Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

There have been a range of estimates due to the considerable challenges in verifying data. What I would say is that our priority has been to protect as many businesses and jobs throughout with this intervention. We have always considered the fraud risks and the need to maintain a sense that the loans need to be paid back, but the Cabinet Office and the British Business Bank are continuing to work on that mitigation strategy, where we have a mandatory system to detect multiple applications. The default risk is an evolving picture that we will keep very close to.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

What recent financial support his Department has provided to the aviation sector; and if he will make a statement.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

It is great to see you in the Chair, Mr Speaker. I thank my right hon. Friend for his very constructive engagement with the Government on this important issue. The Government have recently announced, as he will be aware, a package of financial support for English airports and ground handlers. This support, which will shore up jobs and reinforce local economies, will be equivalent to the business rates liabilities of each business up to a maximum of £8 million per site. It has been warmly welcomed by the Airport Operators Association.

[Chris Grayling]

I thank the Minister for that additional support for regional airports, which is very welcome, but the steps taken by the Government generally to move a small distance towards reopening the aviation sector last week go nowhere near what is needed. We face a situation in January when the Brexit transition period will be open, but our principal airports and our principal aviation links to key business centres around the world will effectively still be closed. I urge the Chancellor and the Minister to use every influence they have in government to get that dealt with and at least to get airport testing and what is necessary available on those key strategic routes.

[Jesse Norman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on testing. As he will be aware, the “test to release” regime combines a much shorter self-isolation period with a real focus on public health. As he will also know from the global travel taskforce report, we as a country are continuing to explore pre-departure testing with partner countries on a bilateral basis, including different models by which that might be delivered.

Areas with Additional Public Health Restrictions: Economic Support

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady says that she seeks targeted measures, but then seems to ignore the £1.57 billion that the Chancellor announced for the arts—exactly the sort of targeted package that she was referring to. She then says that that is not enough, but it is unclear how long the SNP would want to extend schemes such as the furlough, how targeted that would be on specific sectors and what that would mean for the supply chains for those sectors. We think that it is right to be honest with the British public and ensure that we target support beyond the eight months of the furlough, in the way that the Chancellor set out, with the job support scheme and the extension of the self-employed income support scheme.

On certainty of funding for the Scottish Government, I have had regular discussions with the Scottish Finance Secretary. I would have welcomed the hon. Lady’s acknowledgement that we had done something unprecedented in guaranteeing the Barnett consequentials in order—as the Scottish Government had requested, and responding to their wishes—to give them confidence in the funding pipeline. That had not been done before. The Government did it to give the Scottish Government confidence on the Barnett consequentials. An acknowledgement by the hon. Lady of that point would have been welcome.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

Although I am clear that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Treasury have done a Herculaen job in bringing forward schemes to support jobs in the economy, like the Chair of the Treasury Committee, I remain concerned about those sectors that are unable to operate because of Government restrictions. I cite particularly the events industry and our aviation sector—I think especially of the regional airports, which will be affected by regional restrictions. May I ask my right hon. Friend to look with colleagues across Government at ways in which we can get those sectors at least partially working again, with proper social distancing rules? I cannot believe that it is not possible to do that. If it is possible to go to a supermarket, surely it is possible to have airport testing, and socially distanced trade shows and similar to get some of those sectors moving again.

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend is right that it is important, as we live with the virus and accept that it will be with us for longer, that we constantly learn from that and see what lessons there can be, not just in terms of, for example, regional air travel, but how that reads across into other matters such as non-pharmaceutical interventions. My right hon. Friend’s point is exactly why the Chancellor said yesterday that he will keep listening and striving to be creative. His track record has demonstrated that. I look forward to working with my right hon. Friend as we learn those lessons.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

There is no doubt that the spring and early summer of 2020 will be forever remembered as one of the most testing periods in our nation’s post-war history. Covid-19 is both a health crisis and an economic crisis. It has tested the public and private sectors in equal measure, just has it has tested the population as a whole. But the virus has been brought to heel, and thanks to our collective efforts we are now in a position where it is safe to reopen our economy.

