Social Economy

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Brooks Newmark)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) on securing this important debate, which is my first of the new parliamentary term and only my second as the Minister for Civil Society. I also pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), for his brilliant leadership when he was in this role. I have large shoes to fill, but I will do my best.

I cannot think of a more exciting subject with which to begin, because Britain’s social economy is indeed thriving. We have got to this point through the hard work and commitment to support the sector provided by successive Governments, including that of the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles. She continues to be a champion of charities and social enterprises as a member of the all-party group on social enterprise and shows commitment to ensuring that the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 achieves its full potential.

I take on board the right hon. Lady’s point about the importance of having measurables and consistency. Thinking about how to extend the social economy to infrastructure is a great idea. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) was absolutely right to say that, with £86 billion of public procurement, there is much scope for social enterprises to take advantage of what is out there. As the new Minister, I hope that I can try to facilitate that.

[Chi Onwurah]

I omitted to welcome the Minister to his position, but I would like to do so now. If he is going to carry on saying that I am absolutely right, long may he remain in his position.

[Mr Newmark]

The hon. Lady represents Newcastle, which is the home of my football team, so she can do little wrong in terms of representing that exciting city—it is second only to Braintree, of course.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles for her support of Big Society Capital through her role on its advisory board and her regular public appearances, as well as for her support for mutuals. Such contributions have been invaluable to a growing economy that includes organisations, entrepreneurs, innovators and investors who are committed to supporting positive social change.

I am grateful for the bipartisan approach to this issue and to the right hon. Lady for regularly reminding us how this work transcends party differences. It is about supporting those charities and enterprises who work tirelessly to improve people’s lives and communities. Members of all parties have the same agenda: we want to improve people’s lives, and the voluntary and charitable sector leads on that objective.

I think the right hon. Lady said that medium-sized social enterprises employ more than 1 million people; in fact, they employ 2 million people and contribute more than £55 billion to the UK economy each year—an enormous amount. The UK already has one of the most developed social investment sectors in the world and it is growing all the time. A few weeks ago, I visited the Repair Academy in Wiltshire, which transforms unwanted household goods into marketable, new products: upcycling as well us recycling. It is not only doing that to make a quick buck; it is equipping the young people who work for it with the skills they need for the world of work and working to change public attitudes to waste and recycling.

So yes, there is a business mentality, but it is also about public and social good. Too often, we think of those things as being mutually exclusive; allied together, they can be a truly powerful force, strengthening communities and changing lives, developing new solutions to seemingly intractable social problems and transforming the way we deliver public services to this country.

The right hon. Lady also mentioned three other great examples, including Place2Be and—was it Born Back?

[Hazel Blears]

Bounce Back.

[Mr Newmark]

Bounce Back, which I thought was a great idea. The qualification is that someone goes to prison, but there are people there who want to change their lives and help them transform back into the community. Bounce Back seems a great example of that.

For all those reasons, the Government have made it our mission to help strengthen Britain’s social economy. Just like any other business, social businesses need access to long-term capital. For years, charities and social enterprises had been telling successive Governments how hard it was to find affordable and sustainable finance. We listened to them and helped establish Big Society Capital, the world’s first full-blown social investment institution. Much credit is due to my ministerial predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner. People had talked about a social investment bank for the best part of two decades, and his leadership in Government made it a reality in less than two years. He made an excellent point in mentioning the discussions on having a collaborative approach between business and government, in terms of developing the social economy to unlock social innovation.

[Hazel Blears]

A lot has been said about collaboration, and I agree entirely with the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), that government needs to change. I suggested interdependent budgets for Cabinet Ministers when I was in the Cabinet and I believe that there is some interest in that issue now.

However, I should say to this Minister that I am seeing the Health Minister, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) with my social enterprise, Social adVentures, on the issue of dementia care. Collaboration between Ministers is essential. Perhaps this Minister could add his weight to some of our proposals with his colleagues across Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Newmark]

I think I am seeing the same Minister myself. I have a meeting with him, so hopefully we will be singing off the same hymn sheet.

I also pay tribute to the contribution that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles has made to Big Society Capital’s advisory board. Since 2012, Big Society Capital has made more than £150 million of investment commitments into the third sector, creating specialist intermediaries actively providing finance and support to front-line organisations. The beauty of that model is that it is self-sustaining. Big Society Capital is independent of Government, and because the money is provided on a repayment basis, it will constantly be reinvested in new projects, and in turn, will generate more cash.

In April, the world’s first social investment tax relief, which is important and which the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles alluded to, came into force. We estimate that it could unlock an additional £500 million of new finance into the social economy over the next five years. Taken together, these measures mark a move away from reliance on hand-to-mouth grants towards long-term affordable finance.

I like the idea that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) had about other ways of finding finance. Crowdfunding and the seed enterprise investment scheme, which in my previous life I was pushing very hard for, are excellent ideas. Creating a more level playing field when it comes to taxation is also an important point, which I have taken on board.

Of course, many smaller or fledgling charities and social enterprises could make use of the funding, but sometimes they need support to do so, so alongside Big Society Capital, we have introduced the investment readiness programme. That provides start-ups with the intensive support necessary to get off the ground. It also helps established social enterprises improve and expand their operations in a sustainable way, making them ready for investment or ready to bid for a public sector contract.

However, capital itself is not enough. We have also been working to make it easier for charities and social enterprises to provide services in both the public and private sectors. Over many years—and different Governments—traditional private sector organisations have dominated the outsourced public services market, a point made by many colleagues today. We have worked hard to change that, enabling staff to take control of their own services by spinning out into public service mutuals.

Freed from the bureaucracy of the public sector but instilled with the public service ethos and run by committed public servants, mutuals are improving outcomes for users, communities and commissioners across the country. There are already 100 live and trading, up from just nine in 2010, with even more in development. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles said that in her constituency a new one has now been launched—for adult services, I think—and I welcome that.

It is not only mutuals that are getting in on the act. Other forms of social enterprises and charities have an enormous amount to offer. Civil society can also do things that Government cannot do. It is often much closer to the people we want to help, so we are pioneering some really exciting models to allow it to play a more direct role in delivering front-line services.

Social impact bonds, for instance, enable private investors and philanthropists to invest in a project to address complex, entrenched social problems. The taxpayer only pays for what works, and because private investors are able to take on the risk, it means social organisations can get involved. There are now 17 social impact bonds across the UK, four of which were supported by the Cabinet Office’s social outcomes fund. From rough sleepers in London to NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—in Perthshire and Kinross, to children at risk of going into care in Essex, around the country we are going to see social impact bonds opening up serious resources to tackle long-term problems in new ways.

I welcome the work of the previous Administration on the first of these and the continued cross-party support that helps to ensure that such interventions have a transformative effect. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles has championed these as part of her impressive efforts to improve the life chances of disadvantaged children and young people. We are starting to see how social impact bonds can focus capital towards those services that provide strong, effective support for those young individuals.

Because we want to weave innovation into the fibre of national and local government, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 places a legal requirement on commissioners to consider the economic, environmental and social benefits of how they commission and buy services. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) has been absolutely resilient on pushing that point through, with the great support of the right hon. Lady. That will help shape the design of services from the outset, so that due consideration is given to innovative social delivery, which gets full social value from the taxpayers’ pound.

I am confident that we will see more and more public sector commissioners bringing communities, businesses and charities together to change people’s lives. Already, many private sector organisations are interested in how they can include social value in their supply chains, which is why, with Social Enterprise UK, we have created the Buy Social Directory, which lists over 10,000 social enterprise suppliers—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner.

I know it is still early days. We have made a start, but there is so much more to come. We want to encourage more investment in the sector and open up new markets. The Buy Social campaign, beginning in September—and we have Social Saturday coming up—will encourage businesses and consumers to buy from and invest in the social economy, so the great British public can invest in the causes that they believe in. We want to make social investment as easy as possible. We are also exploring how pension and insurance funds can participate in the social investment market, but we are also looking further afield, helping the sector export overseas as well as attracting inward foreign investment.

The UK is experiencing a rising wave of dynamic social entrepreneurship that seeks to improve people’s lives. Britain can be proud to be recognised as the world leader. Even in the few short weeks that I have been a Minister, I have seen first hand some of the fantastic opportunities that the social economy presents, for jobs and economic growth, for innovation and new ideas and for better public services.

I again thank the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles for her commitment. The social economy has much to contribute to her constituency and to the UK as a whole. I welcome her input and that of the hon. Members for Huddersfield and my hon. Friends the Members for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner and for Warwick and Leamington.

