Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will get back to my hon. Friend about the more specific details, if he wants. About 26,000 new businesses have started already and the target is to get 40,000 going by December 2013. There are about 2,000 start-ups every single month under this scheme. Out of the first 3,000 people on it, 85% are still off benefit a year later. That is a successful scheme.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that many Labour Members support this measure, but we are careful about ensuring that the quality of mentoring is good, that the evaluation of the likelihood of success be built on initiatives such as the new scheme of Hertfordshire university and that the scheme leads to long-term sustainable businesses?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have great deal of respect for him, and he is right that much depends on the quality of the mentoring; we are doing our level best to make sure that it is as good it could possibly be. If he has any suggestions about how to improve it further, the door is open and I am always happy to see him and discuss them with him. I would revisit any project he would like to nominate if he wanted us to look at any difficulties and I would consider looking at any improvements that might be worth making.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

12. What his plans are for reducing absolute child poverty.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The hon. Gentleman asks a really important question about absolute poverty. The threshold has been rebased this year under a new baseline. That changes the way it is reported. Those changes result from a reclassification and do not represent a real change in children’s circumstances. However, low-income and material deprivation is static or marginally improved.

The hon. Gentleman asks about what we are doing. There are a number of programmes through bringing in universal credit to help the poorest to some of the Work programme and the troubled families programme—I will go through more detail with him if he wants—as well as the pupil premium, and early intervention and education. There is a raft of work to try to change the lives of those likely to be on low incomes.

[Mr Sheerman]

I know the Secretary of State to be thoughtful man, and quite a caring man as well, but is he not concerned that Maggie Atkinson, the Children’s Commissioner, only as recently as last week said that the recent reforms of welfare benefit had put another 600,000 children into real poverty?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

That is a very good point. When I have visited jobcentres, I have seen examples of people who have created employment opportunities for themselves and others as a consequence of setting up their own business. That is a testament to the strength and resilience of the sector.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister realise—I tell him this as someone who has employed a lot of people in social enterprise—that social enterprise is also a good destination for entrepreneurs? Is he aware of the critical importance of high-quality mentoring? I know he went to Bradford; he could have come to Huddersfield to see the Enterprise Foundation. The quintessential success of that operation was down to good mentoring and trained mentors who carry on mentoring over the long term.

[Mr Hoban]

Indeed. I went to Portsmouth last month to see the Cathedral Innovation Centre, which was working with people from the Royal Society of Arts and Portsmouth university business school, as well as volunteers, to provide the right sort of mentors to enable social enterprises to get set up and be successful.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is well known for his support for getting young people into work, and I commend him on the job club and job fairs that he has run. As a result of the collective effort between employers, Members of Parliament, Jobcentre Plus and others, youth unemployment today is lower than it was in May 2010.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister not realise that however good some of these programmes are—and some of them are quite good—we are not doing enough? Nearly a million young people are unemployed. There must be more imagination. Could we not agree on a cross-party basis that we must not allow young people to fester in unemployment any longer?

[Mr Hoban]

No one should be complacent about the challenge that young people are facing, but I should point out to the hon. Gentleman that, if full-time students are excluded, 66,000 more young people have been in work over the last quarter. We are seeing more progress, but we must not be complacent, and we must not forget that the problem started some time ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend will be aware that in Lichfield, 30 claimants have started with a business mentor. That has led to 20 businesses starting already. Some 8,000 new businesses have been started as a consequence of the new enterprise allowance, and I am pleased to announce that we are going to extend the availability of the new enterprise allowance to lone parents on income support and to some employment and support allowance claimants, because they are the sort of people who would be able to benefit from the new enterprise allowance and combine their existing responsibilities with starting a business for themselves.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I push the Minister on what is happening to people who want to start their own business if they pitch up at Jobcentre Plus? Is it not a scandal, the way that Jobcentre Plus recycles people? Giving them a job for one day removes the onus of finding them anything, such as starting their own business, or referring them to the Work programme. There is a tension between what is happening in Jobcentre Plus and what is happening in the Work programmes that does nobody any good.