From the outset of this crisis, the Government have sought to protect business, jobs and incomes. The coronavirus jobs retention scheme and self-employment income support scheme have between them preserved millions of livelihoods through the lockdown. Meanwhile, our VAT deferrals and business rates reliefs, alongside the coronavirus business interruption loans and bounce-back loan scheme, have carried many businesses through the hardest months, so that they now have a fighting chance to recover.

In the autumn, the Government will bring forward a Budget and a spending review that will set out a longer-term strategy for the United Kingdom’s economic recovery.

However, this pandemic is not yet over. Even as we step out of lockdown, a great deal of disruption and uncertainty remains. Many businesses have yet to reopen their doors. Up and down the country, people are worried about whether their jobs will be secure when they return to work, and that is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the House on Wednesday to set out the Government’s plan for jobs. As a first step, the Government are introducing a one-off job retention bonus of £1,000, available to employers for each furloughed employee who is still employed as of 31 January next year.

There will also be new, high-quality jobs for hundreds of thousands of young kick-starters. We will invest £1 billion to double the number of work coaches and support the unemployed. There will be more apprenticeships, traineeships and skills funding, and we will bring forward £8.6 billion of investment in our public services and infrastructure to trigger new job creation projects around the country. However, we know that some sectors of the economy have been hit particularly hard, and that is why the Government will support the hospitality and tourism sectors by cutting VAT on food, accommodation and attractions from 20% to just 5% for the next six months. It is why the Government have put in place a £1.57 billion rescue package for theatres, museums and other cultural industries, in recognition of the 700,000 people employed in those sectors and to safeguard the incalculable contribution they make to our national life.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend and his colleagues on the Treasury Bench for what I think has been an exemplary response to an unprecedented crisis? He describes the challenges that still remain in the economy. Many people still face tough times, particularly in the events sector, where businesses remain as yet unopened. Many of the people who work in the events and entertainment sector have not, for various reasons to do with their employment or tax status, been able to take advantage of the schemes we have seen over the past few months. Will my hon. Friend, together with his Treasury colleagues, look at whether there are additional things we can do to support those sectors and those people in the months ahead, because for them times are still tough?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind remarks. There is more work to be done, and I acknowledge the challenges faced by different industries in different ways. We will continue to look very carefully at further interventions that we could make and shall make in the Budget later this year.

I turn to the housing market, which is another example of a sector that has experienced considerable disruption and which brings me to the subject of this Bill. The Government’s plan for jobs will support the construction sector by injecting new confidence and certainty into the housing market. It will do so by ensuring that anyone buying a main home for under £500,000 before the end of March next year will pay no stamp duty whatever.

A thriving housing market is critical for growth and jobs in this country. Most obviously, a healthy labour market relies on people being able to move home to be closer to the jobs that match their skills, but the building industry is itself a major contributor to jobs and prosperity in the country, adding £39 billion a year to the UK economy. House building alone supports up to three quarters of a million jobs, and let us not forget the many related sectors that benefit from property transactions: estate agents, removal companies, furniture retailers, DIY stores, self-employed decorators and so forth. The lockdown sadly brought much of that trade to a juddering halt.

Rightmove estimates that 175,000 sellers were prevented from coming to the market between March and May this year. Meanwhile, HMRC data shows that residential property transactions in May were about 50% lower than the same month last year. For the first time in eight years, house prices have fallen.

Economic Update

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that during the transition period this year we are still constrained, but he can rest assured that from next year, when we have our full freedom, we can take advantage of all these things and ensure that our local economies benefit as they should.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s announcements on employment programmes. Jobs are vital going forward and this is exactly the right thing to do. I am particularly pleased to see the expansion of the sector-based work academies—one of the programmes we launched when I was Employment Minister 10 years ago. I can assure the Chancellor that we do not need to learn too many lessons from the Opposition, given our record on employment in the period up to the crisis, but I am concerned about one group on the jobs front: those in the aerospace and aviation sectors. Will he keep them firmly in mind and perhaps look at whether aviation could be included in the VAT reductions, or look at other measures to support a sector that is vital to our economy but has been very badly affected?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend is right about the difficulties facing the aviation and aerospace industries, and of course I will keep them very much uppermost in my mind as we go through the next few months. More generally, I pay tribute to the work that he did when he had those briefs. He knows at first hand what it takes to get unemployment down, get people into work and give them hope and opportunity. I hope that we can build on the success that he had, because we will absolutely need to deliver for our young people in the coming months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I am glad that the announcement we made yesterday was warmly welcomed across the cultural sector, by institutions large and small. I can assure the hon. Lady that the support package is not just for large institutions; it will find its way to all our local cultural institutions that play such an important part in our local communities. The Culture Secretary and his team will be here just after Question Time to answer further questions.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I thank the Chancellor for yesterday’s welcome announcement, but will he bear in mind the freelancers and those in other forms of employment in the sector who continue to struggle as he plans for tomorrow’s statement and beyond? We also need to move ahead with a green recovery, so will he consider providing additional incentives to develop hydrogen infrastructure in this country? I do not believe that we can achieve our emissions objectives with battery technology alone; we will need hydrogen vehicles as well. The Government really need to do a lot to encourage the development of such infrastructure

