Unemployment in Scotland

David Mundell Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Gemma Doyle]

As the hon. Gentleman has just come into the Chamber, I will make a wee bit of progress.

The UK Government did have a plan to help people back into jobs, but the Work programme is not working. In the great fanfare around its launch, we were promised a revolution in getting people back to work that would transform the way people were supported, reducing the benefits bill and getting people into jobs, while ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. What a joke—instead it has been a comprehensive failure. The 3.8% success rate in Scotland—I am looking at the success rate over 14 months—falls some way behind the Government’s minimum target. The success rate in West Dunbartonshire is 1.7%, which means that less than two of every 100 people on the programme get a job. That is a shocking statistic.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

I welcome the opportunity to debate the Work programme, but it is important that we do so on a factual basis. The hon. Lady is referring to outcomes in relation to the report on the Work programme, but that is not the same as people moving into work or off benefits. Therefore, if we are to have a debate about unemployment, that is what we should be discussing and not outcomes in terms of the Work programme report.

[Gemma Doyle]

We could have a debate about what outcomes mean, but for my constituents and people in Scotland, they mean getting a job and getting into work.

What is just as shocking is the Government’s estimate that if the Work programme did not even exist, five in every 100 people would be getting a job. In an astonishing act of irony, it is the first back-to-work programme where people are more likely to get a job if they are not on it.

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[David Mundell]

On that point, the hon. Lady may be aware that the Secretary of State has announced that there will be a Scottish Employability Forum, which will bring together the Scottish Secretary, the Scottish Government represented by John Swinney, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities represented by Councillor Harry McGuigan from North Lanarkshire council and a range of other stakeholders. That forum will address exactly the issues highlighted by her and the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle). It will ensure that the two Governments and local government, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire, actually work together; local government has an extremely important role. I therefore believe that there is significant progress.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I welcome what the Minister says. However, to pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire, for many people currently out of work, the issue is not employability, because they are employable and are desperate to be employed; the simple problem is that the jobs are not there.

To return to the figures, with some 366 people chasing every vacancy in East Ayrshire, one person gets the job, while the other 365 are employable, want to work and are desperate to get that start. They are desperate either to get their foot in the door by having a first job or to return to work to support their family. That has to be considered, and the question is how firms can be encouraged to take people on and to expand. There is still more that both the Scottish Government and the UK Government could do, and they should look to build on the successful companies that exist and, wherever possible, to maintain and save jobs. In that context, I hope that the Minister will offer his support for ways of helping to retain the jobs currently under threat in my constituency.

I have probably taken up my fair share of time. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I again make the plea that both Governments should recognise that this issue is about people’s real-life situations; it is not a political football to be battered back and forth.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. You are certainly the Member of Parliament my constituents most often ask me about, and I am sure they will be delighted to learn that you have chaired the debate today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing this important debate. Based on what has been said I feel that there might be little that we agree on, but I do agree on the importance of having a debate such as this here at Westminster, to focus on issues that are the responsibility of the UK Government, and also on the importance of Members from Scotland holding the Government to account for their policies and actions in Scotland.

I find it disappointing that the Scottish National party has not sought to contribute to this debate, other than through a few random interventions. I do not want to be in the position that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) spoke about, of blaming the other Government—the Government in Scotland—for everything that is going wrong, which would be to adopt the reality of Alex Salmond’s “plan McB”: to claim credit for everything that is good and to blame the Westminster Government for everything that is bad.

Opposition Members, other than the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, to be fair, chose to use their contributions to blame both Governments for everything that is happening. As usual—I had no expectation otherwise—they took no responsibility whatever for the catastrophic state in which they left the UK economy when they left office in 2010. Indeed, we may hear once and for all an apology from the shadow Chancellor today for the state of the economy at that time, which would be good.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I recognise that the Minister and his colleagues are very good at talking about the mess that they were left, but will he share with the Chamber what the black hole was? What was that debt? If we remove from that debt what was provided to support the banks and the UK economy, how big really was that black hole?

[David Mundell]

There was a black hole because, for a significant period of time, the previous Government were spending more than they brought in. That is the reality, and the hon. Gentleman cannot pretend otherwise. Today we have heard various versions of the plan Labour now has to turn the economy around, but the core of that plan remains more spending, more borrowing and more debt—exactly the same prescription that brought the country to its current state.