We are a nation of philanthropists and campaigners, time-givers and fundraisers, poppy wearers and marathon runners. We have a fantastic heritage of social innovation, from the great Victorian social reformers to modern-day social entrepreneurs, so the Government will continue to support the growth of Britain’s social economy. I am optimistic that by working together, we can build on the progress we have made to create the bigger, stronger society that we all want to be part of.

National Citizen Service

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Brooks Newmark)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this important debate and I thank all hon. Members for their extremely constructive contributions. There are lessons that we can learn. Individuals and Members from both sides of the House have come to the realisation that this is something that it is extremely important to do. The hon. Gentleman, in looking back to national service—those of us who had parents who did national service have heard the stories of that and what they got from it—brings us forward to what the National Citizen Service is really about.

The issue of citizenship goes to the heart of my values and beliefs as a father, as a politician, and now as the Minister for Civil Society. Just last month, I visited a project in Peckham called Leaders of Tomorrow, which to me was an exemplar of what national citizen service is about. When I was invited by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister yesterday to take on this role, I was thrilled by the opportunity, because it gives me the chance to pursue an interest of mine—something that I have taken outside the realm of being a Member of Parliament. It is the bread and butter of what I do every week, not just as a Member of Parliament but as someone who has a huge interest in the importance of social action. I have spent the past eight years going to Rwanda on something called Project Umubano, which is a social action project. We in the Conservative party take a group of 50, 60 or sometimes 70 people to Rwanda to work on five or so different social action projects.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I am glad to have the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment. On that point, does he agree that the citizenship programme is a key part of social action? Just this weekend, I saw some fantastic work being done by Cornwall college, which is really engaging young people in social action, and I am sure there will be a legacy for the rest of their lives.

[Mr Newmark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. From a standing start, the programme of national citizenship now engages 10% of young people in the relevant age bracket. As someone who has five children between the ages of 16 and 25, I know that engaging young people for three weeks of their summer is a challenge. Most have the attention span of what they see on their iPhones or whatever digital devices they play with. The fact that the Government are now engaging 10% of our young people every summer represents a huge success.

I saw at first hand the value of bringing together young people from different backgrounds and supporting them in giving back to their communities. Each and every one of us sees many examples in our constituencies of youth organisations that bring together groups of young kids from different backgrounds to work together. It is vital that we encourage all our young people to participate. That is why His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was right to create the “Step Up to Serve” campaign, which is supported by all three main party leaders, with the ambition of increasing the proportion of young people taking part in social action in our country to 50% by the end of the decade. That is a tremendous ambition, and as Minister I am committed to working as hard as I can with community groups to try to engage our young boys and girls. It is right that the National Citizen Service, which is delivered by the independent NCS Trust, should be part of that vital cross-party campaign.

The NCS grew out of the recognition of a need to equip our young people with the skills and confidence they require to transition into adulthood, to re-engage them into a cohesive society and to utilise their energy and passion to improve their local communities. NCS is delivering against each of those needs. The 2012 independent evaluation of the programme found that 92% of participants thought that NCS gave them the chance to develop skills that would be useful in the future, and 95% said that NCS gave them a chance to get to know people with whom they would not normally mix. Two or three Government Members made that point.

NCS participants so far have given some 2 million hours to serving their communities, taken part in more than 50,000 social action projects and raised almost £750,000 for charities around the country. That is a tremendous achievement for the initiative from a standing start. Since 2011, nearly 80,000 young people have benefited from their involvement in NCS, and the programme is on track to have its 100,000th graduate this summer. The NCS started in England and spread to Northern Ireland, and I am delighted that it will soon be launched in Wales as well.

NCS is a special opportunity for our young people at a critical point in their lives, but social action is a habit that evolves over a lifetime. Across our country, there are many fantastic examples of organisations helping our young people to give something back. The Government have granted up to £11 million through two youth social action funds to encourage more young people to take part in social action and support high-quality programmes across England. A further £3 million will be granted through the vulnerable and disengaged young people fund for social action programmes working with vulnerable young people, including those in care and young offenders. As a result of our support and the efforts of charities and community groups across the country, 2012-13 saw the highest levels of informal and formal volunteering in England among 16 to 25-year-olds since 2008-09.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new position. I know that some work has been done on this, but is he aware of any further work on progression routes for those who graduate from the NCS? That is an area that could benefit from his attention in his new brief.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. She is exactly right, and I have been talking about precisely that topic this morning. How can we engage local businesses? If someone gets a certificate to state that they have graduated from the NCS, will local businesses in our communities recognise the certificate and say, “I will give this person a job opportunity,” whether that be a summer job, a temporary job or a full-time job? The hon. Lady makes an excellent point.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I welcome the Minister to his new post. I assure the hon. Member for Huddersfield that Government Members were not ganging up on him earlier; we were very supportive. On the point that the Minister just mentioned, career academies offer some business engagement with young people at the ages of 15, 16 and 17. I recently set one up in Lincoln, which is a good model. The Minister, in his new role, might like to look at such academies.

On the NCS, the hon. Member for Huddersfield made a point towards the end of his speech that needs to be looked at. He mentioned those who are home educated, who might miss out on the opportunities that the NCS offers. When I was out with my NCS team in Boultham park recently doing some clean-ups, one home educating mother came up to us and asked whether her nine-year-old daughter could join in. Her daughter was a little bit too young for the NCS, but there is a need and a desire among parents for their children to be included.

[Mr Newmark]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We want to get more people involved, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield urged us to. That means committing resources to engage positively with parents, and I will be using part of our resources to do just that. Many people still do not know about the programme, so it is important that we try to market this great opportunity to young people.

The hon. Gentleman talked about national service and the skills that young people learned there. I remember hearing when I was younger from my stepfather, who went through national service, about the mix of people he encountered. All sorts of people from all sorts of background got together, and many people found when they left national service that they had a greater sense of social mobility than they had had when they entered.

We are not simply talking about skills. The hon. Gentleman described engaging with people, trying to create a cohesive society, encouraging individual responsibility and developing a responsible society. Those are all the hallmarks of NCS. He said that not enough is being done, and I am sympathetic to that. Like him, I would love every young person to be engaged in some form of community work or social action. I would draw the line—he did not really cross this line—at making such work compulsory, because I do not think that it is necessary to do so. If people engage with us voluntarily, they will be engaged with their communities for life. That is the sort of sense of social responsibility that we want to create from the NCS programme.

I conclude by returning to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. He talked about Professor Oakeshott, and about the concept of learning from our experience. We are engaged in an iterative process, and we will continue to learn from it, continue to grow and continue to engage people, particularly young people. I am told that nearly 300 young people are expected to take part in the NCS in Huddersfield and the surrounding area this summer. I was pleased to note the hon. Gentleman’s tweet on meeting some of the NCS participants last September:

“Inspirational young people @NationalCitizensService in Huddersfield Town Hall if these guys are the future we’re OK!”

I could not agree more.

Youth Employment

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

It is indeed a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Crausby.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing this important debate on youth employment, but it would be remiss of me if I did not commence my speech by highlighting the unemployment figure for young people in this country. Starting their adult life unemployed is not what we want for our young people, but more than 800,000 young people across the UK aged between 16 and 24 were unemployed in the first quarter of this year. That is a worrying statistic, not only because it reads badly, but because it is worrying for the young people themselves and their parents. For the first time in generations, parents from all types of background fear that their children will do worse than them.

We know what we need to do. If we truly want to get our young people into work, we need a highly skilled work force that will enable us to compete with the emerging nations of China and India, as well as advanced industrial nations such as the United States and Germany. What we need is a long-term plan for jobs. We also need to focus on the skills agenda and do more to help the 50% of young people who do not go to university. I never went to university. It could be said I was lucky, going straight into the world of employment on leaving school, but when I left school, finding work was not about luck; there was a plan in place for jobs. In my area of the country, when the school gates opened on the last day of the summer term, other gates in the various sectors involved with the shipyard industries also opened and a transfer took place. Skills were gained and young people had a choice about what they wanted to be in their future career. That that does not happen today.

We know that in the past in my area of the country, we tended to put all our eggs in the one basket—heavy industries. We did the same in the 1980s, replicating the process with the electronics industries. We filled the gap created by the decline of the heavy industries with these “sunrise” industries. Throughout the history of both the heavy industries and the electronics industry, we innovated, pushed the design boundaries and found new markets. With ships, we redesigned them and took them to a new level, replacing many items on the ships with new, cutting-edge design. We did the same in the electronics industry. Without the work done in my area of the country, people would not have the phone in their pocket—if we had not pushed processors and improved them, including pioneering the use of surface-mounted multi-layer technology—but somehow that innovative desire to create new markets and so create new employment evaded us in the following years.