[Rishi Sunak]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend that we should put reaching our net zero commitments at the heart of our recovery. He will have heard our recent announcement about green homes grants, which shows our commitment in this area. I know that he has a lot of experience in hydrogen transportation, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts on that so that they can be incorporated into our future plan.

Covid-19

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]]

I will hit a different tone to start. I want to congratulate the Chancellor on his rapid actions to underpin employment across our economy and to support the worst-affected businesses. It was a huge package delivered very quickly and very necessarily.

It is also true, however, that there are a number of businesses that are not formally required to close but which have been unable to continue trading because of social distancing guidelines set out by their professional bodies or regulators. This is despite the fact that they are formally listed by the core Government rules as being able to continue to trade. Dentists, vets, physiotherapists and many similar professions have seen all their income disappear. I ask the Government to ensure that local authorities have complete discretion over the remaining allocated funds for business support to target such individual businesses that may not fit the textbook but have been particularly badly affected. In addition, there are self-employed groups, including the directors of small companies and those on short-term PAYE contracts, for example, in the media and entertainment industries, for whom the impact of the virus will be long-lasting. Will the Government therefore consider whether there are any other ways of easing the impact on them?

I am concerned that many of the professional bodies and agencies putting the overall principles of the lockdown into guidance for businesses have erred heavily—and, to be honest, sometimes unnecessarily—on the side of caution in drawing up those guidelines. That has an impact on business, the income of professionals and employment. For example, why can local vets not carry on working as normal, with PPE, as long as pet owners socially distance while they wait for their pets? If emergency physiotherapy and dentistry is allowed with appropriate protections, why can routine work not start again? One example I came across in the past few days is that dog walking businesses are having to stop their work because for safety reasons the guidance does not allow dogs from different households to be mixed; the dogs in the park on a Saturday have not quite worked out the need for social distance between households. People are losing their livelihoods because of that. We need common sense, not excessive risk aversion.

From an international perspective, we already know the possible link between the virus and the trade in wildlife. We also know that much of that trade is illegal, shipping animals such as pangolins from other parts of the world to wet markets in Asia. This is not the first time that a virus is suspected to have made the jump between animals and human beings in the environment of wet markets. This really has to be the moment in which there is a concerted international effort to bring to an end that illegal trade, and to bring to an end the practice of wet markets, which have potentially such significant impacts on the health of the humans who use those markets and, as we now see, around the world.

There is another issue. With tourism around the world on lockdown, this is also a time when conservation in Africa and the battle against that illegal wildlife trade faces an existential crisis, leaving a gaping hole for poachers and illegal traders. I urge the Government to channel more of our international aid budget to support vital conservation projects, in particular projects that protect species from poaching, and defend the species that are most at risk from the collapse of local economies in Africa.

These are momentous times. I pay a huge tribute to the key workers in my constituency, particularly at Epsom Hospital, who have done such an incredible job in the past few weeks. I think the Government should take credit for much of what they have done. There are challenges, there are things we will not get right and there is more to do, but we have to win through, get our economy back on the road and defeat the virus.

Budget Resolutions

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

Inevitably, the debate tonight has been overshadowed by the statement we have heard. This should be a moment for us all to reflect on the huge challenge we face, and above all, on the health of our nation. I particularly pay tribute to the staff at Epsom Hospital in my constituency, who are already working hard and dealing with the most challenging of situations, but also with the tragic loss of two lives in the last few days. This team of people constantly work hard for our community and face enormous challenges, and I pay enormous tribute to them. Indeed, I pay tribute to all of the health service workers who serve my constituency in the primary care sector and in the community care sector. We are going to owe those people an awful lot in the weeks ahead.