[Graeme Morrice]

Is it not the case that the current Government are borrowing far in excess of what they are spending? Indeed, based on their original projections, they are borrowing substantially more than they anticipated.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. We are getting into a debate on the economy, rather than on unemployment in Scotland. Can we keep to the subject of the debate?

[David Mundell]

Indeed. I will leave the economy to my colleague the Chancellor, who will no doubt respond to the exact issue raised by the hon. Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice).

Some important points have been raised, and hon. Members have taken the opportunity to highlight what is being done in their local authority areas. We have to recognise what an important role local government plays in taking forward the jobs agenda.

I am pleased to confirm the work of the Scottish Employability Forum. Although the title includes the word “employability,” the forum actually focuses on all employment issues, because as the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) made clear in an intervention, things are not working as well as they could be for the Scottish Government in their partnerships with both local government and the UK Government. In fact, people in the Work programme in Scotland are being refused training, which is a great concern to us all.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I thank the Minister for confirming that the Scottish Employability Forum will consider all aspects of employment. Will he give us further information on any specific actions that that forum will take? When will the forum report, and when will it make recommendations on its outcomes?

[David Mundell]

The forum will meet for the first time early in the new year, and its prime focus will be to co-ordinate the different interests and to ensure that there is a seamless programme of support for people looking for work, thereby ensuring that they are neither passed around nor a victim of conflicting agendas. The forum has an important role to play, because it is quite clear that we have to bring together more close working.

I am concerned about a couple of issues that were raised.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will the Minister give way?

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[David Mundell]

No, I want to deal with the issue of Jillian McGovern and address the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern) about the Department for Work and Pensions. I would be pleased to hear more about what did not happen in that regard, because I have a high regard for the DWP’s work in Scotland. Every single day in Scotland, the DWP deals with an average of 1,500 new job vacancies; conducts some 7,000 jobcentre adviser interviews; receives more than 82,000 searches for Jobcentre Plus job vacancies; and helps an average of more than 1,000 people move into work. The DWP is playing an important role, and if any Member has examples of that not working for their constituents, we want to know about them.

I have asked for a report on why Dundee city council appears at the very bottom of the report on the Work programme, and it is important to understand that, but I want to try to dispel two myths. The shadow Minister sought to perpetuate the myth that, somehow, the youth unemployment issues are a direct result of this Government’s policies. Youth unemployment is a serious issue about which we should all be concerned. As the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) has said, youth unemployment started to become a problem in this country in 2004; it is not a product of the current Government. We all have to do more to work with employers to encourage them to take on young people.

[Jim McGovern]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Mundell]

No, I want to conclude this point, because it is very important. Youth unemployment is a scourge, and we all have a part to play in dealing with it. There is a serious attitudinal problem among employers about taking on young people. They think that if they take on a young person—this is particularly the case with small and medium-sized businesses—that will create hassle and difficulty for them. We have to feed back to them that taking on a young person is a positive thing. We have to encourage employers to take a more positive attitude to bringing young people into work.

[Gemma Doyle]

I am conscious that the Minister does not have much time, but I am desperately worried that we are not getting to grips with the issues that have been raised this morning. He has been challenged directly about no Scotland Office Minister being involved in any of the key Cabinet Committees on the economy and welfare reform. Will he respond to that point? Will he give a commitment that he will make representations that a Scotland Office Minister should be involved in those Cabinet Committees?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady’s colleague, the shadow Secretary of State, has already written to the Secretary of State on those issues, and the shadow Secretary of State was given a full reply, which I am sure she will share with the hon. Lady.

I want to use my remaining time to respond to the issues raised about the Work programme. There has been a misrepresentation of it, which I hope is not deliberate—I am sure it is not just for the purposes of the template press releases that have been put out by the Labour party across Scotland. It is simply too early to judge whether the Work programme is succeeding against its objectives, because it is a two-year programme that has been running for just about a year.

“Outcomes” is a defined term in the report on the Work programme, and it means that a work provider has been paid for someone being in work for six months. It does not mean that those are the only people who have gone into work through the Work programme. In fact, the bulk of the people who are in the process are still on the programme, because they have not been able to complete the six-month period. There has been an attempt to distort the figures to decry the Work programme, and I would be disappointed if any Member present took any pleasure in the idea that the Work programme could somehow be described as a failure. It cannot, because it is not a failure. The figures are not available to make the sort of judgment that Opposition Members leapt to today.