Jobs and Growth

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Binley]

I welcome that important point, because I was about to turn to that very area. More can be done, and we do indeed need to reduce the regulatory burden and to strengthen the business environment.

I welcome in the Queen’s Speech the proposed measures to deal with executive pay and employment tribunals, but I still do not understand why the Government are obsessing about maternity and paternity leave, especially for very small businesses. I simply point out that many people meet in the workplace and set up a family life together, and, if a small business employing 10 people loses 20% of its work force for six months, temporary labour cannot be used as a replacement. That simply does not happen.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

One trend in the employment figures over recent months has been that female unemployment has risen faster than male unemployment, and that it is decreasing less quickly. Detaching women from the labour market, as the hon. Gentleman seems to suggest we do by weakening maternity rights, will surely make the situation worse.

[Mr Binley]

I do not suggest that at all. What I suggest is that we understand the real needs of small businesses. If we want them to grow and create jobs for both men and women, we need to ensure that they are released from much of the burden that they face at the moment. I ask the hon. Lady to consider that burden, because it is a considerable one for small businesses—I have worked in the sector pretty much all my life and founded two such businesses. We need to release small businesses from that burden, so I would particularly welcome their being excluded from the sort of burdens that paternity leave suggests. The Opposition need to get real in that respect.

I turn to the attitude of the banks and financial services.

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[Margaret Hodge]

I have two points on that. First, it is not good value if people do not get into work, which is the whole purpose of the programme, and, secondly, one in four of those who get into work would have done so anyway without any intervention at all. Given the black box nature of the programme, we will not know whether people have actually been given support. All the indications I have seen suggest that that is highly unlikely. We are beginning to get evidence to show that the more difficult cases are being parked, simply because all the money is focused on those most likely to get into work.

[Kate Green]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that Work programme providers are reporting that when they do succeed in getting people into work, it is usually short term and temporary? If people are cycling round and round the programme, that is certainly not good value for money.

[Margaret Hodge]

We have been looking into the issue of whether short-term or part-time work is being provided. When I tried to meet prime providers locally, they would not tell me how many people had been referred to them, how many people they had got into work or how long those people had been in work. The Government claim to be committed to transparency, but any decent assessment of the Work programme is greatly inhibited by such lack of transparency.

Finally, I shall speak about Barking and Dagenham as an excellent example of where opportunities exist for the Government to stimulate jobs and growth. We might have lost many Ford jobs over time, but we have massive potential for expansion, with Barking Riverside, Dagenham dock and Barking town centre. The lack of public sector investment in infrastructure and services, however, is the major barrier to achieving growth and jobs. There is potential in Barking Riverside, with planning permission granted by the local council for 11,000 new homes, but at the current rate of building it will take 50 to 60 years before the scheme is completed. If those homes were built, it would stimulate jobs and help to tackle housing need.

We cannot get the school that we need in order to assure families who move into the area that their children will have a school place; we cannot get the transport infrastructure we need through the docklands light railway extension, because there is no money there; and we cannot get the Mayor to do anything to stimulate private sector house building. What we need is action, not words. Not a penny of the regional growth fund moneys has come to an area like ours, which needs a huge amount of resources.

I am conscious that many Members want to speak, so let me briefly say in conclusion that although the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) devoted about half his speech to the previous Government, we are now two years into this Government—and things have got only worse. During the two years on their watch, living standards for hard-working families in Barking and Dagenham have declined. Since they came into office, people’s hopes for a better future—with jobs for their children, homes for their families, and economic growth for their children and grandchildren—have been smashed.

The Queen’s Speech has nothing to say to the people of Barking and Dagenham. It does nothing for a community where needs are great. It fails the hard-working families of my constituents, it fails the businesses in my borough, and it fails to meet the aspirations and needs of future generations who will make Barking and Dagenham their home.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I want to make a few remarks about unemployment. Despite the modest fall in unemployment yesterday, we still have the highest rate of long-term unemployment since 1996, with 650,000 people in part-time work because they cannot get full-time work and 2.625 million people unemployed.

I want to highlight two groups of losers in the labour market for whom there were absolutely no policies in the Queen’s Speech. The first group are women. Whereas male joblessness increased by 5.4% over the past year, the increase in female joblessness was nearly double that, at 9%. The second group are people from ethnic minorities. White British women and men are more likely to be employed than those from any ethnic minority. A report by Elevation Networks in March revealed that more than half of young black men are unemployed and that the youth unemployment rate for black people has increased at nearly twice the rate among white 16 to 24-year-olds. There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to deal with those inequalities.

When I asked the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) in February what steps were being taken to address black youth unemployment, he answered that “Get Britain Working measures” operated “irrespective of ethnicity”. There was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address the structural drivers of black youth unemployment; no attention paid to, for example, guaranteed jobs for long-term unemployed young people, as recommended by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel; no ethnic monitoring of the Work programme or apprenticeships; no targets for black unemployment; and no mentoring of young black people. Indeed, despite the Prime Minister promising before the general election that there would be a massive programme of mentoring, nothing has materialised.

As for women, the Government have, I am pleased to say, recognised the importance of affordable and reliable child care, although I am alarmed by reports in the Daily Mail this week that Ministers think that the way to boost child care supply is to strip back regulation. Reducing bureaucracy is all very well, but deregulation that dilutes quality and compromises children’s well-being is simply unacceptable. The Netherlands saw a steady deterioration in the quality of child care as a result of introducing measures similar to those that we understand the Government might be contemplating. Indeed, the Dutch Government have now decided to reverse their deregulation policy.

Finally, let me talk about something that actually was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, albeit only cursorily: the Government’s proposal to introduce measures to promote flexible parental leave. We have yet to see the details of exactly what will be on offer, but I warn Ministers to be cautious. An alliance of organisations, including Maternity Action, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the National Childbirth Trust, Bliss, the Child Poverty Action Group and Citizens Advice, have warned of the need to protect adequate leave for women to secure the health and well-being of new mothers and their babies, and to select measures that actually ensure that a share of parental leave is taken up by fathers. Policies that have been shown to be effective in doing that include the meaningful replacement of a father’s lost income, and protecting leave for fathers, rather than eating into mothers’ leave. We need to ensure that the modern workplaces consultation proposals, which seem not to address those kinds of concerns, are carefully re-thought.

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. There is much more that I would like to say, but I will pass on to colleagues.