[Mr Hoban]

To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question about enterprise, when someone first makes a claim for jobseeker’s allowance, advisers talk to them and ask them whether they have an idea for a new business. Where they have a credible plan, they can be referred to a mentor, who will work with them to develop that business plan which, if successful, can lead to the new enterprise allowance. We see the importance of small businesses and of getting new start-ups going. Both the Work programme and Jobcentre Plus are focused on how they can help people set up a business themselves and start to recruit others.

Jobs and Social Security

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I would be happy to trade arguments about our record with the Secretary of State, because while Labour was in office, the amount of money that we spent on out-of-work benefits fell by £7.5 billion. That is why his noble Friend Lord Freud described Labour’s record in getting people back to work as remarkable. It is a shame that he could not arrive at the same judgment about this Government’s programme, which is now in place.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure that my constituents want a reflective debate today, not the sort of intervention they have just heard from the Secretary of State. As I remember, Lord Freud—or Mr Freud or Dr Freud, before he was ennobled—did a thorough piece of work for the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. What went wrong? Was his analysis wrong or was the way the Conservative Government interpreted it wrong? Was Freud wrong and his analysis abused, or was he right and something has gone wrong with the Government?

[Mr Byrne]

The Work programme has got only just over 2% of the people in my hon. Friend’s constituency in the programme into sustainable jobs. It is becoming clear that there is simply not enough fuel in the tank.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, although I must say that there were moments when I wondered whether some of the Members who have spoken had somewhat lost the plot. So few people seem to be interested in our parliamentary democracy these days, and sometimes I think that is because of how we shout across these Benches, which puts many people off. The truth of the matter is that all the mature industrial democracies are facing some deep-seated structural challenges. The previous Government struggled with those structural difficulties, as will this Government. If anyone expects the coalition Government’s policies, many aspects of which I am critical of, to solve the problems that the Labour Administration failed to solve, I think that they are being rather naive.

What do we all want for our economy and our democracy at the moment? I want us to have full democratic citizens, something we do not often talk about. I get sick of Governments, even my own, talking about taking people out of tax. I want everyone in our country to pay tax. I want a broad tax base and the people who pay tax to feel that they are real citizens and participants. They do not want to be non-taxpayers. They also want good pay that is fair and better than the lowest legal pay, the basic minimum wage. We want full citizens, good taxpayers, fair pay and, of course, high skills.

One of the real challenges our country faces, as exemplified by the Ofsted inspector’s annual review published yesterday, is that a significant percentage of people do not get a good deal out of education and skills. We have improved immensely. The previous Government expanded higher education, and much of our school education has been improved under the previous Government and this Government. However, the fact of the matter is that roughly 25% of kids—perhaps even 30%—in many constituencies across this country are not getting the opportunity to acquire the kinds of skills that would make them full, taxpaying, participatory citizens.

Indeed, evidence given to the Skills Commission, which I co-chair along with Dame Ruth Silver, by the chief executive of Hackney college—the Secretary of State does not seem to be interested in this, but he should listen—which takes in the whole of silicon roundabout, shows that around 30,000 jobs have been created there, but unemployment in the area has not fallen by so much as 0.5%. That gets to the heart of what the McKinsey report states, which is that there is a real problem across modern industrial democracies: those people whom we cannot skill-up, whatever age they are, and who cannot get jobs.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes some good points about skills and training. Does he share my concern that the Department for Work and Pensions is still to reach agreement with the Scottish Government about who is responsible for the cost of training those who have entered the Work programme in Scotland and that, as a result, applicants in Scotland are actually less likely to get training under the Work programme than those south of the border?

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend will forgive me for knowing less about the situation in Scotland than I do about the situation in Yorkshire and England, but I am sure that she is right. There are many local differences, as I am finding in my area.

That is why I asked for the Freudian analysis earlier. Lord Freud, before he became a Member of the upper House, was asked by Tony Blair to evaluate which programmes worldwide had actually worked and addressed the structural problem of how to get people into work so that they can be full citizens. He looked right across the piece to identify which programmes had been successful. By requesting the Freudian analysis, I was asking whether it was good information. It was the whole basis of the policy that influenced our Labour Government’s policy and also that of the Conservative party. Freud is very important to these discussions, however he has been interpreted, and we should not forget that he was trying to look at that central problem we all face.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Given that the hon. Gentleman has asked about my noble friend, who is an excellent addition to our team—whichever party he represented previously, he is a very good man and is doing very well—I may say that the Australian system, which is the basis of the Work programme, has shown some of the best results, which occur once companies are geared up and focused on getting people back into long-term, sustained employment. The system is working very well and says that it is on track.