I also pay tribute to the teams of volunteers coming forward in my constituency and adjoining areas to offer support in particular to the elderly, who are going to face a very difficult few weeks, as we heard from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care this afternoon. I pay tribute particularly to Paul Baker, a man from just down the road in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). In the last four or five days, he has built a team of volunteers to help deliver support to the elderly as they need it in the coming weeks, and I fear a lot of support and help is going to be needed. We are going to owe an awful lot to the health service workers and to the volunteers who will be, and indeed are already, making a difference in the weeks ahead.

However, this is a Budget debate and it is a debate about our economy. The other group we must be very mindful of today are the self-employed and those who run small businesses. They were already facing a tough enough situation in the last few days, but for them today’s announcement will have come as a bucket of the proverbial. Their lives will be immensely difficult. The Budget contained a number of important provisions that I strongly welcome, such as measures on business rates, or additional support to be channelled through local authorities. There has been a lot of debate about whether we should get rid of or continue the fuel duty freeze, but right now, keeping fuel prices as low as possible is enormously important to this country’s self-employed, as they seek to keep their businesses afloat in the weeks ahead. It is inevitable that the Treasury and Chancellor will have to consider further measures to support those groups.

There are families tonight whose income comes entirely from self-employment, and they are asking how they will pay the bills in the weeks and months ahead. I echo those who say that we must consider every possible way to provide support for those people as we go forward. This is a critical moment for our nation and economy, and I welcome the fact that the Chancellor has chosen to make a large injection of cash into the economy, and to back that up with a huge investment programme for the years ahead. We will need all that to get through the challenges we now face, and we must take innovative steps to help those most affected. Above all, we must get this country, and our economy, through this. We must save lives, ensure that we rebuild prosperity for the future, and move on from what I fear will be a difficult time in our history.

Alongside that we must meet other challenges. I welcome measures in the Budget that encourage motorists to move away from conventional petrol and diesel vehicles, as well as incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. I hope that we also build hydrogen into the mix for the future, as we will need it. Electric traction does not yet work for heavier vehicles, and hydrogen is an important part of that future. I also add a caveat. There is a lot of talk about going as fast as we possibly can to make the transition to a greener vehicle fleet, and I endorse that ambition. However, we can go only as fast as the technology will allow us, and if we seek to go faster, we will end up doing damage to our society and economy. We cannot transform technology any faster than it is available to be transformed, and particularly in the wake of the current situation, we must also protect the future jobs of those who work in the automotive sector.

It was right for the Budget to postpone the reduction in corporation tax and put that money into the health service, and today’s statement has shown how important it is for the health service to receive that additional resource—and more—in the weeks ahead. We must also remember the benefits of being a low-tax economy. I was employment Minister in 2010 when unemployment was 2.6 million and rising. A decade later, unemployment is a fraction of what it was then, and all through those years I was convinced that one reason for that reduction was because we built a highly competitive tax regime for business, and for investors who sought to come to this country. When we have come through the current troubles and set our economy back on a path to the future, we should not forget that lesson. If we are a competitive place to do business, that means jobs and prosperity for our people, and we will keep unemployment low.

I regard the reduction in unemployment as one of this Government’s great achievements of the past 10 years, and despite the turbulent times that lie ahead, I want to see that achievement solidified for the future. We will do that by ensuring that this country is a great place to do business in, and we must not lose track of that as we take what might be difficult decisions in the weeks and months ahead.

Above all else, this Budget was a stepping stone towards dealing with the challenges we face. I have no doubt that more measures will need to be taken—we have seen the central banks step forward to inject capital into the economy as support for businesses and the rest—and I suspect we will have to do more. Above all, we must do enough to protect the lives of our people, and put this country back on the path to prosperity after a difficult period economically. The Budget was a step in the right direction, but we have big challenges ahead, and we must all live up to them.

Points of Order

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Harper)]

indicated assent.

[Chris Grayling]

indicated assent.

