Jobs and Work
Austin Mitchell Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I absolutely agree with the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) in his opening speech. I say that not just to dissipate the impression of disloyalty that I might have created by an article in the Daily Mail this morning, but because those measures will restore what we desperately need in this country—more stability in the labour market. We have had a long period in which wages have increased by less than inflation in 46 of the past 47 months of statistics since the coalition came to office. That has to be ended, because it is creating a very undesirable kind of society. It is the kind of society described by Professor Piketty—or I should say, because he is French, Professor Piketté—in his book, “Capital”.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That absolutely is a point of order, Mr Ellwood, and I am very grateful to you. The clock has to be operated manually at the moment, so we will do our best to make sure that it works.
Austin Mitchell
If it is any consolation, Madam Deputy Speaker, my clock stopped in 1979. I hope that that qualifies me for an extension of my speaking time.
This kind of society where wealth accumulates and wages and salaries fall as a share of GDP is very undesirable. As Goldsmith put it,
“wealth accumulates, and men decay”.
And it is an economically inefficient society, because purchasing power and stimulus to the economy, then growth, come from the purchasing power of the masses, not the classes. If we are transferring more money to the classes, we will have a slow-growing, stagnant economy. Under the policy pursued by this Government, the only real long-term plan is to slash public spending, benefits and the living standards of the working classes, to transfer money to tax cuts for the rich. The theory is that this will stimulate enterprise and money will trickle down to the poor and the working class, in the same way that the trickle-down effect of horses improves roads. That is the plan, and it is a disastrous development for our economy.
I agree with the proposed measures on raising the minimum wage, promoting the living wage and improving skills, but other measures need to be taken as well. The only real solution to the problem is economic growth to put the people back to work, because full employment is the only adequate form of social security that we have ever developed in this country. That means, first, a massive house-building programme, particularly one of public housing for rent that people can move into, because most people now cannot afford a mortgage and could not get one if they tried. That could be financed by municipal bonds or quantitative easing. Why should the money from quantitative easing—which is, in effect, the Bank of England printing money—all go into the vaults of the banks? Why should it not be used to finance contracts for massive public spending and investment in work on new towns, for instance, provided that there are proper contracts and a proper rate of return? We should use quantitative easing to improve public spending.
Austin Mitchell
I am not giving way—I am sorry. I am having my time extended as an incentive to carry on next year.
Secondly, we should expand public spending generally. What is the problem with borrowing? In a recession, we need to borrow to stimulate the economy. Keynesian economics still works. Why are we so reticent about borrowing more to spend, to stimulate growth? Only in a growth situation can we pay back the debt.
Thirdly, we should boost exports by getting the pound down to a more competitive level. It has risen by nearly 10% in the past few months, and it needs to be more competitive if our exports are to be stimulated.
We need to take all those measures to expand the real economy as well as the measures to deal with the labour market that we are discussing. I appeal to the Government to get rid of their restrictive attitude and start thinking about expansion. I ask my Front Benchers to be less cautious and timorous about capital. Let us expand, grow, and get the people back to work.
Atos Work Capability Assessments
Austin Mitchell Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
The number of MPs who want to speak today and the passion that has been shown are testimony to the fact that the system has not worked, is not working and ought to be scrapped. I hope that the Minister is listening, because that is clearly a strong concern on both sides of the House.
The key weakness of the system is the perfunctory, mechanical, inhuman and rushed process of assessment. I have to point out to the Minister that as the system has been handed to the private sector, the more perfunctory the process of assessment, the greater the profit made by Atos and the assessors.
Meg Hillier
Other Members have raised the issue that Atos is a private company. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that it would be helpful if the Minister could reveal the profit margin, as this is public money being spent by a private company, which one would expect to make a profit. Would it not also be useful if the Minister could tell us whether there has been any change in the profit in the years for which Atos has been doing the assessments?
Austin Mitchell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. That was one of my concerns as a member of the Public Accounts Committee and it was to have been part of my passionate penultimate ringing declaration when I intended to ask the Government to tell us how much profit has been made, but I can now omit that from my speech.
The system is perfunctory and totally inadequate. I will not repeat the cases that have come to my surgery after the assessment—that has been done brilliantly by some of my colleagues—but it is clear that the assessment fails patients with mental health conditions, particularly schizophrenia, which are very difficult to assess and treat. It fails when conditions are intermittent and emerge one day only to fade away the next. It fails on degenerative conditions, too. The system of assessment does not take into account any of its own inadequacies in those areas.
