Jobcentre Closures

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Consistency never was the Conservative party’s strongest suit, but there is a glaring hypocrisy in the fact that the Government are signposting people to jobcentres as they slash services up and down the United Kingdom.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has just spoken about consistency. Does he agree that, when the Government announced these closures, they said that the changes would offer a more efficient service and deliver good value for the taxpayer? If we are being consistent, does he agree that that is the exact same argument that the SNP Scottish Government and the Scottish Police Authority are using for their plans to close 58 police stations across Scotland?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Funnily enough, no, I do not. On consistency—I am not sure whether there are any jobcentres closing in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but I know that none is closing in the Minister’s constituency—where the closures are going to happen, we need evidence of whether they will truly deliver better value for money and a better service, both of which we would all be in favour of. We need to see the evidence that will lead us to that conclusion, including the quality impact assessments and the number of disabled people using each and every service. This service is not comparable with police stations, which are not there to serve the public in the same way. I am happy to have a debate any time on police stations in Scotland, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I am sure that you would not want me to deviate too far from the jobcentre closure title that we see on the annunciator.

Let me draw my remarks to a close. The Government managed an incredible achievement when they announced the closure plans. They managed to unite—not just in Glasgow, but right across Scotland—the Scottish National party, the Scottish Labour party, the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church in Scotland, all the trade unions and people of other parties and of no party against this very plan. We could see that it was ill-thought out, that decisions had been taken not because of the evidence that was before the Government but in spite of the evidence, and they went to great pains not to share much of that or include people in the decisions that were being made about them. I do not know how well versed the Minister is in Scottish politics, but to cause that level of unity is some feat.

When the Minister gets to his feet, I want him to tell us a bit more about the thinking behind this plan. I want to hear about the evidence and the equality impact assessments. I want to hear how the Government intend to review each closure over the next 12 months, as they start to happen right now, to make sure that people are well served and, as the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) points out, that value for money is served. There must be value for money not just for the taxpayer, but for the people using the service. In some cases, people are doing round trips of up to 8 miles just to get to their local jobcentre. What about value for money for them and the impact that it has on them? When they go to claim their benefits, more and more of that money is used just to get to the jobcentre, when they used to be able to use a local service.

Will the Minister guarantee that when people are late for appointments, as a result of the closures, they will not be sanctioned? I am sure that he agrees that that would be completely wrong, though, like other Members, I have my doubts about that. I want to hear what the Minister intends to do to measure the impact particularly on disabled people as the closure programme gets into full swing. I want to hear about the options for reviewing the system should it be found that the evidence tells us that, in fact, the decision that has been taken has proven to be the wrong one. I understand that this comes on the back of the whole Telereal Trillium contract and the option to get out after 20 years and all the rest of it, but this has to be about more than spreadsheets and contracts. There are some desperately vulnerable people who rely on these services, some desperately vulnerable people who are let down by these decisions and some desperately vulnerable people who need to be better served by this Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important contribution, which leads back to the point I was making about the geographical issues that people face, particularly in the north and east of Glasgow. There are structural issues. The hon. Member for Glasgow East made the point that gangland issues are a deterrent for people who want to move around. There are structural issues with public transport, and there is also the general fragmentation of the built environment in that part of the city. None of that has been taken into consideration in the assessment process, and I urge the Minister to apply a reasonable approach to that issue when considering the mitigation of these jobcentre closures.

[Douglas Ross]

I do not want to dwell too much on the geography aspect, because in a constituency such as Moray, 8 miles would be an incredibly short distance for some of my constituents to travel to go to get to a jobcentre. I would have liked to have intervened a little earlier when the hon. Gentleman was talking about the problems that will be caused. I visited my local jobcentre in Elgin just a couple of weeks ago, and the staff there go above and beyond to try to accommodate every single person who comes through the door. So, yes, there are issues with getting to and from the proposed jobcentres, given the closures, but I think that all Members can agree that once they get there, people across Glasgow, Scotland and the UK get a great service from jobcentre staff.

[Mr Sweeney]

I speak for many members of DWP staff in these jobcentres—including members of my own family—and members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents them, and those workers are viscerally against this rationalisation programme. Although they do their best to help people, they are stuck in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Rigid decision-making processes mean that they have to deliver services that they would rather not deliver, but they are forced by policy to do so on pain of disciplinary action. Not only that, but the capacity to help people is severely limited by the huge demand for services in the ever-more depleted number of jobcentres. Staff are physically unable to provide the level of service and interface that they might otherwise offer, such as close coaching in making a universal credit application online. Those things are simply not available.

The alternative is to access Citizens Advice. We have heard about the closure of citizens advice bureaux, and about the dislocation between Citizens Advice and jobcentres. That will only add to the complexity that people face. The Minister has not taken that major issue into consideration.

I think that we are all here in a spirit of making constructive efforts to mitigate the problems faced by our constituents, and I would hope that the Minister approaches the debate in the same spirit. To give a good example of that, I was looking, as a new Member of Parliament, at where to locate my constituency office. I have picked a location on Saracen Street in Possilpark, which is right next to Maryhill Road, where the jobcentre has recently closed, and near to where the citizens advice bureau has recently closed on Saracen Street. I am occupying a building that is only one fifth occupied, but it is currently paid for by Glasgow City Council, Jobs & Business Glasgow and Skills Development Scotland. Why on earth has the Minister not engaged with those agencies to say, “Look, we have a cost-neutral option for providing a jobcentre service in that building”? That could actually be done with the same overhead as would be involved in rationalising provision into a smaller footprint. That is a ready-made opportunity I have observed in the last few months as a Member of Parliament, having looked at these things on the ground.

Why does the Minister not engage with that opportunity, or look at opportunities with housing associations, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East mentioned, or other agencies in Glasgow that could offer the possibility of providing the same service footprint within buildings that are already paid for by the public sector? That would be a cost-neutral option. There are options out there to mitigate this. I urge the Minister to take a fresh approach and look at these ideal opportunities to maintain the footprint of the service across Glasgow. It is out there for the taking, so I urge the Minister to do it.

There is a major issue in Glasgow North East and across the adjacent Glasgow constituencies. We have a structural unemployment issue. Universal credit will hit my constituency later this year, and I can see the demand for jobcentres only increasing. The IT exclusion faced by my constituents is disproportionately higher than in other parts of the UK, with Citizens Advice estimating that 39% of people have never accessed a computer or do not have access to a computer. Library services are increasingly constrained, as is the ability to offer such services to constituents, and the footprint of jobcentres is reducing.

We can see the clear outcome of that situation: pushing people who are already marginalised—the people we need to coach into becoming participants in our society and back into being productive members of it—further to the margins of society. That is simply unacceptable. We are all here in the spirit of trying to engage our citizens, and to make them productive and feel that they are engaged and involved in our society. I am sure that we all agree on that at least, but by penalising them and pushing them further away, how on earth are we going to mitigate the problem?

I urge the Minister to approach this debate in the spirit in which we have engaged with it. We have offered meaningful and proactive options to mitigate the jobcentre rationalisation in Glasgow and the Greater Glasgow region. I hope that he will engage with those points and that we can reach to a successful outcome that will at least make the lives of my constituents, and those of other Members who have contributed to the debate, better in the long run.