I will focus on Scotland for a moment, because we outperform the UK on youth employment and youth activity rates. Scotland has a higher youth employment rate and a lower youth inactivity rate than the UK as a whole, but we are never complacent. This process is about focusing on what matters, which is employment for our young people.

The best possible start to someone’s adult life is employment, whether that comes after leaving school at 16 or after leaving university. The hopes and aspirations of our young lie in finding work.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman at least recognise that youth unemployment in his constituency has come down by 37.8% since the last election?

[Mr McKenzie]

Indeed, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting that fall. I will tell him exactly how we achieved it. Inverclyde outperforms most areas in Scotland because we punch above our weight. We have done that by pulling together resources from many organisations and put in place an Inverclyde Alliance focused on what matters—employment—with a youth employment action plan at the heart of its work. We are pleased to point to the fact that 94% of our school leavers reach a positive destination, so only a single-figure percentage do not reach one. With additional services, the programme provides an end-to-end employability service that is not just about placing a young person with an employer and hoping for the best; it is about continuous engagement with the employer and the young person. What does the young person need to enhance their skills? What do they need to keep them in employment, or to help them to look for other employment at the end of their term of placement? We ask the business, “Where are you going with your business? Where will you take it to in the next year or so? Can this young person come with you, if they have the required skills, and what skills do you identify that the young person needs to retain the position within your company?”

Of course, in Inverclyde we have continued with the future jobs fund. Obviously, the British Government felt that they did not want to retain the fund across the country, but it works and it has been working for us. In addition, we have made a successful bid to the Scottish Government for additional European funding, allowing 170 additional wage incentive packages that have enabled local companies to recruit even more young people. A total of 52 employers have been engaged, creating a total of 58 posts for our young people during the last year.

This year in Inverclyde, my Labour council allocated substantial additional funding for employability measures for young people. That has resulted in an additional 50 placements with employers across Inverclyde, because Labour in Inverclyde has been focused on what matters—employment, not separation. Our young people believe in having more choices and more chances. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Crausby, for briefly saying that that is why I believe they will vote in September to stay with the UK.

I will also touch on an entrepreneurial programme that we have put in place. The Recruit programme is based upon “The Apprentice”, with young people looking to be hired rather than fired. Many tasks are set up and the young people step up to the mark, proving to many employers that they have the entrepreneurial spark and can be innovative in what they have been tasked to do. However, as I said before, we are never complacent and there are still 72,000 unemployed young people in Scotland, which is unacceptable. We need to get on and reduce that figure.

We desperately need to get our young people into training and apprenticeships. Young people need every chance to improve their skills if they are to get good jobs. Speaking as a former apprentice, I know the value of apprenticeship training. My apprenticeship took four years, but I suspect the period required to learn skills can be reduced in the modern era. However, it should not be reduced to the period or level of work experience, which some people would like to see apprenticeships reduced to. In Inverclyde, we now have around 600 modern apprenticeships, which can offer so much, and there is no reason why apprenticeships should not be expanded to cover a wide variety of jobs and professions. Employment is an essential part of life and without it, especially for our young people, the future will be bleak, because our young people must be our future. We need to plan for jobs and industry, looking to the future business markets and, yes, manufacturing can again prosper across this country. As I said in my maiden speech, everyone has the right to work.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing this important debate. I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie). He is right: it is unacceptable that any young person is unemployed. It is the duty of any and every Government to ensure that they do everything possible to get young people back into work. As a father of five children between the ages of 16 and 25, I am well aware, like all parents, of the importance of ensuring that every young person in our society has an opportunity to get a foothold on the employment ladder, so that they can make a contribution to our society. Almost every young person I meet wants a job; they want to work and they do indeed want to make a contribution, and this Government are doing everything possible to help our young people back into work.

I recently ran a successful jobs fair in Braintree, and I thank all the businesses that have been doing what they can to cut youth unemployment and take on a young person from our community. Youth unemployment in Braintree fell from 6.3% in May 2010 to 3.8% in May 2014. That trend has been repeated throughout the country, with youth unemployment falling in almost every constituency, so the Government have done much to combat this problem.

After the last election, the previous Government having left some 1 million young people unemployed, I helped to co-found the Million Jobs campaign. Last year, we drafted a manifesto to tackle the problem of youth unemployment, which set out five steps the Government could take to reduce youth unemployment. They included abolishing national insurance payments by employers of young people; educating school pupils about the apprenticeship opportunities available to them; encouraging firms to invest in young people through employment; removing of barriers preventing employers giving honest constructive feedback to applicants; and, finally, giving every unemployed young person a mentor. In the 2013 autumn statement, the Chancellor adopted the first of our manifesto recommendations by abolishing the jobs tax for any person under the age of 21. At this point, I pay tribute to and thank Lottie Dexter, the director of the Million Jobs campaign, for her tireless effort and leadership.

The Government have introduced a number of other policies over the past four years to tackle youth unemployment. Recently, they implemented the £1 billion Youth Contract, which will create 500,000 new job opportunities for young people by supporting employers and work experience placements financially. Indeed, many of the young people we represent in this House already benefit hugely from the Youth Contract and will continue to in future. Furthermore, the Deputy Prime Minister announced in July 2013 that eight core English cities outside London would be able to bid for a share of £50 million to help young people into work through the Youth Contract.

Apprenticeship schemes have been hugely beneficial in decreasing unemployment of young people, while providing a welcome boost to the national economy. I pay tribute to my Essex colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), for his sterling efforts promoting the scheme. The Government have taken steps to create a greater number of apprenticeships that are applicable to the current workplace. For example, a £25 million higher apprenticeship fund has been introduced to support up to 10,000 degree-level apprenticeships in sectors such aerospace and renewable energy technologies. Today, there are more than twice the number of apprenticeship schemes available to young people as there were in 2010, enabling more than 1.8 million young people to enter the workplace. In Braintree, I have witnessed this at first hand: the number of my constituents entering an apprenticeship has increased by almost 140% since 2010.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on launching the Million Jobs campaign. We have heard great things this morning about apprenticeships—I have an apprentice—jobs fairs and the formal commitment of our hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North, and so on. Does he agree that two ongoing measures will make a difference: the introduction of direct payments to employers, rather than through training colleges, for apprenticeships; and the removal of the loan system for funding apprentices over 24, which will help reduce total unemployment?

[Mr Newmark]

Yes, my hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are reducing the barriers in order to help young people into work. That is the thrust of the two points he made.

It is important that we continue to promote these new opportunities in schools across the country in order to move towards a more vocational education system. In 2010, a study by the economist Alison Wolf found that 350,000 16 to 19-year-olds were in line to receive unfortunately poorly respected qualifications that had little value in the employment market. Replacing low vocational qualifications with new tech levels that will drive up educational standards is another step the Government are taking to prepare young people for work in the future.

Wage incentives for employers have also been put in place to stimulate demand for working young people. Now, any employer that gives a young person who has been on benefits for six months a job could potentially receive up to £2,275, and the Government have also ensured that payments of £2,200 are available to providers who take on 16 and 17-year-olds who are not in education, employment, training or are from disadvantaged backgrounds. That has provided the long-needed encouragement for employers to begin proactively to seek out the young unemployed and ultimately give them a foot on the employment ladder. The Government have also introduced the new enterprise allowance, which has given young unemployed people with great ideas the opportunity and means to start their own businesses and work their own way out of unemployment. Under the last Labour Government, the number of NEETs increased by a third and youth unemployment overall increased by 40% between May 1997 and May 2010. Thanks to the work of this Government, the total number of 16 to 18-year-old NEETs is the lowest in a decade, while the implementation of a pre-apprenticeship training programme called “traineeship” will ensure even the most vulnerable young people have full access to employment opportunities. That has already positively affected both the voluntary and the community sectors and is particularly aiding young people who are currently not in education, employment or training.

This Government have acted on the calls from the public to reduce youth unemployment by using a variety of policies in combination, and although there is still much to be done, there is clear evidence that the Government are succeeding in addressing the issue of youth unemployment and that their long-term economic plan is delivering for young people, not just in Braintree but up and down the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Newmark]

The hon. Lady is right that unemployment for young people is down. In her constituency alone, youth unemployment is down by over 40% since the previous election.

