Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

A clear message was sent that people who failed to participate in schemes could lose their benefit for up to 26 weeks. That is the maximum they could lose. What the Court of Appeal said, and what the High Court said previously, was that we should make reference to the fact that if someone had committed a first offence, as it were, we should give details of the amount of benefit they would lose the first time they did not participate in a scheme. In fact, we have changed the notices as a consequence of the High Court judgment. The notice that we sent out said that people would face a loss of up to 26 weeks benefit if they did not take part in the scheme. What the High Court wanted was details of the lower levels of sanctions that could apply in that situation.

There is a broad consensus that mandatory back-to-work schemes are a necessary part of the approach that we take to get people back to work. When a person signs on to receive jobseeker’s allowance, they accept that they have certain responsibilities. It could be called a contract between the jobseeker and the taxpayer. We will offer a huge amount of support to jobseekers, including help to search for jobs, work experience and jobseeker’s allowance. That is our part of the deal. The jobseekers’ part of the contract is to take up the help that we offer. While the vast majority of jobseekers live up to their part of the contract, there are a small minority who are reluctant to do everything they can reasonably be expected to do to get back into work.

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

rose—

[Mr Hoban]

In a moment. For that group of people, it is right that we have the power to mandate them on to different back-to-work schemes, which we think will help them improve their chances of finding work. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) supports that sentiment.

[Mr Byrne]

A couple of years ago now, the Secretary of State gave an assurance to the House that individual jobcentres or jobcentre districts did not have targets for sanctioning jobseekers and that there were not any kind of league tables that ranked jobcentres or districts for sanctions. Will the Minister confirm that that is still his Department’s policy?

[Mr Hoban]

Absolutely. There are no league tables in place. We do not set targets for sanctions; I have made that point in previous discussions with, I think, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). The decisions that need to be made are the right ones. They need to be based on whether people have breached the agreements they have set out with the jobcentre, and there are no targets in place.

Let me set out in a bit more detail the programmes that exist. The programmes might vary from a training course that the Government have paid for so that the claimant gains some essential skills that will increase their chances of finding work, or they might involve a community work placement, whereby claimants can pick up the basic disciplines, such as turning up on time, that every reasonable employer will expect.

We also know that those schemes work. Recent research on our mandatory work activity scheme found that nine in 10 participants said that they better recognised the benefits of a working routine, and around three quarters said that their confidence and ability to work as a team had improved. More than half said that they felt more positive about work than they did before attending.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hoban]

I want to make some more progress.

The Bill will ensure that the Government will not have to refund sanctions on the basis of the Court of Appeal’s judgment and will be able to make a decision in cases where no sanction decision has yet been made.

As I have previously stated, the Government have applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. However, to ensure that we are not faced with having to repay benefit sanctions, we have had to press ahead with this fast-track legislation.

I would like to put it on record that I am grateful for the constructive way in which the right hon. Members for Birmingham, Hodge Hill and for East Ham have approached this topic. In supporting the Bill, they have allowed us to expedite its progress, thus safeguarding taxpayers’ money.

Following discussions last week with the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, we will be proposing two Government amendments in Committee. The first will reiterate in the Bill that a claimant’s appeal rights against a sanction decision remain unchanged in all matters, apart from those covered by the High Court and Court of Appeal judgments. For example, when a claimant felt that they had good cause for not participating in one of these schemes, they would still be able to appeal to the first tier tribunal on the basis of good cause. That is a helpful reconfirmation of the right of claimants to appeal. Similarly, the Bill will not overturn appeals that have succeeded on the basis of good cause. I hope that our amendment on that provides the clarification that the right hon. Gentleman seeks.

[Mr Byrne]

Will the Minister now confirm that the grounds of good cause in respect of appeals will remain undisturbed and will include the grounds covered in DWP guidance, which says that good cause can include an unsuitable course, full-time study, health and caring reasons, travel time that is inappropriately long, religious belief, bereavement, attending court and other emergencies? Will he also confirm that, ultimately, the timetable for lodging appeals will remain at 13 months?

