Remploy Workers

Chris Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas]

Indeed. That was very much the case. Such was the commitment to the factory that it seemed to me, certainly in Wrexham, that people were willing to consider any proposal at all. The workers and the unions looked at any way at all of keeping the factory open. The history of the Wrexham factory, which I will come to, is that exactly that happened. There was a very strong effort to keep the factory open.

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

My hon. Friend will remember that one of the callous decisions that this Government made was when the Welsh Assembly asked whether the Remploy budget could be devolved to the Assembly. It was a very good plan; it could have saved jobs and kept the factories open, but the Government said no. Would my hon. Friend say that that was quite cruel?

[Ian Lucas]

It was cruel and unnecessary. The Government very often fall over themselves to pass on difficult problems to the Welsh Government. In this case, the Welsh Government came forward and suggested that the Remploy budget be devolved, but the UK Government refused. There was an absolute dedication on their part to close the factories. They were determined that they were going to close them, and despite what the Minister has indicated previously, I am convinced that that was part of a cost-cutting exercise on the part of the Government. They have a stated commitment not to reduce the budget, but I will come on to the figures that show that the money the Government are spending on disabled people is decreasing.

I have made the argument repeatedly to the Secretary of State and to the then Minister for the disabled, who is now the Minister for Employment, that there was a group of people who wanted to continue to work in Remploy factories, doing gainful, positive work, and working for the most part with other disabled people. That argument was consistently ignored and the factory closed, despite a further and intense campaign to keep it open. Efforts were made in Wrexham to secure private investment to keep the factory open, and additional support, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) mentioned, was suggested by the Welsh Government. However, the UK Government were not prepared to consider allowing the Remploy site in Wrexham to be used and, as a result, it was very shortly thereafter sold off for housing development, which two and a half years on is proceeding in Wrexham town.

There was a private sector effort to keep the factory open. A business called Enterprising Employment, which worked with the Welsh Government for a period, employed about a dozen former Remploy workers for a time, but it was unable to continue and those workers were ultimately made redundant and lost their jobs.

We therefore have a picture of the people who worked for Remploy, many of whom had worked for many years on the site, being made redundant. The site in central Wrexham was sold off for housing development. I make no criticism of the fact that the site is now being used—thankfully, in a positive way—but it would have been much better if those people who were working there continued to work there.

The Government’s rationale for closing the Remploy factories was that they wanted to spend the budget of the Department for Work and Pensions more efficiently, so two and a half years on from the publication of the Government’s response to the Sayce review, back in March 2012, is an appropriate time to look at the Government’s record on those vulnerable people. What is their record?

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. It is fitting that you are in the Chair today because, like me and my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), you also had a Remploy factory in your constituency. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend not only for securing this debate but for the passion and fire with which he spoke. He articulated how Opposition Members feel about the way in which Remploy workers were treated by this Government.

A great many things have made me angry since I first came to this House. I have been angry about the way that people, and working people in particular, have been treated. I have been angry about the way that those who find themselves on welfare have been treated like scroungers when they are just looking for a second chance. I have been angry about the way in which those who find themselves ill are being let down by the NHS. But the thing that makes me the angriest is the treatment of Remploy workers in Croespenmaen.

I worked for my predecessor, Lord Touhig, for a number of years, and I remember when, similar to Wrexham, Croespenmaen first came under threat of closure in 2008-09. Workers in Croespenmaen did not stand back and let it happen to them. They fought back in the way that any business would fight back. Instead of sitting back and letting things go, they went out looking for business. They went out asking people and businesses whether they needed packaging. They were not afraid about whom they asked. One of the proudest moments of Lord Touhig’s career—I remember him saying this, and it was one of his last acts as Member of Parliament for Islwyn—was overseeing the signing of a packaging contract between Remploy Croespenmaen and BAE Systems. As you serve on the Select Committee on Defence, Mr Havard, you know that BAE Systems is not a Ronnie and Reggie outfit; it is a blue-chip, FTSE 100 company. BAE Systems does not sign contracts for the fun of it; it signed the contract because it saw Remploy as the best provider of that product.

Two years later, the then Minister with responsibility for disabilities, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), effectively told Remploy Croespenmaen in a side room—it was not even announced in Parliament—that it was closing. Remploy Croespenmaen was told via a press release through BBC news. The House was not told until that Minister was forced to come to make a statement at the end of the day. Hundreds of people lost their jobs, and what a shabby way to treat them. That was just the start. I remember standing up and saying that the workers of Remploy Croespenmaen had worked hard and felt that they had been kicked in the teeth. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said, I pay tribute to the trade unions. Much of the work to secure new business was done by the trade unions, particularly by Ian Lloyd, the GMB trade union representative. To say that the unions are anti-business is a mistake, and it is another myth peddled by the Government.