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the Secretary of State for that intervention, and I accept what he says. He knows that what I am getting at in this short contribution is that we play this game of blaming each other all the time, but the problem is international and global and we will have to sometimes forget party differences and work together on it. I want to make a couple of suggestions as to how we might do that.

Let us face it: all Governments throughout Europe, the United States and beyond have a long history of failure. Modern industrial democracies have this problem of skilling the work force. Indeed, I have never heard such castigation of our country’s further education system as that in yesterday’s annual report by the chief inspector of Ofsted, who said how poorly further education was performing in our country. All the evidence shows that further education is where young people get skills for the good life. It is where they get high skills to get good jobs to be the full citizens that I am after.

I have never heard of the chief inspector picking on one town in particular. I do not know what he has against Hastings, but he said that early years and primary schools are a failure for the children of Hastings and that they also fail when they go on to secondary school and further education. I was astonished. Thank God he was not talking about Huddersfield. It comes down to the fact that a significant percentage of people in our country have inadequate training and skills, and we need to work across parties to do something about that.

I want to share some of my experiences. One of my last reports when I chaired the Children, Schools and Families Committee looked at the problem of those not in education, employment or training. We found that intelligent programmes on the ground which represented a positive response from local authorities that understood their local communities, and which also had good local skills training and good employers, could make a significant difference to the number of people gaining skills and getting into work. There are good exemplars in this country, but some towns are more fortunate than others in retaining their manufacturing and employment base.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I rise merely to express agreement with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s argument on skills, and in particular to say that London is the classic case that supports it, because it has created hundreds of thousands of jobs over the past decade or so, yet large numbers of our young people have been left behind. That points to a much more deep-seated problem.

[Mr Sheerman]

That is why I spoke of our experience in the United Kingdom, which has good exemplars of significant improvement, but the best example that I found in Europe was in the Netherlands, which has a much tougher welfare policy than us. It is difficult for someone to get any welfare payment there until they are about 27. If they are not in work, they have to be in education or training, and if they are not in education or training, they do not get a welfare payment. We in this country seem to have accepted over a long period that significant numbers of young people, many of them with low skills, can be left in a shadow land—a marginal existence—on housing benefit and a little benefit for subsistence, and that they can live in this half world as half citizens for a very long time.

During one of my shadow ministerial jobs a long time ago—it was so long ago that I was a deputy to Roy Hattersley—I became something of an expert on crime and criminality. It is fascinating that if young people do not get into crime before they are 25, they do not at all; unless they bump off their partner for the usual reason later on, they do not get into criminality. The sensible policy on deterring young people from crime is to spend money on doing so early on. We can apply the same analysis of our society to unemployment. What we hate most is intergenerational worklessness, where three generations of a family have never known anyone work.

[Margot James]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

No, I am sorry.

Intergenerational worklessness is a dreadful scourge. We all see it on some of the estates that we represent, and we hate it, so what are we going to do about it?

We have to say, on an all-party basis, that nobody under the age of 25 should be unemployed. We should not let them down in that way. Every young person under the age of 25 should be in work, in training, or participating in a programme; I do not care if we call it the new deal, the new new deal or the Work programme. They should be in a routine of getting up in the morning, going to work and doing something creative, whether it is in the community or helping in hospitals. We have got to the stage where we are moving very quickly towards the participation age rising to 17 or 18. Neither the former Government nor this Government have seriously tackled what young people with a lower level of skills are going to do in the extra year. That is a challenge for those on both sides of the House. I once said that to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), but he got very cross with me for pointing it out, and asked what I wanted for these young people. I said that I wanted for them what rich people have—a personal trainer and a life coach—and he thought I was mad, but never mind.

