities will close, and those areas, which already suffer the highest incidence of poverty, will be hit particularly badly. The Opposition think that that is unfair. It is unjust, and I urge the Government to look again.