Labour Market Activity

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and John Redwood

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. It is not just that lots of people are not aware of the Access to Work scheme, but some people who apply for Access to Work are then faced with the most ridiculous waiting lists. A constituent of mine accepted a job and was told that there was a 26-week waiting list for an assessment. I raised that case with the Department in my capacity as a local constituency MP and I am pleased that the Department has looked at it again, but lots of people will not go to their local MP asking them to intervene, and we want to get people into work. It is no wonder that the disability employment gap is widening.

As a country, we should be aiming for the highest level of employment in the G7. That would mean living standards raised for every household. The reason we want to extend the opportunity of decent work to all is even more fundamental: when one in five people who have left the labour market in the past two years say that they would like to work, we have a responsibility to help them. Behind every statistic is a story of opportunities missed, talents wasted and extraordinary potential left untapped, none more so than for the now 1 million young people not in education or employment. Increasing numbers of young people are out of work for reasons of mental health. We know the long-term scarring effects of worklessness at a young age; it risks a life on the margins. To do nothing for this group of young people, as is, in effect, the case now, means writing them off. Its means tolerating a situation where only about 4% of people in the employment and support allowance support group return to work each year—to me, that is fundamentally unacceptable. It is a massive social cost and it has a massive economic cost as well, as we will see, because the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting that the health-related benefit bill will increase, costing us £8 billion extra.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Most Conservative Members would agree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, so will he offer a bit of guidance as to how the Government should go about contacting people in these positions who might want to get into work? What kind of offer does he think would be best to make so that we can engage with them?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that. I will outline a very detailed plan in my remarks. I hope it finds favour with him, because we want to grow our economy, as he does, and getting people back to work is good for them as individuals, it will make our economy more productive, it will sustainably raise living standards—not by going for growth through inflation—and getting people back to work is surely a good thing. I hope he stays in the Chamber, as I am sure he will, to listen to my speech.

The Government say that they gave us kickstart, but it failed to deliver the 250,000 jobs for young people promised. They say that they gave us restart, but it is expected to help less than half the number of people that Ministers said it would, and it is underspent by around £900 million. However, my argument is not simply that the Minister is doing nothing. It is also that what the Government do do, they do not do very well.

The Local Government Association estimated that the Government—I think that this is last year’s figure—spent £20 billion to deliver 49 different employment and skills-related schemes administered by nine different Government Departments and agencies and, yet, despite all that money, these organisational geniuses have still given us a situation where we have 1 million vacancies, 3 million workless, and the worst employment recovery in the G7. That is surely not good enough for £20 billion-worth of expenditure.

What has been the Government’s answer? It is more of the same. They brief newspapers there will be more daily interviews for the three-month unemployed in the intensive work search group, even though the failure-to-attend rate for weekly appointments is already high. It will no doubt mean more CV writing classes, more applying for jobs online that turn out to be duplications and, of course, more sanctions. Of course there should be conditions applied to unemployment—[Interruption.] We have always been in favour of conditions for unemployment benefit—as many of these hon. Members will find out when they go to the jobcentre after the next general election—but what we need for this country is a plan that widens access to employment support for all who want to work, that brings together health and employment support, that addresses the cost and disincentives of moving into work for parents with childcare needs, for example, and that takes account of the different economic needs of the country.

Autumn Statement Resolutions

Debate between Jonathan Ashworth and John Redwood

Monday 21st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I am afraid that the Government’s position is as clear as mud. The OBR says that the Government are raising £5.7 billion from fuel duty. If they are not raising £5.7 billion from fuel duty, they should tell us where that £5.7 billion is coming from. I thought that this lot had moved away from the reckless, irresponsible approach to the public finances, but it seems that with the Tories, nothing ever changes.

Let us be clear: people are paying not only more income tax, but more council tax, and we expect motorists to pay more for petrol and diesel. Never again can Conservative politicians stand in front of posters of double whammy boxing gloves or tax bombshells at election time, because the tax on working people combined with the wages that they are losing to the ravages of inflation mean that they are being squeezed until the pips squeak under this Conservative Government.

[John Redwood]

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government were not proposing to spend enough by the end of the review period. They are proposing £200 billion a year more. How much more would Labour want to spend?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I did not actually say that. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is disappointed with the Government’s plans and that the previous Budget, of which he was so much in favour, was decisively rejected by the money markets. That shows what happens when we allow the Conservatives to be irresponsible with the public finances.

I now turn to social security and pensions. In fairness, the Chancellor responded to our pressure and honoured the triple lock, which I welcome. I hope that the House will recall and accept that I always give credit where it is due and I always work on a cross-party basis when we agree on things. I always agreed with our man in the jungle, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), when he wanted to put us into lockdowns. I never went as far as the new Chancellor on lockdowns—he wanted much more severe restrictions—but I was always prepared to work cross party with the Government, so I am pleased that they have honoured the triple lock.

The impact of freezing the personal tax allowance at £12,500 or so, however, is that half a million more pensioners will be pulled into paying tax. Over the coming years, it is predicted that, because of the freeze on the personal allowance, 2 million extra pensioners will be pulled into paying tax. So pensioners with little income beyond the state pension—those who have done the right thing and saved all their lives—will be paying more in tax under the Conservatives.