Business of the House

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I sometimes think that my hon. Friend spends his spare hours compiling an actuarial table of senior members of the Government. What I can say to him is that whatever circumstances may arise the Queen’s Government will carry on.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Over the past few years, job-finding services, such as cards displaying real jobs and telephones to call about those jobs, have been stripped from jobcentres. With the unexpected news yesterday that the number of Glasgow jobcentres will be cut by 50%, including the jobcentre in Anniesland in my constituency, will the Leader of the House make a statement on the services my constituents should expect in the new planned supercentres?

[Mr Lidington]

These are obviously matters that will primarily be for the management of Jobcentre Plus, but there will be the full range of Jobcentre Plus services at the larger centres. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), I hope the hon. Lady and her colleagues will acknowledge that one reason we need to provide a concentration of services, to help and provide support to those who genuinely—owing to disability, long-term unemployment or whatever other reason—find it hard to get back into work, is that the overall number of people out of work, in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland, has come down very significantly. I do wish that Scottish National party Members would sometimes balance their challenges to the Government with a recognition of the fact that there are now more people in work than ever before.