Jobs and Growth

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I welcome the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) back from a potential sojourn in Birmingham as mayor—his announcement that he wanted to stand was so powerful that Birmingham, on the spot, rejected the whole idea of having a mayor. I have got to know him well over the past couple of years and he has been heavily involved in designing the policy framework for the Opposition. He talked about part-time work and, as a result of his leader’s decision, he will experience it himself. I am sorry about that, because I am sure that he would have done a very good job had he been allowed to continue—I certainly suspect that he would have done better than some of his colleagues.

Today is about the Queen’s Speech, and I want to welcome a number of Bills: the Crime and Courts Bill, the children and families Bill, the draft care and support Bill to modernise the care system, and, importantly, a pensions Bill to provide once and for all a decent single-tier state pension to reward those who save. Let me say a few words about that matter and in tribute to the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb). He and I have worked very hard together and I hope that when we publish the White Paper both the House and the country will see that we are proposing a genuine and serious reform that should improve the quality of retirement for everybody in the future. We will reform the state pension system, creating a fair, simple and sustainable foundation for private saving. The main benefits of the Bill will be that it will enable individuals to take responsibility for meeting their retirement aspirations in the context of increasing longevity and create an affordable and sustainable pension system for future generations.

Let me respond to a few of the comments made by hon. Members on both sides of the House. The right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), who I see in his place, made an elegant speech, as ever, in which he referred to a number of different issues. In particular, he mentioned youth unemployment, and I want to ensure that we establish the baseline on that point. The trouble was that the previous Government gerrymandered the figures on youth unemployment. When somebody had been unemployed for six months, they put them on one of their programmes—the future jobs fund or whatever—and took them off the unemployment register. They were not put back on to the register until they fell out of that programme—[Interruption.] Members might want to hear this. If we add together the figures, we see that the total number of claimants aged 18 to 24 on jobseeker’s allowance or other forms of temporary support is lower this month than it was in May 2010. Under the previous Government, during a period of growth, youth unemployment rose every year from 2006.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The Secretary of State appears to be unaware of a briefing that his own Department gave to the Select Committee on Work and Pensions yesterday, which exposed the lack of rigidity in the figures. Apparently, the correct figure shows that in March 2010 the number of people who were taken off benefit on a training allowance was 18,000. It has come down to 4,000, but will he accept that that does not explain the rise in youth unemployment?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Labour gerrymandered the figures, and that was a long suicide note about what they tried to do to change those figures. The hon. Lady can try as much as she likes but the truth is that the previous Government set in place every single mechanism to ensure that they did not count young unemployed people.

[David Miliband]

The figures that the right hon. Gentleman’s Department have put out show that in the past year—under his Government—long-term jobseeker’s allowance claimant figures have gone up threefold to 55,000. How does he explain that?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I said to the right hon. Gentleman—his point was about youth unemployment—the reality is that the figures I have given today are correct. His Government created a major crisis by putting us into a great big slump. That is what they did. Whatever else he wants to say in an attempt to defend the Labour Government, we are having to dig them out of a hole and we are the ones producing better youth programmes such as the youth contract. Those unemployment figures are very simple. When you add all the details together, you find that unemployment among young people was higher when we took office than it is now.

I want to move on to what other hon. Members said. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) said that he wanted to see the right hon. Member for South Shields on the Front Bench. I wonder what role he would see the right hon. Gentleman in if he got him there. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) on his speech. He reminded us that we had some great news the other day because Boris won again in London. That is very good news for all of us. [Interruption.] I wonder what Opposition Members are saying. The reality is that their candidate, Ken Livingstone, failed, and I note that a lot of them did not even bother to turn up to support him.

The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) attacked Labour very effectively. I should like to pick up a point made by the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, who said that the welfare-to-work programme is unlikely to be good value for money. I differ from her on that. The big difference with the welfare-to-work programme is that we will not pay the providers unless they get someone into work. Under the future jobs fund and everything else that was going on under the previous Government they threw money at providers ahead of any kind of outcome, caring only to tick the boxes to say that they had done something rather than that they had done something reasonable.

A large number of people spoke in the debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay). The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) made an interesting speech. I notice that he wants to put his name forward to be manager of Liverpool. I wish him the best of luck in that endeavour. As a Tottenham supporter, I am looking forward to him running Liverpool next season.

The Opposition approached this debate believing that they had the right to criticise our Government for what they call our failures, yet not once have they ever apologised for putting the economy in the worst possible state—the biggest bust. They try to compare themselves to other countries. It is worth noticing that the US economy is set to fall faster—

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the amendment be made.

The House divided: Ayes 213, Noes 312.