What happened next was even worse. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) stood up at Prime Minister’s questions and asked directly whether the Prime Minister would seriously consider the idea of devolving Remploy budgets to the Welsh Assembly, which would give Remploy hope. A couple of weeks later, Remploy was met with a big, fat no. The worst thing is that, of all the packaging companies, Croespenmaen was the only one that closed; the others stayed.

We now found ourselves in a far worse situation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham said, since the 1940s Remploy factories have provided good, well paid jobs for thousands of people with disabilities, mainly those who were injured during war. Most people employed in the factories had job satisfaction, a supportive and accessible environment and a sense of community, and I have an example. When the announcement was made, I went to Remploy Croespenmaen as quickly as possible. I stood in its canteen and saw many people in tears because the future suddenly went from being hopeful and bright to looking bleak. Those people stood and said, “Is there any way you could save our jobs?” We MPs are very privileged because we can do a great many things and help many people, but there are times when we feel powerless. Unfortunately, that was one of those times.

Remploy employees made a valuable contribution to UK manufacturing. They worked hard, and it was the same across the country—it was not just in Islwyn or Croespenmaen. Remploy employees did not, as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions suggested at the time, sit around and make coffee. For someone with responsibility for disabilities to make such a comment is crass and unhelpful. We have heard other Ministers say exactly the same things about people with disabilities, and they are still not condemned and it is still not seen as shameful. I have looked all over Hansard for the Secretary of State’s apology, and I have not got anywhere. All we have seen from this Government is a total disregard for people with disabilities and ignorance of what workers actually do. The Government are out of touch and downright disrespectful.

I asked the Secretary of State at the time—he does not have to do it now, because I asked him at the time—whether he had ever visited a Remploy factory, looked into the workers’ eyes and said, “You are only good for making a cup of coffee.” I doubt that very much. If he had gone into a Remploy factory, he would have seen people with skills who are able to manufacture and make things, which is the one thing that the Government are talking about. Do the Government really believe that those people counted for nothing? Are we to believe that the Secretary of State’s comments represent exactly what the Government mean? I know the Minister quite well, and I respect him, but will he now apologise for those comments on behalf of the Secretary of State? Despite claims that Remploy was closed because it no longer made commercial sense, the Secretary of State’s comments suggest otherwise.

I believe that people with disabilities should be valued. People work their best when they feel valued. The worst thing is that I raised with the then Minister with responsibility for disabilities, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke, the fact that we had a 90-day consultation. That was 90 days to formulate a business plan, to cost it, to find suitable funding sources and partners, to review the plan, to contact key stakeholders, to consult unions and Remploy management and to write and submit the report. I would never suggest that the Government wanted most of those plans to fail, but it seems that they did not give the plans the best chance to succeed.

The Government have made much of how they have followed the independent Sayce review—I have a lot of time for Liz Sayce—so why did they not follow her recommendation for

“a sufficient window (for instance, six months) to put forward a business plan”?

We will never know how many jobs would have been saved if the Government had followed that recommendation. We will never know how many communities in which Remploy prospered have now been damaged. We will never know how many former employees have been left depressed and isolated.

What we do know, however, is that less than one in four former Remploy employees had found work by October 2014. Most of those people are working fewer hours for less pay than when they worked for Remploy. The facts are simple. In the year since Remploy closed, only 24.1% of its former employees are in work; 45.7% are working fewer hours; 59.5% are on worse pay; 64.7% have worse benefits, holiday time and pensions; and 69% preferred their time at Remploy to what they are doing now. The simple truth is that they have been let down. They were promised help into new jobs, but most are still unemployed. They were promised support to keep leading active lives, but unfortunately most cannot do so.

There is a lot of talk about welfare reform, but the only way out of welfare is work, which I am afraid is not happening. We are getting closer and closer to the end of the 18-month period of extra support for former Remploy employees, yet so many remain unemployed. The fears we raised at the time are unfortunately being realised. How do the Government expect to help people back into work when they could not do so during the time in which Ministers planned to provide more funding and support? I would welcome the Minister’s answer to that question. The people whose lives are currently more difficult and the communities that built up the Remploy factories that the Government closed will be grateful for the answer as well.