[Mr Hoban]

We have been very clear in this amendment. We are confirming the right to appeal, and appeals can proceed on the grounds that are usually available in these situations, which the right hon. Gentleman has listed. The Bill does not change people’s right to appeal, save for appeals based on High Court or Supreme Court judgments.

The second Government amendment that we will bring forward in Committee will require the Secretary of State to appoint an independent person to carry out a review of the operation of the sanctions validated by this legislation during the first 12 months after Royal Assent. That review will report as soon as possible after the 12-month period, and the report will be laid before Parliament. I hope that these assurances are satisfactory.

To conclude, this Bill is necessary to ensure that the taxpayer does not have to repay up to £130 million in benefits lost through the failure of claimants to take up the Government’s offer of support. It is vital that scarce public resources are targeted at those who need and deserve them most. It would be unacceptable for claimants who have failed to take all reasonable steps to increase their chances of finding work to obtain an undeserved windfall payment. This Bill will prevent that, and I commend it to the House.

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

This is a very dark day for the once-proud DWP, and it beggars belief that this once-proud Department has found itself in this position under the Secretary of State’s leadership. The organisation of back-to-work schemes is now in a state of total chaos. Once upon a time, back in 2010, the Secretary of State boasted that the Work programme would be the

“most comprehensive, integrated work programme in existence, certainly, since the war”.—[Official Report, 22 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 17.]

What do we have instead? We have a Work programme that is literally worse than doing nothing. Just 2.3% of people referred on to the programme have found sustained jobs. As has been said, the Public Accounts Committee stated—

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Lady will want to reflect on this. The Public Accounts Committee said this about the Work programme:

“Actual performance was even below the Department’s assessment of the non-intervention rate—the number of people that would have found sustained work had the Work programme not been running.”

Maybe the hon. Lady can tell me whether she is proud of that.

[Jane Ellison]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but I was going to tell him that this morning the Work and Pensions Committee was at Willesden Jobcentre Plus. I asked the staff running the programme there, helping people get back to work, how they felt about their efforts being described as worse than nothing. They said it was deeply demoralising and incredibly insulting to their efforts on behalf of the unemployed.

[Mr Byrne]

The truth is that jobcentre staff have so little confidence in the Work programme that they are not referring people to Work programme contactors at anywhere near the rate the Department has estimated. That is the reality of how jobcentre staff feel.

We have had universal credit now beginning its descent into universal chaos, and now we have the news that the regulations designed to encourage jobseekers to take work were so badly drafted that the Court of Appeal struck them down and the Department may as a result be on the hook to repay £130 million in sanctions. The judges could not have been more unequivocal. Here is what they had to say:

“The 2011 Regulations must be quashed.”

I therefore put it to the Secretary of State that this is a day of shame for his Department. The House of Commons Library cannot find an instance of DWP legislation being struck down in this fashion since 1996, under the last Conservative Government. If the Secretary of State had delusions of adequacy, they have been swept away by today’s proposed legislation.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore explain to claimants, trade unions and everybody who has looked at this Bill why the Labour party will be abstaining today? If this Work programme is no better than no work programme at all, why on earth is the Labour party sitting on its hands?

[Mr Byrne]

I will address that point directly, as the answer is very simple: because this Bill restores the general legal power of the DWP to issue sanctions. It is a broad sui generis power that has been in place since 1911. I will be interested to hear later the hon. Gentleman’s argument on why he thinks the power to issue sanctions, which has been in place since 1911, should now be struck down for the period in question.

The worst aspect of all this is that the Secretary of State was warned that he was heading for a failure not simply in this House, not simply by commentators opposed to his plans, and not simply by people who had a profound disagreement with him, but by the very specialist Committee he set up to advise him on these questions. This is what the Social Security Advisory Committee said about the 2011 regulations:

“SSAC ask why the Department did not opt to narrow the scope of the original regulations”,

Indeed, it was, of course, their broad and unspecified content that the Court of Appeal objected to.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I want to take my right hon. Friend back to the recent intervention of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), from the Scottish National party Benches. Has my right hon. Friend picked up from those comments that the SNP is totally opposed to sanctions of any kind?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am afraid that no other conclusion can be drawn from that intervention.

