Specialist Disability Employment

Chris Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right to focus on the support package we are putting in place to ensure that people affected by today’s announcement get all the help they need to get into mainstream employment. That will be in the form of both a personal budget, which can give the flexibility to ensure that training is put in place for individuals, and access to any of the mainstream programmes that the Government run, including Work Choice, the Work programme and Access to Work.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

The union convener at Croespenmaen Remploy factory, Ian Lloyd, has been told that Croespenmaen might have a buyer but will not find out until September. As the Minister might be aware, this gives the workers there some hope. Will she guarantee, first, that they are not being led up the garden path and, secondly, that they will have all the support in place at the moment?

[Maria Miller]

I was pleased to have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman, who has been a doughty advocate for his factory and constituency, and obviously it is good that we will be moving forward with the bid. We will work hard to do everything we can to make bids successful, but obviously they have to be commercially viable and provide jobs for disabled people. Those are our priorities.