[Mr Speaker]

Nods of assent from the Government Chief Whip and the Leader of the House suggest that that is so. [Interruption.] Order; I am trying to help the House. If that is so, that is welcome.

On the subject of amendments, perhaps I can say to the House that if amendments are tabled today, presumably by Members who have seen the text of the motion, those amendments will be on the Order Paper tomorrow. Therefore, they will not be manuscript amendments. However, it is within the discretion of the Chair to consider manuscript amendments. Colleagues who have been in this House for any length of time will know that this Speaker has regularly done so, and if necessary I will be ready to do so again.

It is obviously desirable, not least in the light of what the Leader of the House said about having undertaken widespread consultation with a view to trying to put together a motion that would command widespread agreement, that the motion itself, when decided upon and its text finalised, should have been formally given at the very least to the official Opposition. I assume that was done. [Interruption.] Well, may I say that I think that it would be desirable for that to be done, and it would be entirely consistent with the words the Leader of the House uttered about widespread consultation? If it has not happened, may I say that it would now be desirable for it to happen?

Beyond that, all I can really say is this. The Leader of the House made the point that the one-day debate stretching over 10 and a half hours would represent a time allocation broadly equivalent to two full days on Wednesday and Thursday. I know some people like to be very precise about these matters, and my mental arithmetic tells me that if we have a full day’s debate on a Wednesday and a full day’s debate on a Thursday, and bearing in mind that we have business questions on a Thursday, that would amount to an allocation of time of I think 12 hours—10 and a half is being allocated—and that if it were a Monday and a Tuesday and there were two full days’ debate without interruption by urgent questions or statements, that would amount to 13 hours of debate. So to be absolutely correct about this, it is not two full days’ debate in one—that is not true—but it is considerably more than one and a half. It is also perfectly reasonable—this is a political point for the Leader of the House to make; it is not a matter for the Chair—to say that the time allocation is somewhat greater than has been the case in the past.

I am trying to be completely fair-minded about this. I respect what the Leader of the House has said, and there is some considerable agreement with what he has said, but I recognise that there is some unhappiness. I think the best thing at this stage on matters of procedure—we have the rest of the day available—is to try to maximise buy-in to the procedure and to minimise dissent. Let me try to look at it from the vantage point of members of the public. I think that is what responsible members of the public would expect responsible Members of Parliament to do. I hope that is helpful.

Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is timely that I follow the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who lamented the increase in youth unemployment in his constituency, which is less than half the 1,305 people aged 24 and under claiming jobseeker’s allowance in my constituency—an increase of 12.5% on the same time last year.

In December 2011, 420 jobs were advertised in jobcentres in Hackney, which equates to around 14 claimants per vacancy. Young people who are just leaving school or college are competing for those jobs against people who have work experience on their CV, which is one reason why I lament some of the changes this Government have introduced—getting that experience is crucial to helping people to get on their career path.

Hackney is a very young borough—around a third of Hackney residents are under the age of 24—which means that youth unemployment is a particularly striking and important issue in my constituency. The percentage of 18 to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed for six months in Hackney is now higher than the national and London averages. In December 2011, 2.1% of young people in Hackney had been unemployed for six months, compared with 1.5% in London and 0.9% nationally. In Hackney, 1.2% young people were unemployed for more than 12 months, compared with 0.5% in London and 0.6% nationally. One of my concerns is that we are seeing a growing trend of longer-term unemployment for young people. They might be small in number, but the trend is in the wrong direction.

It is important that we hear from young people themselves. I have been talking to providers of the Work programme in my constituency that work with some of the hardest-to-reach people. The private companies take the easier-to-place people and give specialist agencies and organisations the harder-to-reach ones. Janet Usoro, the student contact co-ordinator at East London Advanced Technology Training, which is a third sector IT training company for young people based in my constituency, told me of a young man who comes from a troubled background. His mother has mental health issues and his father is unknown to him, and he had difficulties in the past with drugs that resulted in a prison sentence.

This young man decided to get his life back on the straight and narrow and at ELATT has achieved NVQ levels 1 and 2 in IT networking. He is progressing through level 3. He has gained confidence and found new personal self-discipline. He is on the right track, but with his background, his chosen career path will require a record of work experience and extra support, which, I worry, the Work programme is not entirely equipped to give him. I hope the Minister responds to that in his summing up.

