Oral Answers to Questions

David Evennett Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let me say first that the hon. Gentleman clearly never read the speech that I made, and secondly that I defend my comments in relation to the country as a whole in the wake of the terrible scenes that we saw last summer. That issue is one reason why we must focus on youth unemployment, why we are investing so much money in tackling it, and why it is at the top of the Government’s list of priorities. It is just a shame that the last Government failed to deal with the problem in good times, when it started to become an issue after 2004.

[Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

Youth unemployment is far too high. I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s youth contract proposals, but does he agree that basic skills and qualifications are also vital to ensuring that young unemployed people obtain jobs?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have introduced skills conditionality in Jobcentre Plus, and have also increased the flexibilities available to our skills providers to ensure that when a young person who is out of work has a skills gap, we can refer him or her to a training course immediately to ensure that that gap is filled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The only group that is in chaos is the Opposition. First, they have completely failed to admit and recognise that they left this economy in a desperate state. Secondly, they said that they supported key measures in the Welfare Reform Bill but have never voted for them. They also voted against some of their own measures, which we carried through in our Bill. The reality is that the right hon. Gentleman’s economics do not add up: going on a spending spree, spending £150 billion on benefits and achieving nothing is a failure.

[Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

T2. Will my right hon. Friend advise us what steps he is taking to ensure that benefit fraud is reduced?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

We have a whole series of measures. We recently introduced a new fraud and error strategy, which is already having some success. Future fraud will be reduced now, and agreed by the Office for Budget Responsibility in a sense, but we will reduce future fraud right now by £237 million. The plan and target is for us to reduce it by about £1.4 billion by March 2015. These are major measures over and above what we were left by the Opposition, who seemed quite content to watch fraud and error spiral out of control.