In the Public Accounts Committee, I was able to voice a suspicion that there was a quota for the number of disabled people that should be shaken out in what appears to be an enormous attempt to do that rather than to provide them with the support and help that they need and with encouragement to go back to work. The process is more concerned with shaking them off benefit than with treating their cases properly. We were assured by Atos and the Department that there was no quota, but I think we can guarantee that any medical assessor for Atos who finds that the total or a high proportion of the number of people he is examining are not fit for work will not advance his career in assessment, his career in Atos or his contact with the Department. Inevitably, there are those pressures on the assessors.
As our Committee was told, 38% of the cases that go to appeal—I advise all my cases to go to appeal—are successful in reversing the verdict. That demonstrates its inadequacy and the enormous cost in the reassessment process at appeal, a cost that is not taken into account in the Government’s estimates of the savings produced by the system. Those reassessments are usually done with the help of the patient’s own doctor, so I do not see why their doctor’s view cannot be invoked and used at an earlier stage in the process. After all, the Government are giving more power to the doctors and claiming that they represent the patients. The doctors know the long-term conditions—they are treating the patient—so why are their views not taken into account by Atos at the start?
Our PAC report on the system was pretty damning—one of the most damning we have done. Our concerns included the rate of profit, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) has mentioned. The Minister should tell us the rate of profit made by Atos and what efforts the Department is making to reduce that and to ensure a more efficient service and more efficient assessment processes. We were concerned, too, that this is a monopoly contract with no great risk to Atos. The monopoly is continuously reinstated and Atos is put back in power. Monopoly processes go slack, and if such tasks are going to go to the private sector—I do not think that they should—the companies should be subject to competition and to more regular reviews. The weakness of the assessment system shows that Atos is not working effectively. There should not be a long-term monopoly in this area.
If the Minister reads Twitter at all, as I do avidly—normally to see people abuse me—he will see the widespread concerns about people’s treatment by Atos. If he listens to this debate, he will hear the same. If he listens to the disablement groups, he will hear the same. Instead of backing an inhumane system and refusing to change it or tighten the terms and conditions under which Atos operates, it is time that the Minister showed some concern and changed the system.
Trawlermen’s Pensions
Austin Mitchell Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) on securing this debate and on the fight he has put up, and indeed initiated, on behalf of the fishermen. Icelandic fishing finished in 1976, and the middle water fishing that went out of Grimsby finished in the ’80s with the laying up of the cat class British United Trawlers vessels, and the industry has been in abeyance as a powerful force since. It is a tragedy and a scandal that this matter has not been cleared up, so many years after the death of the distant water fishing industry. We are also still fighting for compensation for fishermen who did not receive it under the two schemes operated by the Labour Government.
The fact is that the pension scheme was appalling. It was badly administered and badly run, and the fishermen were treated with total contempt by the owners. The owners had to set up a scheme, but set up the meanest scheme possible. It was run inadequately first of all by Lowndes, which became Noble Lowndes. It then passed in a series of shuffles to General Accident, and finished up with Norwich Union, which promptly changed its name to Aviva.
My attempts to grapple with the problem began in the early ’80s. Some people were allowed to withdraw their pensions, but some were refused. I took up some of the more difficult cases with the Office for Pensions Administration, which investigated the scheme and found that the records were in an appalling state. The company did not know to whom it was due to pay pensions. It had no records of their addresses or dependants, and it made no attempt to contact them to say that there was money to be collected on their behalf. It was not until pressure was brought to bear by my right hon. Friend, working with the fishing port MPs, that we got a response. To be fair, Norwich Union, and subsequently Aviva, has done its best to contact those concerned, working with the mission and the port MPs, and putting adverts in local papers. A large number of people have come forward to make claims, but, as my right hon. Friend has said, there remains a substantial number who have not been found who are still owed money—substantial sums in some cases; small sums in most cases—by the scheme.
The time has come for the scheme to be wound up and for the Minister to exercise whatever power he has. It is time for the company, working with the fishing port MPs, to wind up the scheme. We have decided that the money could best be paid to fishing charities, to support fishing families in desperate need. That would be a fair use of it. However, after all this time, the company owes us the decency of adding a substantial sum in compensation to the sums already in scheme to be wound up, because here we are, after 34 years, still arguing for justice for the fisherman. That could have happened to no other section of our society. It is appalling that we have to do this, but let us now get it done. Let us get this monstrous scheme wound up.