Anthony Harmer, the chief executive of ELATT, tells me of his worries about long-term, sustainable funding for the high-level support work it does with such difficult-to-reach young people.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

As the hon. Lady has raised a specific point, may I put it to her that the Work programme providers have complete freedom to do what works to help people into work, including securing work experience places for them? It is my hope that the providers in her area find work experience places precisely for someone such as the young man she describes, even if they have not found work experience through the Government scheme or Jobcentre Plus.

[Meg Hillier]

If what the Minister says transpires, I will be a very happy Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch, but I am picking up on the ground that that is not happening in the way that it should be. The bulk of the business is going to private providers, for the easier-to-place people, and they are taking the money, but the harder-to-reach people are going to the voluntary providers, which are struggling to make the packages work because their funding is crumbs from the bigger table. There may be a structural issue, which I hope the Minister will watch closely as the programme is rolled out, because we do not yet know about the success of the Work programme. Ministers herald it as a success, yet we have seen no figures or results, for all the reasons that have been well rehearsed. This is an issue that the Minister, if he is serious about his job, needs to monitor.

In my area, the third sector agencies are picking up the harder-to-place young people, after what we might call cherry-picking. However, I am not trying to be political; I am concerned that those young people should get that work. Ian Ashman, the principal of Hackney community college, has similar stories to tell. For example, he has told me about Kevin, a 23-year-old father of two with a baby on the way who had an accident going to work one day and, as a result, lost his job. After 100 job applications, he has not been able to find another job. When it comes to full-time college courses, although the college has a good relationship with the local jobcentre, the employment advisers there do not know enough about what colleges can provide. As the Minister is probably aware, that concern was shared by 44% of colleges in a recent Association of Colleges survey. Full-time courses such as those provided by Hackney community college are not always appropriate for young people such as Kevin, because of the impact on their benefits. Indeed, there is an issue with young people wanting to progress and improve their lives, but often being unable to undertake the extra qualification or study that they need. Where do they go in the meantime? As we have heard, some of the apprenticeships on offer are not really true apprenticeships. I am all for more apprenticeships if they are real apprenticeships, but not if they amount to cheap, unpaid work experience.

Agencies, job brokers and colleges need long-term sustainable funding to help their work with the most difficult-to-reach people, which is something we need to look at. The young people in my constituency are not interested in party politicking; they want to know that there is a career path for them. We have seen huge improvements in schools in my constituency, with more than 84% at one school alone getting A* to C grades at GCSE, and seven young people placed at Cambridge, including one young woman who had a baby at 15 and is now at the university with her child. There is real opportunity and a real desire to achieve in Hackney. There is no poverty of ambition among the young people in my area. Most of all, however, we need to get those young people on pathways into jobs. We need work experience available, so that they can get the experience they need to compete in the job market. I want to see the unemployment levels in my constituency fall dramatically.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We have had a very good debate. In June last year, the Prime Minister told the House that cutting the deficit faster would revive private sector confidence. That was the basis of the strategy with which we were presented for private sector investment and jobs to surge. Tragically, that has not happened. The business confidence monitor from the Institute of Chartered Accountants says:

“UK Business confidence has collapsed”.

It says:

“Confidence has declined across all sectors and all regions.”

Nobody now claims that the coalition strategy is working to boost confidence. Confidence has evaporated, and the strategy has clearly not worked.

We are debating the consequences tonight: unemployment rocketing; youth unemployment of over 1 million, and becoming worse—the highest that it has ever been. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) drew attention to the growing sense of hopelessness and the long-term damage to our economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) pointed to the growth of long-term unemployment among young people as particularly damaging.

As a result of that failure, the Government have to spend a great deal more on benefits. It is worth comparing the latest forecast from the end of last year showing how much they intend to spend on benefits in the year after next with the forecast a year earlier. Projected benefit spending in the year after next has gone up by £5.4 billion. The overall estimate of borrowing has gone up by £158 billion—a figure at which the Chief Secretary to the Treasury balked at admitting. The Government are determined to press ahead with their version of the benefit cap, which the Department for Communities and Local Government says will add 20,000 to annual homelessness figures, with massive Exchequer costs. The ill-judged attack by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the bishops at the weekend has led to yet another defeat for him in the other place.