The Secretary of State said to us in the House a couple of weeks ago:

“That advice came to us; it was checked and it said that the regulations were fine.”—[Official Report, 11 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 19.]

Well, either the lawyers are bad or the Secretary of State made the wrong judgment. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that there are a huge number of questions that the Secretary of State must now answer.

If this were the only recent example of such incompetence by a Government Department, we might look on it more sympathetically, but all of us clearly remember the west coast main line debacle that cost taxpayers so much money and all of us remember that the Department for Transport responded by appointing an independent reviewer to get to the bottom of exactly what went wrong and how so much public money was put at risk. That is the response we must see now from the DWP. There must be an independent inquiry into how the Department got this so badly wrong.

[Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

May I bring the right hon. Gentleman back to the Bill? Does he agree with its impact assessment, which states that a retrospective transfer of £130 million of

“public money to this group of claimants would represent poor value to the taxpayer and will not help those unemployed enter employment”?

Surely, in the current climate he should welcome the swift action taken by the Government. Listening to his interventions and his speech, I am not sure that he or Labour are ready to be custodians of this country’s public finances.

[Mr Byrne]

Right—so a Member of a Government who have just put at risk £130 million of public money says that we would not be safe custodians of public money.

The Secretary of State was given the judgment by the Court of Appeal on 12 February. Weeks later, there was the request for urgent legislation, please. That is highly unsatisfactory. Tests for retrospective legislation have been repeatedly set out in this House and the other place. Tomorrow, the Lords’ Constitution Committee will opine on this Bill. I suspect it will have harsh things to say about its rushed nature which, because it is retrospective and set to a fast timetable, represents the worst of all worlds.

The Secretary of State will be aware, like me, of the principles set down by the Constitution Committee in its 15th report, where it opines on fast-track legislation. There is a need to maintain clear, transparent parliamentary scrutiny, and to maintain “good law”. The right of interested parties to put forward views must be observed. There is a need to ensure that legislation is a proportionate, justified and appropriate response, and is set out so that fundamental constitutional rights are not jeopardised. Crucially, the policy-making process within Government should be transparent. I look forward to hearing how any one of those principles is honoured by the process before us. The test is all the sharper, in that the Secretary of State is in this pickle because he rushed the legislation, against the recommendation of his advisers.

The test for fast-tracked retrospective legislation is the toughest of all. It was a principle the Lords set down in their report on criminal evidence legislation in 2008, which said:

“Legislation to make lawful an action that was done without legal authority…needs to be scrutinised carefully.”

My concern is that this timetable does not deliver that.

At the heart of this debate is the question whether the programmes the Government have in place, which rest on the power the Secretary of State is seeking from us, are in any way effective.

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that many people in this country will be shocked to learn that the official Opposition want to vote for this Bill precisely because they want to impose sanctions on people on workfare? Let me give him the example of a 58-year-old constituent of mine who has been unemployed for seven months. She was told that she had to travel miles to work in a Scope charity shop in Worthing or lose benefits. She could not afford to get to Worthing, so she offered to work in the Scope shop in Brighton, but the jobcentre would not allow it. Should she be sanctioned?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Lady raises an extremely important point, and that is why we have sought to ensure that the Bill includes our safeguards, which preserve the right to appeal with good cause, and the 13-month appeal window during which people can lodge objections to the sanctions regime. To answer the hon. Lady directly, I do believe that the DWP should be equipped with the power to issue sanctions. That general foundation has been in the hands of Ministers for more than a century. The new deal programmes and the future jobs fund that Labour put in place had sanctions attached to them—indeed, they were tightened by the Welfare Reform Act 2009—and I do not believe that those powers should be empty ones. However, nor do I believe they should be in the ether—in the hands of Ministers who have no obligation to put in place genuine back-to-work programmes that are better than doing nothing, unlike today’s Work programme.