[Julie Hilling]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman continues to make that sort of intervention whenever a Labour Member is talking about the issues with unemployment. If he listens to what I am about to say, he might learn that I do not believe that the figures are totally true and accurate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) said a short while ago, young people are the group who are sanctioned most, and when they are sanctioned they disappear from the unemployment register. For instance, I have a volunteer working in my office who got so disheartened by sanctions and how he was being treated that he now does not sign on at all because he can no longer cope with the system.

We also have young people on workfare. They are not in employment—they are not getting paid for the work they are doing—but they also disappear from the unemployment figures. The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) might be interested to know that in my constituency, any young people signing on for universal credit—that is what is happening for young people in my area now—do not exist in the unemployment figures, because universal credit is not currently connected into those figures. People who want to stand up and say that unemployment is down in my constituency should realise that the figure is not accurate.

I accept that there are more jobs, but one difficulty—I have asked the Secretary of State about this on a number of occasions—is that we do not know the quality of those jobs. We do not know how many involve workfare, zero-hours contracts or unpaid work, and we do not know how many are taken by people who are desperately underemployed and working just a few hours a week when they clearly want full-time jobs.

In the few minutes I have, however, I want to talk about the things we need to do on youth unemployment. One big issue employers and young people talk to me about is the lack of careers education. Where we have cut careers services down to the bare bones, young people do not necessarily get good careers education. The young people I talk to who are in apprenticeships—particularly those working for MBDA, which offers a high-level apprenticeship programme—say they were actively discouraged in their schools from taking up apprenticeships and are not given a full range of information about the jobs on offer. Clearly, therefore, we have a real issue on apprenticeship education.

Work experience should be mandatory. Three out of four employers do not work with young people at all—they do not give them work, work experience or apprenticeships. We need to expand the pool of employers who are prepared to give young people an opportunity. The great value of work experience is that it gives young people a notion of what the workplace is actually like; it encourages them to think about what exams they need to do and what they want to do with their future. Indeed, as a result of work experience, young people sometimes say, “I never want to go into the job I’m doing on work experience.” Work experience therefore often gives young people a rounded view, although I do not think that one or two weeks’ work experience in year 11 is enough; employers should interact much more with education. Some of the best employers in my constituency regularly go into schools and interact with young people; they talk to them about their future and give them a bit of hands-on practice in areas such as engineering.

Another crucial point is support. For 10 years starting in the ’80s, I worked with unemployed young people. We set up a youth co-operative for them, which gave them not only the support they needed, but education and training. Part of that was about young people setting up their own businesses. Not many of those businesses succeeded, but the young people who had attempted to set one up did then find jobs working for somebody else, because they had the experience to do so. Given that 33% of NEETs suffer from depression, we need to see how we can support young people with their education, attitudes and work-readiness. We can build confidence and self-esteem so that they can compete for the jobs that do exist.

I am concerned about the Government’s proposals to introduce fees for the training part of apprenticeships. We are trying to encourage small employers to take on apprentices—that is where the growth in apprenticeships will be—so putting barriers in the way of people taking on apprentices is the wrong thing to do.

I recently held a business event in my constituency. One of the major things employers said was that they wanted apprenticeships to be more responsive to employers, because a one-size-fits-all approach did not really work. They wanted to be much more involved in designing the training that takes place alongside apprenticeships, and to have a say in what happened on apprenticeship programmes for young people.

On the skills agenda, some of the things that have happened in education recently are taking people towards a 1950s and 1960s education agenda. Employers tell me they want young people to do technical subjects. They do not care what the subject is, but they need young people to develop their brains in different ways and to do things more with their hands so that they are ready to take up employment opportunities.

Employers also talk about life skills. They say they need young people to come to them work-ready in many ways. That means young people should have some notion of how the world works, how they fit into the world and how to behave, as well as some notion of financial education and other life skills.

My final point comes back to the issue of connecting employers to education. We need to do far more to enable employers and young people to meet each other and talk about what is going on in the world of work, so that young people can take their place in it.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to debate under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate and on the way she advanced her arguments: she did not do so in a particularly partisan way, and I do not intend to advance mine in a partisan way either. The issues we all face are significant, and engaging in a battle over statistics does politicians in general no favours—I say that to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark). Before he intervenes to say what the unemployment statistics in my constituency are, let me say that I am fully aware of them.

[Mr Newmark]

What are they?

[Chris Bryant]

They have improved dramatically, which is thanks largely to the Welsh Assembly Government and very little to the Government in Westminster—if we are going to get partisan.

There have been some important contributions to the debate. It is an enormous shame that we have lost the Minister who was here at the beginning. I gather he has gone off to Downing street, and we will discover later whether he has been promoted as much as he would like, but I wish him well. I say gently to the Government that it is naughty not only to shift responsibility for answering the debate, which was originally intended for the DWP, to another Department, but then, when we are three quarters of the way through, to hoik the Minister off to get some new employment—taking him out of a debate on those affected by youth unemployment when he does not look old enough to be out of that category. I have not even mentioned the Minister who is about to reply, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson).

[Chris Bryant]

Well, the Minister for Employment is in the Department for Work and Pensions. Be that as it may, let us get on to the matter in hand.

The truth is that the economy is improving and Opposition Members are as delighted about that as Government Members. I say that because many Opposition Members represent seats where what this country has suffered economically over the past few years is felt even more aggressively and painfully than it is in seats represented by Government Members. I know there are pockets of deprivation in every constituency in the land, but the honest truth is that many Opposition Members deal weekly and daily with multiple levels of deprivation, some historical and some new, so we know the pain. We are therefore delighted that the economy is improving, although I sometimes feel quite angry, and I think my constituents do too, when the Government seem complacent about the situation we are in.

The truth of the matter is that we still have the highest ever number of people in part-time employment who would like to be in full-time employment, many of them women. That is a significant challenge, because the issue then is how people in work pay the bills. Under this Government, for the first time ever the problem is that the majority of those living in poverty are people in work. That must be a cause of shame for all of us. Youth unemployment is still stubbornly high. I fully accept that the numbers have fallen, and they have fallen in my constituency. However, they reached an absolute peak last September, and there is still a considerable way to go. I will talk about that a little more later.

I am glad that we have a flexible labour market, but I often worry that the flexibility is all on the part of those who are employed, and that the employer can sometimes exploit that to such a degree that there is unfairness in the market. That means that whether someone is on a zero-hours contract without wanting to be, or is on an exclusive zero-hours contract, or does not have enough hours because the number they are given depends entirely on whether they get on with the boss rather than on a contract, their working conditions will be kept pretty miserable—let alone the problems of low pay.

At the moment some 853,000 young people aged 24 or under are unemployed. Although the figures have fallen, the ratio of young unemployed people to adult unemployed people is considerably higher in this country than for all our competitors. In the UK there are 3.6 young unemployed people for every unemployed adult; in the EU as a whole there are 2.4 and in Germany just 1.6 unemployed young people to every unemployed adult. Many hon. Members cite Spain and Greece, where youth unemployment is high, but we should not underestimate the problem in this country.

As several of my hon. Friends have mentioned—not least my hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) who chairs the all-party group on youth unemployment—the recession in the UK has hit the young hardest. All the economic statistics show that they have had a harder time of it than anyone else, and today, although I do not suppose that anyone will notice because the great reshuffle will obscure it all, prices are still rising 2.5 times faster than wages. That has a dramatic effect on people who are on low wages, because they spend a far higher percentage of their wages on the basics of life such as eating and heating. In the past five years, the employment rate has fallen faster among 20-year-olds than any other age group. Real pay has also fallen fastest for the young. We must factor in housing costs and the state of the housing market. They were part of the problem in Spain and Greece: the housing market fell apart, contributing to high youth unemployment. Because of the cost of housing, young people have problems with personal social mobility and moving from parts of the country with no employment to places where there is employment.

We should never forget how those things affect people, including their long-term health. A young person who has been out of work for more than six months is twice as likely as anyone else to be taking antidepressants, and anyone who is out of work for six months or longer is six times more likely to have a mental health problem of some kind, which might make it difficult for them to get back into the labour market. People move further and further from the labour market. One of the most depressing statistics that I saw this year was from the Prince’s Trust Macquarie youth index, which suggested that 750,000 young people in this country said they had nothing to live for.

[Mr Newmark]

rose—

Debate on the Address

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think that we should look at the empirical evidence provided by countries around the world, including the United States, where the ability to access shale gas is making energy prices and industry competitive and is helping the economy to grow. Those who are against access to shale gas seem to be claiming that it will somehow be legal to go on to people’s property and frack against their will. That is simply not the case, as the legislation that we are setting out will make extremely clear.