All along, we have been told that the solution to all these problems was the Work programme. Let me begin by welcoming the U-turn by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). I welcome his change of heart, because until now he has refused to allow Work programme providers to publish any data on their performance. Today, he has announced that he is going to change his policy.

[Chris Grayling]

rose—

[Stephen Timms]

Perhaps the Minister will tell us when the guidance to which he referred will be published.

[Chris Grayling]

I am a little puzzled. I could be wrong, but I thought I heard the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) say that the Labour party supported the benefit cap, but the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) has just said that they do not. Would he tell us which is right?

[Stephen Timms]

We do support the benefit cap. The version that the Minister is pressing through is, as the House of Lords has rightly pointed out, going to cause huge costs for the Exchequer. I hope that even now the Secretary of State will think again before returning to the House with the measure next week.

The Work programme was rushed, and badly prepared. As we pointed out at the time, there should have been a plan for transition to the new programme. There was no plan. We can glimpse how the Work programme has been going by looking at the number of people coming off benefit each month. The number plummeted last May, when the flexible new deal stopped, and it stayed low as the Work programme got going. I invite the Minister to compare the months after May with the same period the previous year, because he will see that poor Work programme performance resulted in 86,000 people not getting into work who should have done. That is probably a permanent unemployment rise. The damage will be with us for years.

The Government told us that the Work programme would enlist an army of voluntary organisations to give specialist help to jobseekers. To begin with, we were told that 508 voluntary sector organisations would be involved. By August, that number had fallen to 423. Next week the Government will count once again. Last week, apparently, at a crunch meeting, voluntary sector organisations told the Minister that they were being used as “bid candy” to win contracts. Some of them still have not had a single referral since the Work programme began last summer.

The “Open Public Services White Paper” promised, as I quoted to the Minister earlier:

“Providers of public services from all sectors will need to publish information on performance and user satisfaction.”

I welcome the Minister’s U-turn on performance. What about user satisfaction? Let me tell him about the satisfaction of one user, the father of a constituent of mine, who came to me to complain about his daughter’s experience on the Work programme. She received a letter referring her to mandatory work activity. It was completely incomprehensible; I will send the Minister a copy. She lives in my constituency in east London. The letter appeared to require her to report on an unspecified date to an address with a postcode in Sheffield, and the telephone number was given as 000. It was a shambles. It is no wonder the Work programme is not delivering and youth unemployment is rocketing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

Let me start by making it absolutely clear that tackling unemployment and youth unemployment is right at the top of the Government’s list of priorities. I share the frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) at some of the comments from Opposition Members. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, to whom I pay tribute, is firmly of the view that the decline in the teaching of history in this country is a lamentable failing in our education system, and we realise precisely why when we listen to the Opposition. They have forgotten the history not of 10 or 100 years ago, but of two years ago: the mess they left behind for us.

Someone listening to Opposition Members tonight might think that youth unemployment had been created in the past 18 months, but the truth is that when Labour left office 18 months ago youth unemployment stood at 940,000. It has since risen by 100,000, which we wish had not happened. Half of that increase has come from students in full-time education looking for part-time work. The Opposition talk about surging youth unemployment, and I get increasingly frustrated by their use of figures, because they keep up the spurious claim that long-term youth unemployment under this Government has rocketed, but that is utterly untrue. A like-for-like comparison that removes all of the ways in which they massage the figures reveals that long-term youth unemployment today is actually lower than it was two years ago. There is one other fact that they do not mention: fewer people in this country are on out-of-work benefits today than were at the time of the general election. Let us hear nothing about the failures of the past 18 months, and let us never forget the failings of 13 years of Labour government.

We have had a thoughtful debate and heard some sensible contributions, including those from my hon. Friends the Members for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), for Salisbury (John Glen), for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham). We have also had a snapshot of the past, present and future of the Labour party. On the future of the party, I must say that the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made some thoughtful contributions on things the Government might do, and I listened carefully to what she said. We also had a bit of a throwback from the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who talked about bankers’ bonuses while conveniently forgetting that the bankers’ bonus pool in the City of London was twice as big under Labour as it is today.

