Job Insecurity

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is totally correct to raise that issue. Not only is it an issue of justice in the workplace, but it is also—[Interruption.] I have completely forgotten the point I was going to make—one of those moments. Ah, the thought has returned to me: it is also bad for the economy. If people are frightened out of their wits about whether they will retain their jobs, they will hardly go and spend money in our economy.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to another historical parallel that goes beyond the Morecambe bay tragedy? A few years ago we marked the centenary of the Tonypandy riots—Members might or might not be aware of them—which took place in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). The significance of those riots, and the parallel with today’s situation, is that mine owners and the representatives on the Government Benches argued tooth and nail that they could not afford to pay a fair wage to miners working in the most difficult seams in the south Wales valleys. Those miners were living in poverty. I suggest that the parallel is that we should all be working together, with businesses and others, to ensure that people are paid a proper wage.

[Mr Umunna]

That is absolutely right. I will explain how we are seeking to promote that through the payment of the living wage.

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[Mr Umunna]

I am not sure that the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) is having a very good day.

Several hon. Members have already raised the issue of zero-hours contracts, and let me explain how we would stop their exploitative use. We would prevent employers from insisting that people on zero-hours contracts are available to work even when there is no guarantee that they will be given any work. We would prohibit zero-hours contracts that require workers to work exclusively for one employer. We would prevent the misuse of zero-hours contracts. When, in practice, employees regularly work a certain number of hours a week, they are entitled to a contract that reflects the reality of their regular hours.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will my hon. Friend speculate on why for some reason my M4 travel-to-work area, where there is some good and encouraging news on jobs, has the highest level of food bank usage in the whole of Wales and has seen a tenfold increase in payday loans, including to people in work, during the past year?

[Mr Umunna]

We know that there has been stagnation in wages. My hon. Friend has given the clearest evidence of the impact of that in his constituency. That relates to the points that I have made to Government Members. Of course it is a good thing that people who have not been in work are getting work. The key thing is that it must be decent work that prevents people from having to go to food banks because they are not earning enough.

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[Vince Cable]

Give me some time and I will happily take interventions. I am always generous with interventions and I will wait until a suitable point and give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The danger the hon. Member for Streatham faces is that of creating a cliché such as “triple-dip recession” or “no more boom and bust” that then proves to be positively cringeworthy when the situation changes. Labour’s slogan is now the “cost of living crisis”, and at first sight that is a plausible line of attack because, as I have always acknowledged, real wages fell in the wake of the financial crisis, the country is poorer and the consequences have been painful. The hon. Gentleman buttressed his argument by quoting from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that this painful process is likely to go on until the end of next year. That was what it said until quite recently, but I do not know whether he has seen its report today, which states that the cost of living crisis is to turn around this year. Inflation is now falling so rapidly and the economy recovering so quickly that it expects that turnaround to happen by the middle of the year. I fear that the “cost of living crisis” may be another to go in to the museum of clichés.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Has the Secretary of State done an analysis of when the cost of living crisis might turn around in different regions of the UK, such as south Wales? What is his best guess on that?

[Vince Cable]

I will get on to regional variation. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue of Wales, because I was studying the regional employment changes and Wales has done relatively well against almost every other region of the UK. Despite the terrible history of unemployment in Wales, its unemployment level is now at the UK average. Its increase in employment levels is greater than in any other part of the UK, including London and the south-east. There is a good story in Wales as well as many very deep problems, which I of course acknowledge.

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[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) and to tell him that we do have jobs fairs. In fact, we have had them for years in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and in my coterminous constituency, run highly successfully by the Labour-controlled Bridgend county borough council, working with the local chamber of commerce and local businesses. We are not an anti-entrepreneur party—quite the opposite.

Something very odd is going on in south Wales, as I suggested earlier. Long-term youth unemployment is still remarkably high—intransigently so—and the overall level of employment is not good, but there are some encouraging signs. At the same time, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend will know, our county borough area has recently been identified as the area with the highest level of food bank use in the whole of Wales. Every single village in my constituency now has a food bank. It is a tremendous tribute to the work of the volunteers, the Trussell Trust, local churches and so on, but why are so many people who are in work having to go to food banks?

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend referred to a recent report by StepChange, the UK’s largest independent debt advice charity, entitled “Wales in the red”, which highlights what is going on in Wales. I want to mention some of its findings. Between 2010 and 2013, the demand for debt advice in Blaenau Gwent increased by 60%. In the Bridgend county borough area it increased by 63%. The same pattern was true in completely different, remote and rural areas such as Denbighshire and Gwynedd. In the Vale of Glamorgan the increase was nearly 60%. The same pattern can be seen right across Wales, but it is significantly bad in the south Wales valleys.

The report analysed the proportion of the charity’s clients struggling with rent arrears in each of Wales’s 22 unitary authorities. Blaenau Gwent and Ceredigion, which are completely contrasting constituencies, given Blaenau Gwent’s post-industrial structure and Ceredigion’s rurality, have both seen an increase in the proportion of clients struggling with rent arrears—35% in Blaenau Gwent and nearly 40% in Ceredigion. The same can be said of Flintshire, Neath, Port Talbot, Powys, the Vale of Glamorgan and other areas. The employment figures might offer a crude indication of some recovery, but underneath those figures something odd is going on, because many of the people clamouring for debt advice—StepChange makes this point—are actually in work.