I remind the Minister that for nearly 70 years, under Labour and Conservative Governments, Remploy existed and flourished as a way to provide disabled people with work at good pay. For many people, over the years, working at the Remploy factories was the only time they got out of the house to socialise. They were their communities and their social lives and they gave them purpose in life. They helped them to be productive, active and, above all, happy.

Since the Government closed most of the factories, many of the disabled people who were employed by them have lost all that. They have lost their community and some have become isolated and, in the worst cases, depressed. We can argue back and forth on the economic reasons for that. I would say that closing the factories was wrong economically, but what is undeniable is that it was the wrong choice not only on a business level, but on a moral and social level. That has shown once and for all what the Government really think about the most vulnerable in society. For the Government to say that they are on their side is a joke that is not funny to those former Remploy workers. The sad thing today is that it is far too late to reopen any of those factories, but it is not too late for the Government to repair their mistake. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, but, of all the crass decisions, closing the Remploy factories was among the most cruel.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The thing is, we know about the Remploy workers who lost their jobs through out factory closures; we know nothing about those who lost their jobs under the previous Government. More of them lost their jobs under the previous Government, who did not track the progress of such employees, but we did so, which was welcome.

Let me say more about what the hon. Member for Llanelli was asking about. The other thing that we built into the package of support was a community support fund, providing grants to local voluntary sector and user-led organisations so that they could run job club projects to support disabled Remploy employees. In Wales, three local organisations have successfully delivered such community support fund projects, supporting 90 participants, 72 of whom have moved successfully into employment. In July I had the chance to visit one of those community support fund projects at the Lennox Partnership in Glasgow. I understand that 833 former Remploy employees have participated in such projects, which have enabled 352 people to take up new employment opportunities.

On the statistics, we can of course only track employees who have given us permission to do so—we cannot find out what is happening to employees if they did not wish us to know that. On the figures that we have, therefore, 774 of the 1,507 people who were made redundant are in work, which is more than half of them. At the end of October, to update the figures that the hon. Lady had, we had spent £5.7 million of the £8 million support fund; we expect the budget to be fully spent.

It is also worth mentioning Remploy employment services. When the right hon. Member for Neath made his statement, which I remember clearly, he said that the employment services part of the Remploy business had got some 5,000 people into work that year, which was the same as the total number employed in the factory network. The employment services business has continued to be successful. Since 2010, it has supported more than 100,000 disabled and disadvantaged people into work. As Members know, a commercial process is under way at the moment and on track to be completed by next March. The employment services business has been successful in getting a significant number of people into work. As shadow Minister, I had the opportunity to visit some of the successful people whom it had placed in work.

The hon. Member for Islwyn mentioned the consultation process and the time line. I deliberately read out the relevant section from the 2007 speech of the right hon. Member for Neath, so it is not as if the factories did not know that there was an issue. From 2007, he put on the table the fact that those factories that were not closed by the previous Labour Government had to hit what he described as stretching targets and a tough forward plan if they were to be successful. The idea that people only started thinking about such things when we set out our proposals is not true; those factories all knew that they were losing money, and that there was a significant challenge to get profitable work from 2007, or five years before we set out our proposals.

Furthermore, when the Sayce review was under way, there was a consultation on our process in which people could commit to things. That process was not as swift as the hon. Gentleman made out. There were two stages: in stage 1, the Government reduced its subsidy to Remploy from the beginning of the new financial year, so that we ceased funding factories that made significant losses and restricted funding to those factories that might have the prospect of a viable future. The Remploy board looked at all the factories and decided which ones had a reasonable chance of being successful. At the end of that early stage, therefore, some factories were closed.

In a further commercial process, the board worked with bidders and interested parties to see if there were other viable options. The fact is, however, there were no viable options for most of those businesses. Some of the businesses successfully exited Government control. At stage 1, the health care business in Chesterfield and the filters business in Barrow successfully moved into the private sector, and the employees there have ongoing employment. At the end of stage 2 of the commercial process, three businesses successfully exited Government control, completing the process.

A reasonable chance was given to those businesses that had a reasonable prospect of being successful, but in the commercial judgment of the board some businesses simply did not have a viable future. That is why the decision to close them was taken at that time.

[Chris Evans]

Did the Secretary of State not rub salt into the wounds when he commented that workers at Remploy were not doing real jobs, but only making a cup of coffee? Will the Minister condemn those comments as crass, out of date and offensive to so many Remploy workers throughout the country?