[Derek Twigg]

Is there not evidence in our constituencies of people being taken off benefits for no good reason? For example, a constituent who was attending the funeral of a close relative had her benefits stopped. People with mental health issues, particularly young men, are kicked off benefit for no good reason.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to flag that up. He will know that the DWP’s own guidance says that “good cause” for appealing against a sanction decision includes bereavement where the claimant was arranging or attending a funeral of a close relative or friend. That is why it is vital that we seek to protect these appeal rights in the Bill.

The ultimate test of whether a back-to-work programme is working is perhaps the one the Secretary of State set out when he spoke in Easterhouse all those years ago. He said that

“we need a jobs revolution. Every working-age adult capable of earning a decent living for themselves and their dependants must be helped to have the opportunity to do so”.

Since he took office, unemployment has increased in three quarters of the estates with the worst unemployment levels in Britain. It has not got better; it has got worse.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

More than half the first cohort on the Work programme are in work. Why does the right hon. Gentleman describe that as a failure?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman would do well to pay attention to the DWP’s own statistics and to the judgment of the Public Accounts Committee. They are categorical; they do not hem and haw or hedge their words; they make it clear that the Work programme today is worse than doing nothing. On the estates where unemployment is worst, the situation has got worse, not better since the Secretary of State took office. By any measure, that must be a failure.

That is why we say there has to be a different macro-economic policy. Unemployment is high because there are not enough jobs to go round. My constituency has the highest youth unemployment of any constituency in the country. There are 30 people chasing every single job. There are not enough jobs to go round, and we need a different plan for growth and jobs—an argument that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has set out with some power. We also need a different plan at the DWP. It is now Labour authorities and the Labour party nationally that are setting out the way forward for this Government. We have said that it would be wise to put a tax on bankers’ bonuses because we know we could use that money to get more than 100,000 young people back into work quickly. That is decisive action, which we hope to see from the Chancellor tomorrow. If anybody rejects an offer of a real job with real wages and real training, sure, perhaps they should face sanctions. But let us be clear: young people today deserve a real choice of a real job with real wages, but that is being denied them by this Government.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to me a second time. If I have read the Library briefing correctly, the JSA claimant count in his constituency fell over the last year by 6.7%.

[Mr Byrne]

That is cold comfort to a constituency with the highest youth unemployment in Britain. Does the hon. Gentleman know what people at my local jobcentre say when I visit it? Can he guess? They say, “I wish this Government would bring back the future jobs fund because it was the best programme we ever ran.” What a shame his party cancelled it, and that is why we propose its restoration.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I will in a moment, if the Secretary of State will allow me.

When we look around the country, we now see Labour councils leading the charge to get young people back into work. In Sheffield, they are looking at how to intervene better in schools to help prevent young people from becoming unemployed. In Wakefield, they are bringing together colleges and businesses in a new way to get people back to work. In Leeds, there are new programmes to help get young people back into work. In Manchester, there is now a UCAS-style clearing house to get people back into apprenticeships. In Bradford, there are now industrial centres of excellence that bring the council, colleges and young people together. In Glasgow, the Labour council is guaranteeing a job for any young person out of work for too long. In Wales, they are making the same kind of commitment. In Birmingham, the Labour council—my own authority—has brought together a coalition of the willing to make progress on youth unemployment. In Liverpool, there is now an apprenticeship training agency, set up by the council and a local college. In Sandwell, Newham and Cardiff, Labour councils, local colleges and business communities have set up job brokerages. That is the kind of decisive action the Secretary of State can learn from. Perhaps he will give a commitment to go and look at what I have seen first hand and incorporate it into his policy.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Youth unemployment is lower than when the previous Government left office and there are more people in work than ever before. He is extolling the virtues of our localisation agenda, and I congratulate him on that.

I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman about a simple point. He has laid out for the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and others why his party will, by and large, not vote against the Bill. In doing so, he has said constantly how much he opposes emergency legislation and how terrible it is. Will he confirm that under Labour, there were 12 cases of emergency legislation being brought through this House in a hurry? Is he not crying crocodile tears on that point?

