Remploy

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister if she will make a statement about the end of Remploy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to provide the House with an update on Remploy. On Thursday, I laid a written statement in the House about stage 2 of Remploy factories—a continuation of a process announced by my predecessor, now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on 7 March. She then gave a further statement to the House on 10 July. In it, the Remploy board announced the outcome of its analysis of the remaining stage 2 businesses. Remploy will now start a commercial process to mitigate potential job losses. At this stage, no final decisions have been made about factory closures or redundancies. Our priority throughout the process is to safeguard jobs, which is why we are offering a wage subsidy of £6,400 for each disabled employee to encourage interested parties to come forward.

We want substantially to improve employment opportunities for all disabled people. We engaged with disability experts and organisations to undertake a review of our specialist disability employment support. The Sayce review findings and the responses we received to the public consultation strongly supported the idea of moving away from the Remploy model for disabled people.

The first point that I want to make is that a sixth of the money for the sustained employment of disabled people is currently spent on supporting the Remploy factories, which means that a sixth of the budget went to 2,200 out of 6.9 million disabled people of working age. I remind the House that, before the last Government closed 29 factories, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) said:

“The reality is that without modernisation Remploy deficits would obliterate our other programmes to help disabled people into mainstream work.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 448.]

The current Government are committed to protecting the budget of £320 million for specialist disability employment support, but we know that we must use that money much more effectively to help far more disabled people to fulfil their ambitions and move into mainstream work. In these economically difficult times, it is more important than ever for the Government’s disability employment programmes to represent value for money and to deliver the most effective possible support to help disabled people to find and keep employment.

Remploy has faced an uncertain future for many years, and in 2008, under the last Government, 29 factories closed. A modernisation plan failed, having set excessively ambitious targets which were never achieved. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) knows that only too well. As a result, the factories have become increasingly loss-making, and their future has become more precarious. That has left all staff in a vulnerable position. The answer must be to find them work and help them into mainstream employment, and the changes that are being made are focused on ensuring that they all obtain long-term, sustainable jobs.

I do, of course, understand how unsettling it is for Remploy employees to find that they are faced with the threat of losing their jobs. I know that a large number of them have given many years of service, and that they now face the prospect of looking for alternative work. That is why we set up the people help and support package especially for them. All disabled Remploy staff affected by the changes who give their consent will be guaranteed access to £8 million of tailored support to help them to find alternative employment. Despite a slow start, we are making a number of improvements to the package. Over the past three months, 148 of the 960 or so disabled people who have come forward to work with us and our personal case workers have found employment. We have every expectation that the number of job outcomes, which is already increasing daily, will increase further. We are monitoring and tracking these people and helping them to obtain work, which is something that the last Government never did when they closed their factories.

Jobcentre Plus reached agreements today with five major national employers—some of the biggest high street retailers and restaurant chains—to help ex-Remploy staff into work, and they will also have access to support from Remploy Employment Services. Since 2010, despite the tough economic climate, it has found 50,000 jobs for disabled and disadvantaged people, many of whose disabilities are similar to those of staff in Remploy factories.

Let me give a few instances of former Remploy staff who have begun work in a vast array of jobs. Four former employees from Aberdeen have started a co-operative business in their old factory. Red Rock Data Processing Services in Wigan is reopening its factory and employing former Remploy staff. Ex-employees have found work at Dekko Windows in Oldham, Camborne college in Penzance and Hayman Construction in Plymouth, and at Asda. All those people are moving into mainstream work, and I expect that, as the support continues, we shall see an increasing number of such good outcomes.

I have met many Members on both sides of the House to discuss this matter, and I shall continue to do so. We seek the best possible outcomes and opportunities for all Remploy staff.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Minister. She did somewhat exceed her allotted time, which simply means that I must allow some modest latitude to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne).

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

May I start, Mr Speaker, by saying how grateful we are to you for allowing this urgent question this afternoon? I say to the Minister that, frankly, it is shameful that her Department tried to sneak out through a written ministerial statement last week news that it was shutting a further 10 Remploy factories and putting five more at risk. It was a mark of contempt for Remploy workers that the Minister sought to duck a debate in the House.

This statement marks the destruction of a tradition that stretches back to the foundation of the welfare state. If there is an ideal that Labour Members cherish, it is that the welfare state should be strong on the ethic to work and strong on the ethic to care. Remploy epitomises both those ideals, yet over the past year all we have heard from the Government is one plan after another to close Remploy down, without any regard for how its workers are connected to a future—to jobs and prosperity in the years to come.

Months ago, a Minister from this Department promised the House that the Government would move hell and high water to ensure sacked Remploy workers got into jobs, yet today about 90% of those workers sacked this year are still out of work. That is not good enough. The Work programme is not delivering for disabled people. Fewer than 1% of people on employment and support allowance have been found sustained jobs. When we undertook the modernisation of Remploy, we set aside £500 million to help support the process. I am afraid that is in sharp contrast to what we heard from the Minister this afternoon.

It is now apparent that this closure programme must stop until we are clear about what has gone wrong in getting sacked Remploy workers back into jobs. We need to learn far more from the example set by the Welsh Government, who have already provided 97 opportunities for 250 workers who have lost their jobs. The Minister will have heard, as I have, just how important this is, because she will know, as I do, that for Remploy workers their job is far more than simply an income; it is their connection to a social network and to a world outside. It is often everything to them.

Let me ask the Minister this: will she apologise to the House for trying to sneak this announcement out through a written ministerial statement? Especially after the Secretary of State dismissed Remploy workers as doing nothing more than sitting around drinking coffee, I think that that would be an appropriate gesture. Will the Minister stop this closure programme until we have a report on the table from her Department about what has gone wrong in getting the workers sacked earlier this year back into jobs? Specifically in respect of Wales, will she take up the proposal of Leighton Andrews that two factories in Wales be transferred to the Welsh Government, because although she does not feel they have a future, the Government of Wales certainly do?

[Esther McVey]

I am quite taken aback by your bluster and, I have to say, false words. Your words would have far more emphasis—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman’s words would have far more worth were it not for the fact that he put these plans into place in the first instance. Indeed, he closed 29 factories in 2008 and rightly put in a lot of money, but it was put into a failed modernisation plan with targets that could never be reached. A target of 130% was expected of public sector contracts; that never happened. Worse still, he has the temerity to talk to us about what we have put in place for individual workers when he did absolutely nothing; he did not track them, and he did not put in place any personalised casework or any support. That is really rather shocking.

The right hon. Gentleman might be making cheap jibes and cheap statements on the back of these workers, but frankly I find that rather disingenuous and beneath him. He has a failed modernisation plan behind him, and also failed support, and he was also the chap who said that no money was left in the bank. I will not apologise, therefore, because, frankly, I am picking up his pieces.