Labour Market Activity

Debate between Hywel Williams and Jonathan Ashworth

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend, typically, anticipates a point I will be making later, but it is clear that certain members of the population could be encouraged to return to work if the correct flexible option was in place, along with appropriate help with childcare or indeed social care. Many people are caring for loved ones—parents and so on.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that six out of 10 people who are economically inactive because of illness are economically inactive because of mental health problems. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that changing the conditions of work, for example, with good childcare, with proper jobs, with proper wages and so on, is the way to deal with this problem?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable point. We are seeing more and more people being forced out of the labour market, or not able even to enter it in the first place, because of depression, stress or anxiety. If we reform the way in which we deliver employment support, we can get many of these people back to work, because being in work will be good for them in terms of managing their mental health. Obviously, that is not necessarily the case for everybody, but it will be for a significant proportion. The problem is that there are many who want to work, yet under the Government’s approach, which focuses just on the unemployed via the jobcentres, only one in 10 out-of-work older people or disabled people are getting any support. We reject that approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I agree. May I welcome my hon. Friend to her place? This is the first opportunity that I have had to do so. She brings to this House great experience in local government. She knows that local authority leaders, working in partnership with the business community, with those who provide skills, and with civic societies, trade unions and so on, can do a much better job of getting people back to work, which is why we should be shifting resources, be it to the east midlands combined authority, the Cheshire region or elsewhere.

Where that has happened in pockets—such as in Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester, through the working well initiative—there have been great successes, so we need to shift resources. That is the key to providing a form of universal support, which my friends at the Centre for Social Justice have rightly called for, to help people with complex barriers to return to work. We endorse that approach.

[Hywel Williams]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way—he is being very generous. We have a Labour Government in Wales. Would he support the devolution of the administration of social security to that Labour Government?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me into very choppy waters by offering to disrupt the way in which we provide social security across the country, but I will resist the temptation to go off course.

At a time when local areas should be given more resources to deliver employment support, the Government are cutting resources. Not only did they announce out of the blue in December that they were cutting a scheme that helped those with health conditions to move into work in the west midlands and South Yorkshire—they then U-turned on that a couple of weeks ago—but, as I heard from the Salvation Army when I went to visit an employment project in East Ham this morning, they are also leaving the voluntary sector with no answers about its future because of decisions about the shared prosperity fund.

The shared prosperity fund, which is the successor to the European social fund, helps to fund schemes that support people with complex barriers into work. The European social fund money ends at the end of this year, and there is then a nine-month funding gap until the people and skills element of the new shared prosperity fund kicks in. How does the Secretary of State expect to get more of the economically inactive into work when that funding gap means that voluntary organisations in all our constituencies have no idea how they will fund their work for the best part of a year? That is not the way to go about it, and when the Department leaves those voluntary organisations with no funding, it does not suggest that the Government are serious about getting people back to work.