I was speaking about the values that are at the heart of the Queen’s Speech, and I believe that they are what matter when it comes to turning people back on to politics and our ability to change things in a way that they will find satisfactory. One value that is important is fairness. However, fairness means not just what people get out but what they put in, so it is right for us to have a welfare system that rewards work and an immigration system that is tough, controlled, and unashamedly in our national interest. We will never have genuine equality of opportunity if we have low expectations for our children, so it is right for us to take on the dumbing down and the low standards of the past, and to ensure that we have the best schools and skills for the next generation. Those are the values at the heart of this Queen’s Speech.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

The Government have created more than 1.7 million jobs, and have helped many of my constituents back into work. Will job creation continue to be at the heart of their policy?

[The Prime Minister]

Job creation is absolutely at the heart of what this Government are about. As my hon. Friend said, we have seen 1.7 million more private sector jobs and 1.5 million more people in work overall. One of the things that I think is absolutely vital is to give a clear commitment that we will not put up jobs taxes—national insurance—on either employers or employees. I am prepared to make that commitment; why will the Leader of the Opposition not do so? He was asked repeatedly. He says he wants to deal with the things that people find so frustrating. One of the things that is so frustrating is when someone will not give a simple answer to a straightforward question.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I wholly support that vision. It is massively important to the country. I join the hon. Gentleman in recognising the work of that extraordinary individual and remind him that the Prime Minister has launched a new initiative that will announce daily the Points of Light awards to reward outstanding volunteers. I ask Members of Parliament on both sides of the House to think about nominating individuals in their constituencies for that award.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

One way in which we can encourage volunteering is to thank those volunteers who work hard. Will the Minister join me in thanking the volunteers in my constituency at the play and resource centre PARC, Braintree Foyer, the Archer centre and Rethink Mencap? Does he agree that it is the volunteers who work for the various charities and community groups in all our constituencies who form the backbone of our society and deserve our collective thanks?

[Mr Hurd]

I wholly endorse that and join my hon. Friend in his recognition of and congratulations to his local volunteers. Few Governments have done more to actively encourage volunteering, and I reiterate my encouragement to colleagues to step forward and nominate individuals for the Points of Light awards.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

What I would say to the right hon. Gentleman is that the best route out of poverty is work, and we should welcome the fact that there are 1.5 million more people in work. Looking at the figures, of course, yes, he is right that food bank usage has gone up, not least because food banks are now properly advertised and promoted, not only by Jobcentre Plus but by local authorities.

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to deal in facts, the OECD has shown that the proportion of people struggling to buy food in the UK has actually fallen since before Labour’s great recession. I know that Opposition Members want to make this argument about poverty and inequality in Britain, but the statistics do not back them up. Inequality has fallen compared with when Labour was in office; there are fewer people in relative poverty, and fewer children in relative poverty. The picture Labour Members want to paint—because they cannot paint one of an economy that is not growing, or one of people who are not getting jobs—is wholly false.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

With the service, manufacturing and construction sectors all growing at 3% plus, does the Prime Minister agree that the economy is well on the road to recovery and rebalancing as well?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. Recent figures showed that manufacturing was one of the faster-growing sectors of our economy, which I welcome, but what the Chancellor said so powerfully in his Budget is that we are not resting on our laurels or saying that the job is done. There is more work to address the fundamental long-term weaknesses of the British economy: we need to manufacture more; we need to export more; we need to save more; and we need to invest more. Unlike the Labour party, we have policies that promote all those things.

St John Ambulance

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is sitting on my right, but as those remarks have not yet been made, it might be polite, if nothing else, if he were to wait until I have said what I am going to say. I can say to him that I am sure that the St John briefing notes, which I have seen, will have been well and truly read into the record by the time that we are through.

I will not detain hon. Members for too long, but I need to illustrate with broad brush strokes what has gone wrong and then, as the subject of the debate is the regulation of St John Ambulance by the Charity Commission, set out why the commission has been unwilling, or unable, to intervene in a manner that might have been expected in the interests of those supportive members of the public who have so generously given many millions of pounds over the years to the St John Ambulance service. It is not my style to say under privilege anything that I would not be prepared to say outside Parliament on the record or in public. Nor do I propose—this might come as a relief to some—to name names or to besmirch individual reputations. There is, however, a collective responsibility at the very top of St John that has to be held to account. My understanding is that, in recent years, the St John accumulated reserves have suffered from a near catastrophic 30% loss. I am sure that that figure will be disputed and that “reasons beyond our control” will be offered for the failure to protect the charity’s funds properly.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I do not want to pre-empt anything that he might say, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) did, but will he recognise at least that these have been tough economic times for many charities? St John is no different from any other charity that has had to restructure itself to ensure that it can protect front-line services. The evidence that I have seen in my constituency, in Braintree and Halstead, and throughout Essex is that that is exactly what St John has been doing.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I get the sneaking feeling that my hon. Friends on either side of me are reading the next paragraphs of my speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Roger Gale]

I apologise that I did not see the hon. Lady come into the Chamber. I had said that I would give way to her the moment she walked in because, for reasons that everyone in the House will understand, she has to leave for a long-standing commitment elsewhere. She is, however, one of the three Members who pitched for the debate—my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury and I were the others—and I thank her for her support.

I happen to be a supporter of a significant international charity with which I am fairly heavily involved, so I am aware that fundraising in times of austerity is not easy, that returns on investments may be low and that great care and caution have to be taken to protect assets, staff, and the aims and objectives of the charitable organisation. The reaction of St John Ambulance to the situation it faced—due, I believe, to mismanagement—appears to have been draconian and, to say the least, badly handled. It has cost the charity many members and loyal staff, as well as much support in the country.

Faced with severe losses, St John embarked on a national reorganisation in 2011. It said that that was undertaken following full consultation, but as one who was only remotely and peripherally involved, I am in a position to say that no one within the mantled ranks of the priory appears to have been listening and that such consultation as did take place was tardy, inadequate, unheeded and designed to promote and implement decisions that had already been taken. I believe—in fact, I know—that I am not alone in that experience.

On the lines of an experiment conducted by the UK branch of the Red Cross, the St John counties were abolished, with eight regional organisations put in their place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) indicated, any organisation faced with difficulties has the absolute right to restructure. St John, however, might have heeded the results of the Red Cross adventure, which showed that the loss of local ownership led to a loss of membership, support and local income. That process ended with a reversal of the decision.

[Mr Newmark]

I understand what my hon. Friend is saying and I will not contradict—

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Mr Newmark]

Mr Turner, I was in full flow before the Division, and I have almost lost my train of thought. I do not contradict the point my hon. Friend is making about Kent, but does he accept that there may be regional disparities? When I heard about this debate, I spoke to my local contact in Essex, our mutual friend, Janie Siggers, and tried to obtain an understanding of what is going on in Essex. The issues that my hon. Friend is raising are not reflected in Essex. Does he accept that there may be some regional disparities?

[Sir Roger Gale]

I accept that. I know the lady to whom my hon. Friend refers and she is extremely hard-working. I concede that there may well be regional variations, and I will come to that precise issue almost immediately, but I cannot help feeling that the fundamental malaise comes from the very top, and that while some organisers have chosen to interpret instructions in a particular way and successfully, others have been perhaps less successful or felt that they were put under pressure. I am not suggesting that the people doing the job are bad people, except perhaps at the very top, and even then I do not mean that they are bad people in that sense.

We now move into uncharted territory, and I will offer the House some observations that have been made to me, not only from Kent but from East Sussex, the midlands and Yorkshire, as examples of precisely this effect of top-down diktats. When events such as this debate reach the public airwaves, testimony also emerges. During the past week, I have taken phone calls and received written communications from people whose details I have but whom I propose to anonymise for the record.

From East Sussex, a volunteer with 35 years’ service under their belt speaks of a branch that in 2008 had a membership of nearly 86, but which has now declined to just three or four. They also tell me of some 13 units whose headquarters buildings are to be sold, and that is in just one district. Another volunteer tells me of training that has gone downhill, with sessions booked from a centralised HQ in Aylesbury that is out of touch with the rest of the new region. In the former area, there were 146 trained emergency ambulance crews; in the corresponding new administrative area, there are only 86. I was told of headquarters premises sold by St John for £80,000 to a developer, who cleared the site and sold it on for £220,000. St John’s justification for that seems to have been, “We’re not property developers.”

It has been suggested to me—of course, the accurate figures must be available within St John—that the result of reorganisation has been a loss in Kent alone of perhaps as much as 75% of the membership. That is all anecdotal, of course, but it is a matter of record that on Thursday 24 January 2013, a special resolution was tabled calling for a vote of no confidence in the priory and the priory council of St John. That resolution was defeated, but in circumstances that the record suggests were, at the very least, bizarre.

