Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Ian C. Lucas

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I am going to make a tiny bit of progress once I have given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas).

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What Government Members do not seem to understand is that the whole rationale for this Bill is the need to address their failure to deliver on the economic promises they made when they first came into government. The Bill is necessary only because the Government have failed economically.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When the Chancellor came to the House back in December, he was forced to admit that somehow, for some reason, growth had eluded him once again—it had got away. He brought forward a package of measures that was so focused on generating jobs that the Office for Budget Responsibility looked at it and revised the claimant count for the forecast period, not down but up by 300,000. The OBR also spelled out how much this was going to cost us: it is an eye-watering figure. The heroic efforts of the Chancellor and the Secretary of State to get the claimant count down over the next few years is costing us £6 billion in higher welfare bills, and today’s Bill shows us exactly who is going to pick up the tab.

Disability Benefits and Social Care

Debate between Liam Byrne and Ian C. Lucas

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

That was part of a reform programme that included £500 million for modernisation. This is the point. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is missing it. The argument that we are prosecuting this afternoon is not about whether Remploy needs to change. Remploy does need to change, but is now the right time for it do so, given that long-term unemployment is approaching 1 million? Where are the real plans to ensure that these factories have a future?

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

We are engaged in a consultation that has been taking place over a particularly difficult period. During the council elections, it was very difficult for councils to become engaged in the process, and in the course of the consultation the Department changed the terms that were available to staff and prospective purchasers. Will the Secretary of State recognise that businesses need a reasonable length of time in which to consider the facts, and will the Minister confirm that she has considered whether the decision may be legally challengeable?

[Mr Byrne]

Let me deal with my hon. Friend’s intervention by listing a series of practical measures and steps that I think that the Government could and should now take.

First, why do the Government not honour every letter of the Sayce report? Why do they not honour the recommendations of Liz Sayce that factories should have six months in which to develop a business plan and two years before a subsidy is withdrawn, that the viability of Remploy factories should be decided by an independent panel of business and enterprise experts—with trade union involvement—rather than by unilateral action from the DWP, and that expert entrepreneurial and business support should be provided to develop the businesses into independent enterprises? Each of those recommendations needs to be implemented.

Secondly—here I come to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—the full 90-day timetable for consultation should be re-started, given that the terms were radically changed halfway through the process.

Thirdly—this is relevant to the points that have been made about procurement—may I ask what steps the Secretary of State has taken to draw together local authorities, as well as central Government Departments, to ensure that any extra work that can be put in a Remploy factory is put in a Remploy factory? Surely we should be exhausting all those opportunities before we move on.

Fourthly, we should take a more flexible approach to each and every factory. The fact is that some factories will need more support in order to continue, while others will need less. And fifthly, we should review the subsidy per worker offered to Remploy workers, given that it may be different from the subsidy that is available under Work Choice.

If the Secretary of State is in any doubt about what these factories do, I will go and do a day’s work in a Remploy factory, and I hope that he will join me. I think that we should invite the Sunday Express as well, for good measure.