Remploy

Debate between Anne Begg and Nia Griffith

Thursday 15th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on forcefully making the case to the Backbench Business Committee to secure this debate. The debate has been extremely well attended, particularly by the Opposition, considering the many other distractions on a Thursday afternoon, including an important by-election.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for his fantastic work with the Fforestfach factory. He brushes over it lightly, but the work of going out to get all the public procurement, simply from a meeting back in March and in just three months over the summer, to change the situation of having virtually nothing in the order books to having those books absolutely full and going out to big purchasers, such as the national health service and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, to ensure that there is work for that factory, shows what can be done.

I endorse the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who said that there is no divide between the factories and other schemes to help people get into work, and we need both mechanisms. In theory, nothing stops a worker in a Remploy factory from finding a job elsewhere, but the reality is defined by the shocking unemployment figures—an increase was announced yesterday, and further increases are predicted in the new year. Many Remploy factories are situated in unemployment hot spots. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who was present earlier, 20 people are chasing every single vacancy, and I know that many hon. Members have similar situations in their constituencies.

Remploy workers find themselves competing with a whole range of people who have been made redundant from public sector jobs and private sector companies that rely on securing sales contracts, which have been drastically cut, with the public sector. Many in the private sector are not surviving the economic disasters that we are encountering at the moment. All those people are looking for jobs, and people from Remploy factories find themselves in a difficult position, particularly if a large number of them are made unemployed at the same time. I am not patronising Remploy workers, because the same would be true if any other factory in my constituency were to close. If a large number of people with similar skills enter the jobs market together, they will have many difficulties in finding employment.

The key is economic growth. We are currently looking for mechanisms to create more jobs in the private sector, but we have seen little in the way of strategy from this Government. We have not seen an upsurge in the private sector, which is not creating jobs in the way it was supposed to. There do not seem to be any Government strategies for doing so. Where we have Remploy factories, infrastructure, machinery, products and some markets, why are we throwing all that away? It is nonsense. Every individual factory needs to be looked at carefully, and strategies need to be developed for each factory to maximise its potential, so that its products can be marketed properly.

Marketing seems to be key. If the marketing strategy is put right, as seems to be the case in Wythenshawe, Aberdeen and Swansea West, the purchases will come in and the order books will fill up. If we can do that, we can make the factories as viable as possible, and we can help to create jobs. If we do not do that, the on-costs and health costs of people being unemployed will be enormous.

We would do a much better job if we made the factories as viable as possible, while keeping the Government support at a sensible pace. We cannot turn the factories around overnight, but we can make them more economically independent and viable over a period. We would always welcome a mix of workers with disabilities and workers who do not have disabilities. That would bring people together, and we would like to see that mix, which is already happening in many factories. We want viable places, and we want the products that are made to be sold.

That brings me on to public procurement. Assembly Members have a policy by which they purchase their furniture from Remploy factories. I have purchased furniture from Remploy factories for my office. We need much greater awareness. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) asked why it has not happened before. Well, it used to happen, when there was a greater coming together of public purchasing. For example, local authorities once purchased everything for their schools together, before they began to have local management of schools and began to buy their own things in different ways. We need to return to the same sort of consortium purchasing, where we look at what is available or to make what is available more obvious. I have learned, even in this afternoon’s debate, of some products I did not know Remploy was involved in producing. There is a lack of awareness, because an awful lot of people just do not know what can be purchased.

[Dame Anne Begg]

When my Select Committee visited the Neath Port Talbot factory, we discovered that it had had full order books, because it had won a contract for Building Schools for the Future, which was, of course, cancelled by this Government. It was beginning to struggle a bit.

[Nia Griffith]

Absolutely. Remploy factories, just as many other private firms, have suffered considerably in the cuts to the construction programmes and Building Schools for the Future, which have kept much of the private sector going when the construction sector has been in absolutely dire times since 2008. That is an important point.

We need to look at public procurement policies thoroughly. We must encourage every single sector in public procurement to look at the whole range of products available from Remploy and conduct specific marketing on that. I am absolutely convinced that we can make the factories more viable by doing so.

Currently, we need continued support and an individual assessment of each factory to ensure that everything is being done to make each factory the best and most viable business possible. We also need a determined public procurement policy to save our Remploy factories.