Instead of citing telephone calls, I will quote directly. From Kent:

“We learned of the reorganisation in 2011 and that the new structure would be in place by October 2012.

Kent became part of the South East Region on 1st October 2012 being administered from the Regional Office in Aylesbury.

Our County HQ at West Malling was closed and almost all of the loyal staff made redundant.

All funds that were held in County accounts were amalgamated into the Regional Pot.

The feeling among the membership is that the new Regional Directors are trying to run St John as a commercial company and that making a profit is their main aim.

A small number of local events that we covered for a small donation are now not able to run because St John wants to charge them a commercial price and they cannot afford it.

Each Division would raise funds to buy a new Ambulance; they took pride in their vehicle, kept it clean and well stocked and were proud to display their Divisional name on the side of the Ambulance. Those Ambulances have had the names removed and no longer belong to the Division but are moved around the Region with no-one taking ownership for their cleanliness and equipment.

Kent was one of the best-run Counties in the Country with a very strong membership providing thousands of hours of voluntary service to the public of Kent. Sadly, the membership is declining fast and it appears that what has taken over 1000 years to establish the new management have destroyed in just over a year.

I would be interested to know where the funds that we held in Kent have disappeared to.”

From the east Midlands, a long-standing and very faithful divisional superintendent gave the following reasons for his recent and unexpected resignation from St John. I am quoting from a minute:

“That the commercial side of St John was taking over and using the voluntary arm, for financial gain, neither of which is within the spirit of St. John.

To achieve this end there is no regard or concern for the volunteers. We have not been consulted about anything, decisions are made over our heads even when affecting our Units personally, even including the decision to close down a particular unit.

The Leaders of East Midlands Region say whatever is suitable for the occasion, even if it’s not the truth and even if they’d said the total opposite before.”

That is followed by something that is even more disparaging and I will not read it out. It continues:

“The need for change in St. John is understood but the harsh, inconsiderate manner, with few explanations and little consideration of the volunteers, is not an appropriate way to introduce these changes. A more humane, considerate approach could have produced a better outcome.”

Another volunteer from Kent said that

“having been a member for almost 38yrs I am totally confused with this ‘restructuring’. All I see is an excuse to take all Divisional funds away from the Divisions into one large pot… Divisions virtually have to beg for funds and they are a long time coming if they come at all.

We now have a District Manager in Kent telling us he wants us to work with local authorities and KCC and his vision is to cut out event cover completely! Our whole ethos…for the past 1000 years has been to give help to the sick and since we were reformed in 1877 in England we have always covered public events assisting the injured. Our Division has some events we have been covering over fifty years.

I am very sad that everything St. John stands for is being undermined.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I rise to counter the damning speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). This is prompted not by any national part of St John, but by members of my local group, for whom I have always had enormous respect and whose service in my constituency has always been of the highest order. It is on that basis that I want to put their views on the suggestions made in the lead-up to this debate about the present management and direction of St John. None of the people I have spoken to within St John is in any way resistant to the idea that the Charity Commission has some responsibility for overseeing the charity, and they would welcome any investigation that might be thought necessary. This is not about thwarting the intention that I assume is behind the debate; I want to provide a wider, more rounded picture of the present state of affairs.

As we know, St John believes that too many people die—in my area as much as anywhere else—who do not need to, and who would not if first aid was available at their time of crisis. My group believes that, since the reorganisation, it is even more committed to St John’s mission, which is available on its website and seems close to the heart of every member of my local St John I have ever dealt with.

The mission is

“to provide an effective and efficient charitable first aid service to local communities”—

my group does that—and

“to provide training and products to satisfy first aid and related health and safety needs for all of society”,

which my group certainly does. The final aim is

“to encourage personal development for people of all ages, through training and by membership of our organisation”,

and my local group’s membership is growing.

I ask the hon. Members for North Thanet and for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) to understand that while they speak for communities in Kent, St John extends throughout the country. It was an important admission that local disparities in service might very well be part of the problem, and that could be an issue when forming a picture of the organisation and its recent management that is perhaps not as complete as it might be. We know that the organisation was, in essence, £9 million in deficit by 2011 and that that deficit was growing. Any organisation has to face the reality that if it is that much in the red and things are not getting better, change is needed. I understand that there might be some objections to how that deficit arose, but it is instructive that, by the end of 2014, this organisation that was recently £9 million in the red will be registering a small surplus. St John has quickly got on top of a financial situation that was unacceptable.

[Mr Newmark]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that although my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) made points about the cuts and their impact, the delivery of services has improved, especially for young people—perhaps in the same way that the Government have made cuts yet improved productivity and delivery—and the training of young people has increased by 37% in the past year alone.

[Mike Wood]

I am grateful for that intervention because it makes my next point for me. In spite of what has happened, and against that background, my understanding is that the organisation nationally—this is certainly my experience locally—has improved its performance. It is training more people and functioning in a much more open fashion, and it has listened and taken note of the report it sought on its governance. As I understand it, the report was independent and said that the organisation was too bureaucratic and complex, that it lacked clear governance policies and lines of accountability and that, essentially, there were too many committees and too many roles. Perhaps that is inevitable in an organisation split over 41 semi-autonomous bodies but, none the less, St John sought to improve that state of affairs after hearing the view of the expert body asked to review it. Again, my group, which is based just over the border into Wakefield, at Ossett, has welcomed the improved situation in which it now functions.

It is also important to look at information from bodies such as the Care Quality Commission. It has continued to provide inspection reports that have shown, certainly in my area, that St John is providing a service of a very high standard. Obviously, if the two hon. Gentlemen from Kent—the hon. Members for North Thanet and for Canterbury—have misgivings about the organisation and management of a St John home in their area, it is their responsibility to make those concerns public. Nobody has any misgivings about that, or any opinion other than that that is exactly the right thing to do. I would have done the same about something in my constituency, but to extrapolate from that a wholesale belief that the organisation is far away from its objectives and delivery targets, as was suggested at the start of the debate, seems to be neither sensible nor safe.

May I make a rather partisan, north-south point? The two hon. Gentlemen from Kent who proposed the debate—they are supported by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), who came and went, who I understand was born in Kent—perhaps might just, in their more charitable moments, accept that the world extends beyond Kent. I think that they have to be told that there is life north of Watford.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I am chairman of the all-party group on first aid, whose administrative support comes from St John Ambulance. So far 25 MPs and peers, from all parties, have obtained the certificate in essential first aid here in the House.

I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) and the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Mike Wood), in putting on the record both personal opinions and facts. I shall not venture into the Kent debate set out by my fellow knight, my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), because I believe that it needs to be dealt with as a constituency matter. St John Ambulance representatives will read Hansard tomorrow and see what he had to say. I hope that in some respects they will take on board his concerns about what he senses is a lack of localism in Kent, and the other points he made.

My first involvement with St John was more than 50 years ago, when I was a young scout and trained in first aid. I recognise and echo all that my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said about that. Notwithstanding the criticisms that have been made—one might have thought the organisation was dying on its feet—there is a remarkable expansion going on, with 30% more young people trained last year than the year before. That is a record of success and achievement. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet said, there are concerns, and I hope that St John Ambulance at national level will consider how it can address them and encourage the localism that I see at the Colchester branch. I occasionally visit the branch—not just the adult training but the Badgers, which is the youngest group, aged five to 10, and the cadets who are aged 10 to 16. The organisation is remarkable and it has evolved.

[Mr Newmark]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will indulge me with one last intervention. As a fellow Essex MP, he will know the tremendous work that the new St John branch in Halstead does. I went on my very first training course in first aid, which was excellent, and I was surprised at the number of young people on the course with me. Will he join me in paying tribute to that work and does he agree that St John Ambulance does an excellent job training young people in basic first aid?

[Sir Bob Russell]

If the Halstead experience is like the Colchester one—and both towns are on the river Colne—the hon. Gentleman is fortunate to have an excellent St John Ambulance centre in his constituency.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury gave some dramatic statistics, and I will add some more. Community first responders attended 31% more call-outs in 2012 than in 2011, supporting the NHS ambulance service. In addition to youngsters, unemployed young people are going through the training system. An initiative launched in the past year by St John called “In their community” enables youngsters between the ages of 14 and 17, including cadets, to use their skills to deliver first aid training to others—that is self-help among young people. In another programme, “Your first aid”, cadets are given a chance to volunteer at events.