I want to abolish unemployment for those under 25 and to get people out of that routine. I want to get rid of intergenerational worklessness, with a fundamental change in how we allow people to live that half life. My plea is that across the parties we should agree on a programme that gives all our young people the opportunity to live a full, democratic life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for the opportunity to clarify the position. She and I have already had discussions about this very issue. I hope that we will continue to have such discussions, and that they can involve the other parties as well. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will be able to make things clearer in his business statement later today.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State will recall that the Leveson inquiry started as a result of the phone hacking scandal. Is she aware of recent evidence that journalists were using information like a trading commodity, one of them picking up the hack and then passing it to another to disguise the source of the hacking? Will Leveson cover that aspect?

[Maria Miller]

Obviously Lord Leveson has been looking at this issue in an enormous amount of detail, and criminal investigations are also in progress. I am sure that the specific issue raised by the hon. Gentleman, and indeed many other issues relating to the prevalence of phone hacking, will be dealt with in Lord Leveson’s inquiry report, which, as I have said, will be available very shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Indeed I can. The innovation fund was set up by me when I came into the Department. It consists of approximately £30 million of seedcorn funding to enable voluntary groups, charities and organisations—beyond the normal organisations that one comes across in the work process—to show that their programmes, which help people to deal with drug addiction, family breakdown or gang violence, actually work, to prove that concept, and to set them up to be able to run those programmes. At least 11 social impact bonds have come out of this and we have just launched a second round.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that much social breakdown stems from intergenerational worklessness? Is he as enthusiastic as many Opposition Members are about the Heseltine review, “No Stone Unturned”? Will he ensure that he takes a positive role in bringing some—indeed, most—of those recommendations to fruition?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

When one of the big beasts from the past roars, it is always difficult not to be incredibly enthusiastic about what they are roaring about, so I accept the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to express my interest and support for the report. Obviously there are details in it, but he makes the vital point that in too many communities there are families of two and three generations that have been beyond the work cycle. This is about getting them back into the idea of work not just for the money but because their whole lives disintegrate without it. I agree with him and will certainly make sure I tell Lord Heseltine how supported he is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree. Actually it is so good that they volunteer for it; I wonder whether we should run a work experience programme for those on the Opposition Front Bench.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is very difficult for Opposition Members to get a word in on this one. Is not the Secretary of State being rather silly, because most people know that if the work experience is of high quality and does not displace other people’s jobs, we are all in favour of it? Is it not about time that all of us on both sides of the House made sure that we had decent schemes for young people, which are of high quality and lead to jobs?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I respect the hon. Gentleman and I am grateful for those comments; I wish that everybody else on his side of the House approached this issue with the same attitude. Work experience has resulted in about half those going on to it getting off the benefits roll. They want to do it—this is really important—and what they are getting from it is experience they cannot otherwise get. Employers say to people time and again, “We can’t employ you because you don’t have experience,” yet they could not get that experience. Surely this has got to be a good thing for them and a good thing for all of us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State who has responsibility for employment held a meeting with a number of employers who are part of the scheme, all of whom backed and supported it. They were concerned that the message goes out that the scheme benefits young people. One employer who is not a profit-maker—the chief executive of Barnardo’s—said:

“Scrapping the scheme would have taken a lifeline from thousands of young people.”

I should also quote a girl called Dawn, who was on the programme after having real trouble finding work. She said that work experience was daunting, but that:

“It’s work experience—the clue’s in the name. Nobody is going to give you a job unless you get experience first, and that means sometimes working for free”.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I urge the Secretary of State to sort out the teething problems with the programme—there have been such problems. Will he look at the Morrisons initiative, which is different and overcomes many of the criticisms that have been made of the programme? Will he also be assured that many Opposition Members want a scheme that gets young people into work and work experience rather than being on the dole?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s positive involvement. I simply say to him that the scheme as it stands is incredibly positive. More than 50% of those who enter the work experience scheme go into work, many with the employers who took them on for work experience. The reason we set up the scheme is what young people said, and they told us, “Our problem is that when we go to an interview, employers ask us, ‘What experience have you got?' We say, ‘We don’t have experience.' They say, ‘We can’t employ you.' But without employment we can't get work experience.” I genuinely believe from our discussions with employers that the scheme is a positive move, but I will certainly look at the scheme that the hon. Gentleman talks about.