Let me mention a couple of other indicators. In Conwy, the proportion of home-owning clients struggling with mortgage arrears is up to 50%. In Gwynedd, that figure is over 50%. In Pembrokeshire—these are completely contrasting constituencies—it is just shy of 50%. In Powys it is just shy of 50%. Something really odd is going on.

If we look at the proportion of customers with arrears on gas bills—I will skip over electricity bills, but it is a similar story—we see that nearly 16% of people in Neath Port Talbot and in Torfaen are struggling with that situation. Right across the whole of Wales, bills have increased over the past three years. Something odd is going on.

My final point is the most significant of all. In every one of the 22 unitary authorities in Wales, many people in work are seeking debt advice. The Bridgend unitary authority area is on the M4 corridor, still has one of the biggest manufacturing belts in the whole of the United Kingdom, and has a travel-to-work area that includes Cardiff, where jobs should be available. Yet people in that area, including those in work, are struggling with payday loans and debt advice, and there has been a near-enough tenfold increase in the number of those seeking payday loans. It is the same in Flintshire, Newport, and so on. Something odd is going on.

It is great to welcome the crude analysis of people falling off claimant counts, but if they are then falling into debt because they are not being paid enough and are having to rely on loans and getting into debt, that is not good enough. Surely, as a House, we want to do better for our constituents than that.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

Only this Labour party could call a debate on job insecurity a week after it was announced that a record number of people have got a job. Such impeccable timing makes me think that the motion must have been written by the shadow Chancellor, for it reminds me of the time he predicted that unemployment would soar by 1 million just before it fell by 1 million to a record low or the time he called a triple-dip recession just before official figures showed we had not even had a double-dip recession. In fact, the only recession that took place was when the Labour Government were in power.

And here we have a motion on job insecurity just after we have had the biggest rise in jobs in 40 years—more than 30 million employed—while unemployment has fallen in every part of the country. It is clear that even Labour Members were disappointed by the motion and had no faith in it, because the Opposition Benches were empty throughout the afternoon. The hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) has not returned to the Chamber, although it was he who moved the motion, but I can tell the House that in his constituency the claimant count is down by 20% and the youth claimant count is down by 36%. No wonder he is not present to hear those facts. As for the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the claimant count in his constituency is down by 27% and the youth claimant count is down by 30%.

Labour Members may talk about job insecurity, but the biggest guarantee of job insecurity is a Labour Government. If Members want the facts, I can tell them that unemployment rose by nearly half a million under Labour, female unemployment rose by 24%, youth unemployment rose by 45%, and long-term unemployment almost doubled between 2008 and 2010.

The truth is that Britain is poorer because of the recession over which the Labour Government presided. As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies put it,

“That household incomes are lower than before the recession and are lower than they were in 2010 is hardly surprising. We have just lived through the deepest recession in generations”.

We are living beyond our means, but given that they were borrowing £160 billion every year, what do the Opposition expect? What we needed to do—and what we have done, in remarkably good time—was turn the economy around in three years. We did what we said we would do: we stabilised the economy, rebalanced the economy, and grew the economy. Even the International Monetary Fund has said that it is now the fastest-growing economy in the western world, and Mark Carney has said:

“The economy is growing at its fastest pace in 6 years… The recovery has finally taken hold.”

That has happened under this coalition Government.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Esther McVey]

I should love to hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Minister is giving a glowing report of the coalition Government’s success, but will she tell us whether she has had sight of what now seems to be the suppressed report on food aid that landed on Ministers’ desks a year ago and has not surfaced? Will she give an undertaking to produce that report, which deals with the causes of poverty among working people?

[Esther McVey]

I have not had sight of the report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because I am a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, but once it has been authorised and released, the hon. Gentleman can read it.

Let us return to today’s debate. We heard a great deal of what I would describe as misinformation about the number of people in part-time work. Since the election, the number of people in full-time work has risen by 1 million; three out of four people are in full-time work, and we have stabilised the position. In the last quarter, the number of people wanting to move from part-time to full-time work fell for the first time ever, and—Opposition Members may be startled to hear this—between 2005 and 2010, the number doubled. That is the truth of Labour’s legacy.

Opposition Members talk of zero-hours contracts, but the number of zero-hours contracts is the same as it was in 2000. The 75% increase happened between 2004 and 2009. Moreover, if we want to think about getting our houses in order, we should note that the council with the worst record for zero-hours contracts is Labour-run Doncaster council, which is in the constituency of the Leader of the Opposition and also in the constituency of one of the ladies on the Opposition Front Bench.

Turning to the contributions of those on the Government Benches, my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) talked some good common sense about people getting their foot on the ladder, job progression, the fact that the number of apprenticeships has doubled in her constituency, and how this Government are helping families and young people into work. She also questioned what the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) meant when he said, “Don’t take any old job; some jobs are different from other jobs.” There was some real job snobbery from the Opposition Front Bench.

My hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) talked about youth unemployment being down by 25% in his constituency, and how he does not talk down the economy, but instead talks it up because that is positive and it helps people into work.