We must accept that St John Ambulance, like many other organisations, needs to remain fresh and vibrant. The Scouts and Guides have already gone down that path, and so have political parties. St John Ambulance will evolve to keep in step in society and to meet changing challenges. St John, facing significant financial losses that could have brought the organisation crashing down, tried with the help of operational front-line volunteers and others to find a way not only to save the organisation but to give it a future. I suggest that that is what the restructuring has done, but I think—referring back to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet—it needs to find a way to retain the ethos of localism. After all, that is what all political parties want—localism is part of their agenda. One way of saving money is to acknowledge the fact that the semi-independent divisions were costing money. We all recognise that not everyone welcomes change, but new arrangements mean more team working and sharing resources.

This is a welcome debate. The circumstances are unfortunate, but we have on the record the good things about St John Ambulance, and I hope that St John will listen carefully to the criticisms and build on its strengths.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I shall be very happy to hold that meeting. I think it is really important for us to do everything we can to help families who are put in such a position. To be fair to our consular services around the world, I think that they cope extremely well. They try to go the extra mile. They work very hard, and I know that the Foreign Office encourages them in all that they do. However, there are cases in which things do not work out in the way they should, and we struggle to get answers from other countries about their justice systems and what is happening.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

Tragically, John Ray infant school, one of the largest infant schools in Braintree, burnt down a few days ago. Will the Prime Minister join me in thanking Essex county council for the speed with which it found alternative accommodation for the children, and in welcoming the encouraging news that the school is to be rebuilt as soon as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in praising his county council. That does sound like a tragic event, and it comes on top of the fact that, as everyone knows, we need to provide more primary school places. I commend the council for its quick action.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister pointed out, poison gas was extensively used in battle in the first world war. That led to a revulsion that was formulated by the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, which banned the use of poison gases but did not prevent a country from possessing a stockpile so that it could threaten retaliation if attacked by such gases. That protocol had nothing to do with the fact that poison gas was not used in the second world war—what prevented Hitler from using it was the threat of overwhelming retaliation. Indeed, sarin and tabun were nerve gases that Nazi scientists invented in the 1930s and 1940s. Hitler proposed to use tabun in 1943 but was deterred from doing so by the mistaken belief that the allies had discovered it too, although they had not. Similarly, Churchill thought of using poison gas against the V-weapons in 1944, and decided not to do so on military advice. The gas protocol had nothing to do with it.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

If my hon. Friend is talking about Hitler’s use of gas on soldiers he should not forget that Hitler used poison gas on innocent civilians—6 million Jews to be precise.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted to have the extra minute, especially as that was the next point I was going to make, given that a large proportion of members of my family were among those victims who were gassed. Hitler used poison gas against those innocent victims because he did not give a fig for the gas protocol; he cared about whether or not people could hit back. Those victims could not hit back whereas the allies could, and that is why he did not use gas against them.

I do not want to divert too far into that, but it is important to understand the realities of what makes countries use poison gas and what deters them from using it. In my mind, the questions we must consider resolve themselves into two, rather than the four elegantly put forward by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. My two questions are: first, is it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Assad did it; and secondly, even if Assad or his regime did it, is a military strike sensible?

On the first question, the UN inspectors will not tell us anything about whether or not Assad did it, as I understand it. All they will do is tell us whether or not a sarin gas attack took place, so we cannot look to them to point the finger as to who did it. The Joint Intelligence Committee has been cited and we can all read the summary. That summary is not conclusive and in fact states that the JIC is baffled to find a motive for Assad having done this, as well it might be. If Assad did it—and perhaps he did—it was the height of irrationality for him to do the one thing that might get the west intervening against him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Syria’s use of chemical weapons is either a huge mistake or, in my view, a calculated attempt to test the resolve of the west, post Iraq and post Afghanistan. If we look at the possibility that it was a mistake, it could have been an official or a general who gave orders to the relevant Government department for the use of chemical weapons without the direct instruction of Assad; that scenario has been put forward by reports appearing in Foreign Affairs magazine. Alternatively, it could be a test to see whether Syria could get away with the use of weapons of mass destruction, and whether the west would not have the stomach for a challenge. Chemical weapons have been used in Syria earlier, and until the recent red line from Obama the west did not react, other than to threaten a red line.

The weapons inspectors said that they needed another four days to finish their investigations, plus, I am sure, a short time after that for their report to be collated. Many of us believe that the regime is responsible for the attacks, and those attacks are probably authorised from a very senior level—probably Assad himself. But the inspectors need to report back to the UNSC purely and simply to establish due process—something that did not happen through the Iraq conflict and the Iraq war that followed. I was a relatively new MP, sat on the Bench just behind the Prime Minister, in 2003 when we took the decision. We thought we had good intelligence, and that intelligence was later found to be false. One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that we wait for due process to be followed through the UN before action is taken.

Obviously, the resolution tabled by the Prime Minister under chapter VII preceded the weapons inspectors’ report, so we knew full well that the Russians and Chinese would be likely to veto that resolution. Our debate today obviously takes place before the weapons inspectors have finished, because powers elsewhere have decided to go ahead before the Security Council has determined whether the evidence from the inspectors is sufficient to meet the burden of proof required. It is clear that without that Security Council resolution, any military action would, like that of a previous Labour Government, be illegal.

[Mr Newmark]

The hon. Gentleman is putting huge stock in the UN, but the UN will not apportion blame. The only thing that the UN is doing is validating that chemical weapons were indeed used, and we all know that.

[Mark Hendrick]

Yes, we do all know that, but it is a prerequisite of the due process, and the UN procedure, that that is established through the inspectors. That must be the basic building block on which the Security Council makes a decision. In addition to that, as the Prime Minister has said, there must be a lot of intelligence from different intelligence services around the world, and the inspectors’ report will add to that information. So that is just a basic building block; it is not a decision in itself.

Therefore, as I said, action may be illegal, despite the doctrine of responsibility to protect. Despite what the Attorney-General says, I and many others around the world are not convinced that the six criteria required by the doctrine have been met. The unintended consequences of that could be catastrophic, for the following reasons.

By using those weapons, Syria has crossed the red lines set by Obama. Iran is watching, helping to arm the regime and sending its own forces to the regime. The Russians are arming the Syrians to the hilt and wondering whether the west will act against the use of WMD. Iran knows that if Syria can get away with using WMD, its own WMD, as well as its development of nuclear weapons, could well be ignored, and Iran could go on to produce more WMD and nuclear weapons without the intervention or involvement of the west. That may provoke a response, if that were to be allowed, from the Israelis. The Israelis will be looking, at some point short of Iran’s having developed nuclear weapons, to possibly take matters into their own hands. Indeed, if the situation kicks off with the western intervention in Syria, and Iran responds, and if Syria responds with an attack on Israel, that could be the perfect excuse for the Israelis to try and deal, not only with the WMD question and Syria, but also the nuclear question and Iran. We need to take these things into consideration before we decide, as a result of any UNSC deliberations and a UNSC decision, what action we take.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has taken the right decision. Let us go the UNSC route. If Russia and China say no and veto, for political reasons rather than the reasons of the evidence that we all know about, we must make a decision. Only once we have seen the evidence from the inspectors will we be able to decide what that decision shall be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Hoey]

No.

We have had information before that poison gas had been used and Carla Del Ponte, who was the UN commissioner in Syria, pointed out that it was the rebels who had used it. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell me when he winds up the debate, if, despite what everyone thinks, the weapons inspectors find that it was the rebels or some rogue general who used the chemical weapons last week, the Prime Minister will be saying the things that he did about the use of chemical weapons? The doctrine of prevention, which I had hoped—

[Mr Newmark]

I have huge respect for the hon. Lady. To help her in her thinking, let me point out that Damascus is defended by the president’s brother, Maher. He is responsible for the fourth division and he is ultimately responsible for the heinous chemical attack that took place. Given the industrial scale with which those chemicals hit three, four or five different areas, it would be impossible for the rebels to do it to themselves, besides the fact that it would be incredibly counter-intuitive.

[Kate Hoey]

I do not think that has been proved or that we have any proof that bombing will make things any better or get rid of the chemical weapons, if they are there. We need to remember that once we cross that line of military action, as other Members have said, even if it is a short strike and very few civilians are killed, which is highly unlikely, the result will be that when anyone is killed in future years in Syria, whoever has killed them or whatever the background, the west will be blamed. The United Kingdom will be blamed, as has happened throughout the middle east, and we will see the repercussions on our streets in the form of increased extremism.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), for whom I have huge respect. I want to begin by agreeing with the Foreign Secretary that this is a moment for democratic nations to live up to their values. The use of chemical weapons by President Assad’s regime is a moral outrage that cannot go unchallenged. I will therefore be supporting today’s motion.

