Remploy Factories

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bain]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend highlights precisely the complete lack of logic in the proposals, at this time when the disabled, young people and people in long-term unemployment are encountering the toughest employment conditions in decades.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

We have Remploy in Coventry, and it is one of the most profitable organisations there are. It has contracts with Jaguar and Ford, and if a factory can get such contracts and drive hard bargains it is doing very well. The tragedy, which anyone who has met these people from Remploy knows, is that within days they were sacked, and some of them will never work again. The Coventry plant operates like a normal factory as, I am sure, do others. It is amazing. They have their own representation. What is being done is short-sighted and, more importantly, it shows the true face of this Government.

[Mr Bain]

Indeed, and the Government should be looking at the application of procurement rules, striving every sinew within the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, the Scotland Office, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that good industries such as these have the accessibility to public service contracts that would give them a good long-term future. That is one of the things that I will be asking for later.

The Minister, perhaps inadvertently, revealed the real picture when I last secured a debate on the topic in this Chamber: of the 1,021 disabled workers sacked by Remploy and this Government in their closure programme of this year, a mere 35 have found other work. Will she be able to update us on the most recent figures when she winds up?

[Mr Bain]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

Those 35 people are not in jobs of equivalent pay and skills to the ones they had with Remploy; they are the only 35 people who have got any work at all. Additionally, the Work programme is placing only 2.5% of long-term jobless people in my constituency, and less than 4% across the country, into sustained work.

To have any chance of producing a solution to the crisis, the Minister must recognise the true problem: the economy is too weak and long-term unemployment is soaring. Some 1,320 people in my constituency alone are long-term jobless. Vulnerable groups such as the young and the disabled are suffering the most. The OECD has shown that a disabled person is twice as likely to be unemployed as a non-disabled person. It is clear from the figures so far that the Minister’s plans for Remploy workers, and for the disabled as a whole, are not working.

The reality is that the longer someone is out of work, the lower their chances are of finding another job. So instead of doing nothing, the Minister should be redoubling her efforts to help disabled people in long-term unemployment get jobs now. It is unacceptable to plough on with a failed strategy that simply consigns sacked Remploy workers to near certain long-term unemployment, and crushing poverty, as a result.

In the spirit of constructive engagement, I offer the Minister a plan out of the hardship that the closure programme is inflicting on disabled workers across the country. First, given the ways in which I have shown it is increasingly hard for the disabled to find new work, the Minister should announce today a moratorium on any further factory closures in phases 1 and 2 to lift the threat from 18 other Remploy factories in communities such as Clydebank, Cowdenbeath, Dundee, Stirling and Leven, as well as in Springburn.

Secondly, I ask the Minister to convene an urgent working group, to report by the end of the year, composed of officials from her Department, the Scottish Government, Glasgow city council, Scottish Enterprise, trade unions and other representatives of the disability and local business communities to help locally elected politicians draw up plans to save the Springburn factory.

Thirdly, I ask the Minister to engage specifically with the Scottish Government to build on the commitments made by Minister Fergus Ewing in Holyrood last Thursday to introduce a proper strategy to support Remploy staff in Scotland and those who have already lost their jobs but not found new work, as the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive have already done.

Fourthly, the Minister should ask ministerial colleagues to review the application of public procurement rules, particularly the application of article 19, and to draw up plans for how supported employment workplaces can more effectively win Government contracts and secure their long-term futures. The Springburn factory makes high-quality wheelchairs for the NHS, but it has no long-term relationship with the NHS in Scotland or with Government agencies at UK level.

Finally, given the disastrous conduct of the tendering process in relation to the Springburn factory, the Minister should order an inquiry into what went wrong, why the process collapsed and how the hopes of workers were raised last month only to be so cruelly dashed by her letter of a few weeks ago. In particular, she needs to provide answers to questions being posed by workers at the factory and by one of Scotland’s major newspapers.

Last Wednesday, the Daily Record reported that Remploy Healthcare entered a deal with R Healthcare, otherwise known as R Link, in July 2011 to take over the “front end” of the business, including

“the sales, marketing and distribution of Remploy’s healthcare products.”

There are many people who believe that that contract may have endangered the probity of the tendering process for the sale of the Remploy Springburn factory. Workers at the factory believe that the contract, which was not made public at the time, sealed their fate as long ago as last year.

Will the Minister tell the Chamber why there has been such a lack of transparency on the existence of those contracts? How can she ensure that this tendering process and future tendering processes will operate on a level playing field for other potential buyers of the Springburn factory and any others? She will be aware of the concerns of Greentyre and other potential bidders—they felt excluded from the tendering process because of the link with R Healthcare. Why were the contracts kept secret only until the decision to close the factory was announced? Why has her Department refused my freedom of information requests on those contracts? The reply refusing the request was sent on the same morning as the confirmation that the factory would close. Does she really believe it reflects well on her Department that R Healthcare is planning to keep Remploy’s wheelchair order book, and to benefit from the business that will be released thereby, after dumping all the workers and closing the factory?

The Minister will remember from when we debated the issue previously that if the factory had been sold, the workers would have benefited from the protection of the TUPE regulations. If any workers are taken on by Haven, R Link’s subcontractor, they will not benefit from the protection of TUPE, which is the difference. If workers are fortunate enough to be re-engaged, they might be hired on markedly poorer terms and conditions. Such asset stripping should not be worthy of contracts issued under the aegis of her Department.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

What my hon. Friend has revealed is nothing short of scandalous. Having said that, will he include the affected factories in Coventry and the rest of the UK in his proposals to the Minister?

[Mr Bain]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right that, given the scale of the disaster being faced by people in the disabled community, the only answer is for there to be a moratorium so that this incompetent Government can produce a strategy for disabled employment that actually works.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

The commercial process, which was robust and has been carried through, will not be reopened. As I explained, however, there is an opportunity now for people to come forward with their best and final offers, as with Aberdeen and Wigan. Equally, should Greentyre—as mentioned by the hon. Gentleman—wish to come forward, it may bid for the factory. That is what we are looking for and what we are doing with other factories.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned article 19. Previous modernisation plans assumed a 130% increase in the Government procurement rules under article 19 but, in reality, that did not happen. Article 19 allows the use of sheltered employment to deliver services, but it has to be done in the context of value for money. If use of article 19 does not deliver value for money, it is not valid.

I hope that I have answered all the hon. Gentleman’s questions.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

We have a couple of minutes left, so I will take the intervention.

[Mr Cunningham]

Can the Minister publish the figures on people who have been made redundant from Remploy and found employment?

[Esther McVey]

I believe those figures are in the public domain. If they are not or if the hon. Gentleman needs clarity about them, I can provide them or break them down by factory.

If there are no more interventions or requests, I will come to a close. I know that the process will be long and that we are all passionate about the issue because we all want to see the best solution and conclusion possible but, as I have said in the past, all channels of communication are open. Not only do I meet with MPs, trade unions and MSPs, but I also work with ex-employees of Remploy.