I was also struck by the lack of ambition among Labour Members. When they went through their plans yet again—we have to bear it in mind that the money from their proposed bankers’ bonus tax has been announced for nine different things so far; another bit of history they have conveniently forgotten—we realised that the reality is that they are talking about creating 100,000 places in a replacement for the future jobs fund. I see that as rather unambitious, because the package of support we have put together will help, and is helping, far more young people into employment.

We have a clear strategy to support the creation of jobs in the economy and provide help for those people, older and younger, who are looking for work. We have set out some of those measures. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury team set out in the autumn statement a range of proposals to do everything we can to stimulate and support the growth of business. I am particularly pleased that in the last quarter private sector employment in the economy increased at a time when we face huge economic challenges that were described recently by the Governor of the Bank of England as probably the most difficult in modern peace time history, if not ever. Yet against that background we are determined to give business every opportunity to grow and develop through investment in infrastructure, measures in the tax system and the measures we are taking to deregulate—for example, in relation to health and safety—in order to support business growth. There is no other way of securing the future of our work force or job creation in the economy.

We cannot go back to the uncertainty and instability under the previous Government and under the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who is chuntering away on the Front Bench and forgets the severe damage that he and his colleagues did to the economy when they were in office.

Alongside the work that we will do and are doing to ensure that business has the best possible opportunity to grow and to create jobs, however, we have put in place a package of support for the unemployed that I believe is more ambitious and more successful than anything that the previous Government did.

Let us start with our work experience scheme, which will double in size under the youth contract and is already helping large numbers of young people to move into work.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am sure the Minister agrees that work experience programmes should give people skills that they do not already have, and perhaps confidence if they have not worked for a long time, so why has it been made compulsory for people who have already done the work or had the training to go into jobs such as shelf-stacking, on which I know the Conservative party is so keen? Why is that relevant to people who already have such experience?

[Chris Grayling]

I simply cannot understand the view that Opposition Members have of our retail sector. Our larger retailers are national and international businesses, with hugely varied career opportunities for young people. The manager of a single supermarket can run a £100 million business, so let nobody say that giving an unemployed young person the opportunity to show to a supermarket chain their ability to contribute to that organisation is nothing but a possible footstone for a long-term career.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, because more than half the young people who are going through our work experience scheme are moving off benefits quickly afterwards. When we make a comparison with the future jobs fund, from which about half moved off benefits immediately afterwards, we find the total cost of that scheme was between £5,000 and £6,000 per placement, whereas the total cost of our work experience scheme—of achieving a similar result—is about £300 per placement. Which do Opposition Members think represents better value for the taxpayer?

Alongside that, we are also delivering 170,000 wage subsidies, through the youth contract, to employers who take on young people, and that is the big difference between our philosophy and that of the Opposition, who simply want to recreate another scheme with artificial, six-month job placements in the public or voluntary sectors. We are trying to create a path to a long-term career for young people. That is what the wage subsidies in the youth contract will do, and it is also why we have expanded by so many the number of available apprenticeships. They are not about short-term placements; they are about building long-term career opportunities. Since we took office, we have increased massively the availability of apprenticeships in the economy, precisely because we believe that our young people are best served by creating a path that they can follow to a long-term career opportunity.

The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) talked about the Work programme, which is providing much better and more intensive support for the long-term unemployed than previous schemes, and about the flexible new deal, which we inherited last year. Let me, however, give him some statistics about that. It cost the Department for Work and Pensions £770 million, and it achieved 50,000 job outcomes in six months—at a cost of £14,000 per job outcome. Does that represent good value for money or a programme worth keeping? Does anybody seriously believe that that programme had the effect he describes?

I am confident that, by contrast, the Work programme will deliver results because it is based on payment by results, and because we have created an environment in which the organisations, large and small, that are delivering the programme are paid only when they succeed in getting somebody into long-term employment. Having now been around the country and visited almost all the providers, I have seen a team of people who are motivated, determined and succeeding in getting the unemployed back to work. I meet people who have not worked for years but who have got back into employment, and people who did not believe they could get back into work but are getting back into employment.

When we publish the figures, and we will, I look forward to demonstrating that that approach makes a difference to the prospects of the long-term unemployed in this country—

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Main Question put accordingly.