[Mr Byrne]

No. The Secretary of State should set out the detailed individual circumstances of every piece of legislation that he has referred to. He knows as well as I do what underpinned them. The point, as well he knows, is that he is making retrospective, fast-track legislation that touches on rights of appeal and property rights, all because of the mistake that he and his Ministers made in 2011 in bodging the regulations so badly that the Court of Appeal has struck them down.

To conclude, the assurances that we have heard from the Minister this afternoon are extremely important. The safeguards for appeal rights that have been set out are vital to ensure that people who are hit by sanctions have a wide-ranging set of good causes that can trigger an appeal.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

In a moment.

First, ensuring that the appeal window of 13 months is preserved is crucial for people who are hit by sanctions. Secondly, as has been referred to by my hon. Friends, it is vital that there is an independent review of the sanctions regime. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) will set out the questions that we believe need to be answered.

I have heard the Minister’s assurances this afternoon that there is no series of targets and that there are no league tables. We will hear further evidence on that point over the course of the debates in this House. I hope that the assurances that we have heard this afternoon withstand those tests.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Is it not the case that it is not only the low-paid, but the non-paid that Labour are not backing? By sitting on their hands, Labour Members are helping the Government to ensure that the people who are already being affected by the bedroom tax get no further support. It is worse than two bald men fighting over a comb.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

It was the Labour party that opposed the bedroom tax when the Welfare Reform Bill went through this House, it is the Labour party that has consistently voted in opposition to the bedroom tax, and it is the Labour party that has forced the concessions out of the Government to protect foster parents and armed forces families.

In conclusion, it beggars belief that the Secretary of State has had to come before the House to fast-track retrospective legislation to fix a problem that he created when he got things wrong all those months and years ago. That is why it is so important that there is an independent Laidlaw-style review to get to the bottom of what went wrong. We need answers on how the Secretary of State has landed himself in this position. We need those answers to come before this House so that we can come to a judgment about whether he is still fit to be Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall respond to the debate.

We have heard powerful speeches this afternoon from my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and good speeches from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) and the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). This is a day of acute embarrassment for the Government. They have bodged their regulations so badly that they have been struck down by the Court of Appeal, yet not once this afternoon have we heard a word of apology from the Minister for bringing forward retrospective legislation of this type on a timetable so fast that proper scrutiny is constrained. As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, not once have we heard even a word of contrition for the position they have put the House in.

Today’s debate has clarified one important point. The core of the Bill concerns the long-standing foundational power of the Department to issue sanctions. We think that the Department should, indeed, be equipped with such a power, but that is not to say for a moment that we subscribe to, or agree with, the programmes that it has built on those foundations. We heard from the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark that the programmes now in place, not least the mandatory work activity, are seriously flawed, are malfunctioning and are not getting people back to work, especially in those communities where unemployment is at its worst.

We will continue to argue that the Government’s back to work programmes need to be improved. Young people should not simply be confronted with the option of mandatory work activity and very little else. We do not believe that the Work programme is delivering. We believe that a better choice would be a jobs guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed, and that the country could afford it if the Government had the bottle to introduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses and change the pension perks for the very richest. That would go a long way to delivering the kinds of changes that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark spoke about.

It is important that on the foundations with which we equip the DWP we build good, strong back to work programmes that get young people and the long-term unemployed back to work. We have heard today from my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and other of my hon. Friends, including in interventions from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), about the clear evidence that the sanctioning regime is malfunctioning. That is why the commitment to an independent review of the regime is so important. As the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark said, the system is clearly failing.

We will continue to argue that the review should be put in place, and when it is up and running, we will be leading the evidence gathering to ensure that the House is fully aware of what is going on. We will ensure that there is a clear and loud argument that the back to work programmes in this country should be better and properly financed, and that those who have the latitude to take part in them should be asked to contribute. We want to ensure that more people get back into jobs; that is why we are in the Labour party. That is the argument that we will take to the Government over the course of the next few days.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, we will not stand by and watch the demonisation of the poor in this country. We will stand up for vulnerable people and for the things they need, and we will stand against the attacks now being perpetrated against them by this Government.