Less than 24 hours ago, I was on the Syrian border, where I have spent the past few days meeting Syrian opposition fighters from the Free Syrian Army—the FSA. The brigade commanders and fighters I met were from all backgrounds. Many were doctors, teachers, farmers and engineers; they represented a broad cross-section of Syrian society, including Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Druze and, yes, Alawites as well. I also had the opportunity to meet General Idris, the head of the FSA, and President Jarba, the head of the Syrian Opposition Council. As colleagues will know, I also met President Assad several times over the five-year period between 2006 and 2011. So I come to this debate fairly well informed on Syria and its people.

The use of chemical weapons in war is particularly abhorrent, as we saw in 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, and again last week when the Assad regime inflicted a chemical weapons attack on Ghutah, a suburb of Damascus. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, that attack resulted in at least 3,600 casualties. In 1925, in the aftermath of the first world war, the Geneva gas protocol was passed to ban the use of such weapons.

A year ago, a red line on the use of chemical weapons was drawn for the Assad regime, but since then, it has been testing the elasticity of that red line with the repeated small-scale use of such weapons, according to witness statements, video evidence and physiological samples that have been tested here at Porton Down as well as in the US and elsewhere. In fact, last week’s chemical weapons attack was possibly the 14th such attack by the Assad regime on its own people. It was only the fact that it was on such a large scale and took place in the capital itself that led us in the west to decide that enough was enough.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech based on his knowledge of the situation on the ground. What assessment has he made of the size of the chemical weapons arsenal, and of which country might have helped Syria to establish it in the first place?

[Mr Newmark]

That is a very good question, and I suspect that I know my hon. Friend’s direction of travel in asking it. There is no evidence, at least that I am aware of, that the Russians or the Iranians helped Syria to develop that arsenal, although I would not be surprised if they had done so.

Peter Hitchens wrote recently, in support of the Assad regime, that the Syrian Government were not lying and that it made “more sense” for the opposition to poison and kill more than 1,000 of their own people. If that is the case, however absurd, why, if they had nothing to hide, did the Syrian Government and their chief sponsor on the Security Council, Russia, block the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors from going to the site when they were only 15 minutes away? Instead, they continued to bombard the area and to degrade the evidence as much as possible. I find it astounding how this kind of double-think has become common currency among many of those who oppose the war. That includes some Opposition Members who have been retweeting articles along those lines from the Voice of Russia. Frankly, I would rather believe our Government and our intelligence agencies than Russia and President Assad.

That chemical weapons have been used in Syria is in no doubt. The question is whether the regime itself delivered them. My understanding is that the intelligence drawn from eye-witness statements, video footage and electronic intercepts is extremely compelling. This raises another question: do we have any confidence in our intelligence agencies at all? My answer is yes. Just because Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were economical with the truth about the intelligence that they used to get us into Iraq—through what has become known as the “dodgy dossier”—that should not taint our view of the current evidence that the intelligence services have been collecting on this matter. That evidence puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Bashar al-Assad and his brother, Maher.

[Bob Stewart]

I was an officer trained in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, and one of the things that I learned on my course was that only a professional army could manage and use chemical weapons. There is no doubt in my mind that the rebels would not have the capacity or the ability to use such weapons. I am sure that when the report comes back from the United Nations inspectors, it will not be able to identify who threw them or used them but it will perhaps be able to say that they were used. In my mind, however, there is no doubt that only a professional army—and not the rebels—could use chemical weapons.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his thoughtful intervention.

Those opposing military action say that, notwithstanding the increasing evidence that Assad used chemical weapons, we should let the UN inspectors do their work first. To them I say this: of course, but we should remember that the inspectors’ remit is not to apportion blame for this atrocity; it is merely to confirm that chemical weapons were in fact used. Does any Member in the House doubt that such weapons were used? Of course not. Those opposing military action say that we need a UN resolution to back any action, but we will never get such a resolution while Russia, the Assad regime’s key supporter, remains a member of the Security Council. In fact, Russia has blocked every single move to condemn the Assad regime since this conflict began.

[Dr Huppert]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Newmark]

No, I am afraid I cannot.

The result is that the UN is failing to live up to its mandate to protect. We therefore need to find a coalition of the willing. Why? Because we cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to go unchallenged. As President Jarba said to me earlier this week, western silence and inaction are killing his people. If we do not support today’s motion, and if we do nothing, it will give a green light to the Assad regime to go on slaughtering and gassing its people with impunity. For that reason, I support the motion.

Debate on the Address

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said, we should judge the Gracious Speech by the extent to which it is fit for the job that this country and the people of this country so desperately need it to do. We must therefore begin by addressing the important fact, which is very uncomfortable for us as politicians serving in this House, that there has not been a time in the 40 years that I remember of active politics when the level of public engagement with the relevance of politics has been so low. We saw that to a very great extent in the local election campaign.

I am enormously proud of my party’s achievements in the local election campaign, but I know that all of us, including myself, who campaigned in different parts of the country regularly, met people who were angry—people who felt that politicians were deaf to their concerns and that politics offered them no solutions. When we judge this Queen’s Speech by whether it is fit to meet the challenges of modern Britain today, that is a very important test.

Perhaps what has created the anger and unease— I think this underpinned so much of what the Prime Minister said in his response today—is the fact that our political narrative has been characterised by a view of the worst of our national human nature rather than the best. Let us turn that around. What follows if we believe that we live in a country where the majority of the million young people who are out of work desperately want the chance to work, to realise their potential and to fulfil their ambition? Mothers, fathers, young and older men and women come to all our surgeries with a sense of growing desperation that they are running out of solutions to the circumstances in which they now feel themselves to be.

So these are the challenges, and many of the remedies are very simple. When we were in government, we demonstrated that people did not have to languish on jobseeker’s allowance for weeks into months. If we apply what we know—that for every week people are out of work, it gets harder for them to get back into work—and if we provide people with support and retraining, and maintain their confidence that they will get a job, the chances are that they will get off benefits more quickly. But if we hollow out the services that are designed to achieve that change and galvanise that human ambition, people are on their own.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

On that subject, will the right hon. Lady at least acknowledge that in only two years this Government have created 1.25 million jobs in the private sector and have helped to create 250,000 new small businesses and 500,000 apprentices in the past year alone, and that the strategy proposed from the Opposition Front Bench would jeopardise this by borrowing more in a debt crisis?

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

On behalf of the whole House, I wish the hon. Gentleman a very happy birthday, and I thank him for his intervention. By scrutinising the figures on mothers who no longer feel it is worth staying in work, he will see that very many of those jobs, welcome as they are, are not full-time jobs that enable an adequate income to come into the family home.

[Mr Newmark]

rose—

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I will not give way again as many other hon. Members want to speak.

There is much in the Queen’s Speech about welfare and the future of the welfare state. It is not a welfare policy to pop up on television every other Sunday with another bit of tinkering with the welfare state. We have a welfare state which is founded on three principles— the contributory principle, the universal principle and the discretionary principle. Richard Titmuss famously observed—and this is the warning to those who seek to dismantle a universal welfare state that has at different times of our lives relevance for all of us—that services only for the poor are poor services. I challenge Government Members to think of a single service which is used only by the poor that they would be prepared to use at a time of difficulty or trouble.

Remembering the simplicity with which many of the terrible human conditions in which people now find themselves can be resolved, two principles should be upheld: do not hollow out those services that are the practical, direct contact with those individuals, and steer away from a principle for our public services or our welfare state which reduces its scope, making it one that is only for the poor. Stigma follows.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We do want to see patients have a stronger voice in the NHS, and we are about to debate, at some length in terms of the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, how that is done. One of the most important ways of doing that will be to make sure that the NHS Commissioning Board mandate has at its heart quality nursing, quality care and the voice of patients. We also need to look at how HealthWatch will work to ensure that it is truly independent. We have to understand that some of the ways we have tried to empower patients in the past—the report we are about to discuss goes into this in some detail—and give them a better voice, always with good intentions from Governments on both sides of the House, just have not worked, and we have to listen to Francis when he says that.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

With more women in work than ever before, with more men in work than ever before, and with more jobs created in the private sector, does the Prime Minister agree that not only is the Chancellor’s plan A working, but that the economy is beginning to turn the corner?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We should listen very carefully to the Governor of the Bank of England. He has said that growth is slower than we would like, but that the economy is moving in the right direction and that rebalancing is taking place. The things that need to be fixed in our economy, in terms of bank lending and the housing supply, are being fixed, and that is what the Government are determined to do.