Jobs and Social Security

David Lammy Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yet again, the right hon. Gentleman has defeated the first point that he made. In other words, the figures that he has produced in the motion are wrong and he has just proved it. [Interruption.] If he wants to listen, he might learn something. No wonder he ended up as the man who told us there was no money left—with his kind of arithmetic, I am surprised that there was anything left at all. The reality is that in a year—if we want six-month referrals—a number of people will not have been in the programme for six months. So 315,000 people—[Interruption.] I am simply saying to him that the reality exists. This programme is on track; it is the best programme; and it will be putting some of the most difficult people back into work. Let me just deal with another point, which is the one about unemployment.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I said that I was going to make a few points and then give way.

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[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way in a moment, but I said that I was going to make these points.

Labour’s policies then went on to try to hide the true scale of the problem, by automatically moving people off jobseeker’s allowance into training allowances or short-term jobs, thus breaking their claim just before they reached the 12-month point. The Opposition claim today that long-term unemployment is up by more than 200,000 since the Work programme began, but in actual fact, comparing like for like, which means counting all those who were previously hidden on training allowances and other support, the total number on jobseeker’s allowance is about the same as it was at the start of the Work programme, so that point is complete nonsense.

[Mr Lammy]

Can the Secretary of State confirm that, on his figures, he is talking about 4.5%, which is still below the dead-weight of 5%—in other words, the situation if he did nothing—and his target of 5.5%? Is it 4.5% on his figures? If I am wrong, what is it?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, the figures we stand by are those we published yesterday. The point that I was making today to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill—[Interruption.] No, actually the figure would be more than 5%, but I am not claiming that. What I am saying is that we stand by the figures that we published yesterday, and I believe we are on track. The point I was making, legitimately, is that the right hon. Gentleman spent his time deducting some numbers from one bit and adding them into another to create some bogus figure that two in every 100 people were found sustainable jobs. That is complete nonsense.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and to follow my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). There are fewer and fewer Members of Parliament who come from their constituencies, and many people will look on her maiden speech with tremendous pride. You will be familiar with the St Pauls area of Bristol, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you will know that there is great affinity between areas such as Moss Side, St Pauls and, indeed, Tottenham.

Last week, together with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), I held an event with chief executives from the voluntary sector in north London. It was a jobs summit in which the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Haringey and Enfield came together to discuss the urgent issue of unemployment in our areas, what we could do and what the voluntary sector could do and is doing. We talked, for example, about the Haringey jobs fund, where Haringey council itself is providing apprenticeships and subsidising jobs in a similar way to the future jobs fund that we ran when we were in government.

We also got down to neighbourhood level and looked at what Waltham Forest is doing with its Going the Distance initiative with problem families in that borough, working with families whose young people are caught up in gang violence. The aim is not just to deal with former gang members, but to help parents into employment in such communities.

We were conscious when we got together that we were meeting in Tottenham town hall which, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, had emblazoned on the front the figures for unemployment in my constituency. It is important to recognise when we have these debates in the House that there are many constituencies around the country that have seen successive appalling levels of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, over many generations. I recall the deep recessions of the early 1980s and the recessions of the early 1990s that scarred so many in the community in Tottenham and in many communities across London.

I do not want to doubt the sincerity of Members on the Government Benches, who must recognise the urgency of youth unemployment. I particularly do not want to doubt it because I have worked cross-party with the Secretary of State on these issues, but we must be very concerned that, since the Work programme began, the figure for long-term unemployment in London has risen by 30,000. If we look at young people in London, the figure has risen by 7,000. That is an increase of 420% since the Work programme began in our city. My constituency is one of those that still has high unemployment, fluctuating between eighth and ninth in the country. It is deeply unsatisfactory that the Work programme has benefited only 110 people in Tottenham, or 2.7%.

We cannot afford to have young people long-term unemployed, and often their parents long-term unemployed, in a constituency such as mine. We should take no great comfort from the zero-hour contracts that are being handed out, which do not allow people to budget for next week, for the future or for their benefits. That is causing chaos and hardship in our communities. We should not take comfort either from apprenticeship figures that are massaged by the number of people over 25 who are put on to apprenticeships.

When we look at the numbers, we see that a fifth of apprenticeships are in the retail sector, a third are in administration, and some do not last longer than 15 weeks or so. Are they really the apprenticeships that we understood them to be? The number of apprenticeships in London in construction is falling. The number in engineering is disappearing. Much of this goes to the heart of what growth is meant to be in our economy, and we should not take great comfort from the fact that we are, in effect, asking the retail sector to take up the slack because we are not doing the hard work to identify where growth is to come from in Britain.

We should also be deeply concerned about the number of people who are effectively the working poor—6 million at the last count, who are working, often on those zero-hour contracts, often in temporary or casual employment, who are not able to make their way and certainly do not have a living wage to provide for their family.

Two and a half years into this Government, we now have some data coming forward, and Opposition Members are genuinely concerned, because the scars are deep, and I say that as an MP who has seen those scars over successive generations. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central, who made her maiden speech, will be all too aware of the repercussions in Moss Side if we do not get this right on this attempt.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—