Social Security (Additional Payments) (No. 2) Bill

Jerome Mayhew Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I rise to support this enabling Bill, which will enable the payment of additional cost of living support for many millions of the poorest in society. Before I go into the detail of the proposals, it will be useful to set the debate into context, which is of course that the best welfare, where it is accessible, is access to a job. We know the obvious financial implications of being in employment, but there are equally important mental health benefits.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain then why 4.2 million people in work are in poverty and six out of 10 people in a low-paid job will still be in a low-paid job 10 years later?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am not saying that employment of any description is the silver bullet. We have phased movement under universal credit, because it is a tapering benefit from unemployment through additional support from Government that diminishes as pay rates increase. Most hon. Members would accept that that is the right approach, but I also accept that the hon. Lady rightly drew attention earlier to the disability employment gap. Although I recognise the recent unwelcome upward tick in that, the direction of travel and the long-term trend is downward, which I wholeheartedly welcome.

In my constituency of Broadland, the universal credit claimant rate is only 2%. Bearing in mind that a percentage of those will be in employment, in my part of the country at least we benefit from full functional employment. It is a feather in the Government’s cap that the national average universal credit claimant rate is just 3.6%; we see that in particular when we look at youth unemployment. In Broadland, the rate among the 18 to 24-year-old cohort—who are often hard to employ and most quickly affected by economic downturn—is just 3.6%, whereas nationally it is 4.6%. It is worth taking a moment to make some international comparisons. In France, the rate of unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds is more than 20%, and the equivalent figure for Spain is about 35%. Something is happening in the United Kingdom that is not happening on the European mainland. My submission is that it is because Conservative policies are leading to fuller employment, particularly in those cohorts that have traditionally found it harder to gain and retain employment. That is down to the brave decisions of this and former Conservative Administrations in creating a dynamic labour market that has allowed and encouraged employment and, yes, the ability to reduce the employment count for employers. That has led to fuller employment in this country than there has been in areas that are perhaps more unionised, where once someone is in the club their job is protected but that comes at the cost of the young and the poorest.

The Government have been right to focus on a dynamic labour market, in addition to direct Government support in schemes such as the £2 billion kickstart scheme, which worked so well in the aftermath of the pandemic, and the restart scheme. It cost an eye-watering £2.9 billion, but UC claimants of nine months or more got additional focus from their Jobcentre Plus work coaches to help them step back into employment, countering the terrible drain on the country and the individual cost to people’s lives of long-term unemployment.

On work coaches, this Government have doubled their number in 2021, increasing it by 13,500. I have seen these work coaches at work in my constituency, at the Jobcentre Plus in Fakenham. I pay particular tribute to all the staff members there, who have a huge amount of enthusiasm and expertise, and are going the extra mile day in, day out to get the long-term unemployed in my area into jobs. The total number of UC claimants in Broadland is 1,130. They are not all long-term unemployed, but, in a period of full employment, we just need an extra bit of help to get that hardcore group into the jobs, which are available. The additional work coaches are exactly the right way to go, which is bearing fruit.

The apprenticeship schemes are also being supported and encouraged by the Government. Members from around the House will recall that two weeks ago it was National Apprenticeship Week. To celebrate that and encourage its further uptake, I visited a business in my constituency, Ben Burgess, which many in the east will recognise as agricultural machinery suppliers of great repute. At any one time, the company has about 30 apprenticeships, which, typically, start at the age of 16. The apprentices get taken through training both on the job and at a national training facility in the midlands, where they have university-style education as well as on-the-job training in their place of employment. They come out of that scheme with a machinery technician qualification, a job and a career, leading to a really fulfilling lifestyle. That is exactly the kind of thing that the Government should be and are supporting.

I cannot move on from this area of my speech without a little plug for my jobs fair, which is taking place at Taverham High School on 10 March. It is one of a series that I have been holding and will continue to hold. My first one was in Fakenham, in the aftermath of the covid pandemic, when my assumption was that we would have a tidal wave of unemployment. The estimate at the time was that we would have 12% unemployment. I set in place a jobs fair to try to solve that problem, but because of the incredible intervention of the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister, we did not have 12% unemployment. The Government put their arms around the economy, supported people in their jobs and the potential crisis did not materialise.

On the detail of the proposed legislation, I fully support the uplift in the national living wage by 9.7%, taking it to £10.42 an hour, and not just for those whose employment is at the national living wage. As a former employer, I know very well that the national living wage is the base upon which many, many layers of employment judge their own job offers. We have created the conditions where there is full functional employment in the vast majority of the country, so employers are having to compete for staff. One way—it is not the only way—to compete is on pay. As the national living wage base rises, the gradated competition in pay rises as well, and that has a really beneficial effect.

[David Linden]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has seen the Budget submissions from both the CBI and the TUC. It is not often that they both sing from the same hymn sheet, but one key theme they complain and raise concerns about is staffing shortages. I accept that the national living wage is one factor, but does he also accept the concerns of both the CBI and the TUC that the Government have a problem with staffing issues, which cannot necessarily be helped by something like Brexit?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am really grateful to the hon. Member for making that intervention, because we had a similar discussion in an earlier debate and he gives me the opportunity to say what I kicked myself for not saying last time. As a former employer, if one has access to—let us call it this—unlimited cheap labour then there is no incentive to increase productivity or invest in further plant and machinery. As a result, we have what he was also complaining about, which is the low productivity conundrum. On access to labour, I recall him saying in an earlier intervention a couple of weeks ago that in Scotland the problem is not having too many people, but an exodus of people from Scotland. I just wonder what is the difference between Conservative-run England, where people in their hundreds of thousands are seeking to come into this country, and SNP-run Scotland, where they are leaving in their tens of thousands?

[David Linden]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am hopefully allowing him to sit down and think about that just a little bit more. That might help him.

The reality is that immigration policy is controlled by the United Kingdom Government. The Scottish Government and huge swathes of civic society have said that our problem has never been emigration, but immigration. We are looking to get more people to come to live and work in Scotland. It is the UK Government and the Home Office who make that more difficult. On Friday, I had an asylum seeker at my surgery, somebody who is incredibly well qualified and who has something he wants to offer this country, but because of a decision taken in 2002 by the Labour Government he is restricted from working here. He wants to work in Scotland, but he cannot do so because of an intransigent UK immigration policy. That is the reality of our immigration problems. It is not some mini-tartan issue that he might want to dress it up as.

[Jerome Mayhew]

This probably strays a little far from the topic of the debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, which is not about immigration policy, but I note in passing that if the hon. Gentleman wants to encourage people to work in his country, having a supertax on employment is probably not the best way to go about it.

Cost of living inflation hits working families too, so I welcome the £900 cost of living payments that will benefit fully 8 million families, as well as the disability payment of £150 to help with the higher cost of equipment needs. That will also benefit some 6 million people. If a job is the best form of welfare, then reducing inflation is the best way to tackle the cost of living crisis. My commendation to the Minister is that we should stick to our guns that reducing inflation during the course of this year, halving it as the Prime Minister has promised to do, is absolutely the right way to do it. The Bank of England currently predicts that inflation will dip below 4% by the end of this year, so that, overwhelmingly, is the best way to deal with these longer-term problems—not one-off payments which seek to address a symptom rather than dealing with the cause. While it is necessary to address the symptoms in the way the Bill does, I am grateful to the Government for also dealing with the cause of the cost of living crisis—inflation resulting from Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine—because that is the long-term solution to these problems.