Remploy

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs McGuire]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sorry; I might have touched a nerve.

I also wonder, given the way in which the House works, whether the Minister had given Members advance warning of her briefing at 4.30 this afternoon.

I shall turn now to the substance of the review. The Minister often cites the Sayce review, as did her predecessor, as protection for her decisions. I would remind the House, however, that the Sayce review did not recommend the speedy closure of the Remploy factories in the way that the Government have progressed it. Indeed, it recommended a phased development of the process. Once again, however, the review has been brought into play. The Government’s aim has always been to get rid of the Remploy liability in this financial year, and no matter what else was said, this was always going to be the cut-off point. That has been confirmed this morning. Of course I welcome the fact that viable bids have been received for some of the factories and that 17 of the 27 CCTV businesses are in the commercial process. I also welcome the Minister’s comment that it appears that eight of the other 10 will continue in one form or another.

The textile division based in Scotland has a long and proud tradition of making security and chemical protection wear for the Ministry of Defence, and the disappearance of the skills built up over many years will be a great loss. The textile division recently lost a major MOD contract that it was eminently capable of carrying out, given the quality and timeliness of its work. Given that the factories are under pressure of closure, will the Minister tell us whether she or any of her officials had any engagement with MOD procurement officials to encourage them to use Remploy as a supplier, given that it had carried out the work successfully over many years? It has never been properly recognised that much of the kit worn by our service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq was made in Remploy factories. Did the Minister use her good offices to encourage the MOD to award that contract to Remploy, if necessary using article 19?

Will the Minister also explain what she meant when she said that there was an asset bid from a social enterprise company for the textile section? What opportunities does she believe that that bid will open up? Many of us on the Opposition Benches see the words “asset bid” and worry that they might really mean asset stripping. We need to know exactly what is involved.

I also want to ask the Minister to define the word “success”, which she used in the closing paragraph of her statement. She mentioned that about 1,100 former Remploy workers were choosing to work with personal caseworkers to find other jobs. In other words, they are not currently in employment. Another 400 are in work and another 300 are in training, so by my calculation, significantly less than 50% of the former Remploy workers who have already been made redundant are currently in employment. I am wondering what the Minister’s benchmark for success is.

Given that the Work programme is performing three times worse than doing nothing for disabled people—

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

Rubbish.

[Mrs McGuire]

The Secretary of State keeps saying “rubbish”, but he needs to listen—[Interruption.] I did not realise that the Minister had brought along—[Interruption.]