Unemployment

Debate between Liam Byrne and Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will in a moment, but first I want to make one point about the Work programme.

The Work programme is a new scheme that builds on the flexible new deal. We have said that if it works and delivers value for money we will keep it in place, but the Minister must accept that worries about the programme are growing. [Interruption.] I am delighted that the Secretary of State has been able to join us to hear this important point. The Minister for unemployment has repeatedly told the House that he cannot produce statistics on how well the Work programme is doing, and I completely understand his caution. I think that he is the only Minister who has been formally warned by the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, who last year said that the Minister’s use of figures was

“likely to damage public trust in official statistics”.

No doubt he has repented for that sin and is seeking redemption, and I understand that he apologised and is certain not to repeat the offence. If the Work programme was working, surely the Department’s statistics would show that more and more people were flowing off benefits and into work. That is a simple test we can apply, but the problem is that the figures do not show that.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

On that basis, how does my right hon. Friend, as a fellow Birmingham MP, react to the fact that in the past year, between November 2010 and November 2011, the number of young people in Birmingham claiming jobseeker’s allowance increased by 19%, which is the worst figure for all core cities in the country?

[Mr Byrne]

That is an extremely serious problem for Birmingham, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to it, but there is a more widespread problem if the rate of people flowing off benefits into work is not rising. Research by the House of Commons Library for my office, which we are publishing this afternoon, shows that fewer people are flowing from benefits into work than at any point since 1998. That fall coincides with the Government’s decision last year to cancel the flexible new deal and the future jobs fund. Since January, when the future jobs fund ended, the percentage of people flowing off benefits and into work has fallen by a fifth. Between May and August last year, when the new scheme was being worked up, 86,000 fewer people came off benefits and into work than the year before. Surely Government Members would accept that that is simply not good enough.