Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct. We have extended the new enterprise allowance to help disabled entrepreneurs with support from Access to Work and she will be pleased to know that more than half a million disabled people have now set up their own businesses.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

In spite of the bluff and bluster of the Minister of State for employment, the reality is that Work programme outcomes for new ESA clients show a pathetic performance outcome of only 5.3%, three times worse than doing nothing.

However, I want to turn to another employment support programme for disabled people, Access to Work, which the Under-Secretary has just mentioned. According to the DWP’s most recent statistics, the programme is now supporting 27,000 people compared with 37,290 in the year 2009-10 and 35,000 in 2010-11. Given that many disabled people want to get into work and are constantly told that they need to get into work, can the Minister advise when both the Work programme and Access to Work will start to make a real change to their lives?

[Esther McVey]

The right hon. Lady is quite right that Access to Work is key in helping people to remain in work, which is why we have extended it to young children who want to do internships and to new people who want to set up in business. It is working well and we are continuing to expand it, but we must also ensure that it works as best it possibly can. I am proud of what we are doing and we will build on that good platform.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I like to think that on both sides of the House the objective is to reduce child poverty. That is our stated objective; I think it was the stated objective of the Labour Government.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It has gone up.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I hear from a Labour Front Bencher, “It has gone up.” Actually, relative poverty has fallen by 300,000 since the start of this Parliament. Before Labour Front Benchers intervene again, I should say that while the hon. Gentleman’s question is thoughtful, their interjection is not. The reality is that throughout the past 10 years they talked about relative poverty as the measure, not absolute poverty, so they ought to be slightly careful. It has fallen under this Government.

The real point is that we are in a difficult time; there is no question about it. Just the other day, we saw that the Office for National Statistics has revised its figure on the scale of the collapse in 2009 down to 7%, which is a dramatic fall. We will drive all those programmes that I mentioned to the hon. Gentleman, and the change—we hope—to the measurement is about getting real help to real people.