Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[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.

Universal Credit

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is to the credit of the Secretary of State and the Government that, as we have seen so far today, the issue being debated is not whether we should try to introduce universal credit into the welfare equation. The level of the debate has been fascinating, and I commend the Chair of the Select Committee on her contribution. I was particularly taken by her succinct and well made observation that whichever political party brings in the change, there will be unforeseen consequences, and the issue is the Department’s ability to deal with those consequences. We cannot do much more about them—by their very nature they are unforeseen—but the House will rightly look to the Department to work as assiduously and quickly as possible, because they will affect people’s real lives.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson). I have yet to agree with her on anything, but she touched on the subject of individual fraud. I do not wish to alarm her, but I calculate that the bank account running the universal credit system will be one of the largest in the world. I hope our security systems and advice are up to scratch, because that would be an expensive fraud for all of us. I am not making light of it, but individual applications may be a smaller part of the problem if our security advisers have taken care of that one. I am sure that they have and that there is nothing the Minister needs to lose sleep over.

It is to the credit of the House that, in discussing whether universal credit is a good idea, we have not entered into yah-boo politics. However, while the House rightly focuses on vulnerable citizens who may be caught up in the changes, it is important that we do not reduce the issue to a denominator that means we should not press ahead with them. We should all aspire to change, and not hold back because of a fear that smaller groups have the potential to lose out. Of course, they must not lose out as a result of some of the issues I will come on to talk about.

It is important that we distinguish between vulnerable people and those who presently do not have skills. I am not sure that someone who cannot complete an online form is vulnerable, but I argue that they are unskilled. Our goal surely must be for 100% of benefit claimants to be able to claim online, notwithstanding the hon. Lady’s self-declared inability to do so, something I understand perfectly and empathise with. It must be our goal. It would be more economical and user-friendly once people are conversant with it.

In my constituency, if I accept the statistics suggested for those unable to complete a claim online, 600 out of 3,500 claimants may not be able to do so. However, I would rather find a system that suits the vast majority of people, and then work hard to bring others up to scratch. It is good to see the use of computers and advice being available in jobcentres. Three computers in each jobcentre may not be enough—although I suspect we will probably have more in areas of greater need, and fewer in areas with less need—and it is right that the telephone service will be in place for a considerable time. However, I want us to aspire to better systems and not be held back. It is crucial to seek to get everyone online not just to meet the needs of universal credit, but for the development of personal skills. We cannot run from the digital age. It is here and we will all have to use it whether we like it or not. Whether we are luddites or reformers, it is here and that development must be one of the fringe benefits of what we are trying to do.

On direct payments to landlords, my understanding—I am very happy to be corrected if I am wrong—is that under the Government’s pilots the majority of people are meeting their rent payments in full and on time. My understanding is that in the first four months, from more than 6,000 social tenants who were paid their housing benefit directly, rent collection rates stood at 92%. If that is accurate, it indicates that the pilots are travelling in the right direction. Of course, that means 8% are not doing well. However, I support the view taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who argued that we will be able to invest more time to bring that 8%—if that is what the figure turns out to be—the care and attention they need. I recognise the cynicism mentioned by the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn, but that is what we are here to deal with. We should not allow ourselves to repeat the mistakes of the past. We should learn from the past and be able to put extra time and resource into looking after those people so that they become more self-reliant.

On self-reliance, in the past decade or 12 years or so, approximately 2 million children were brought up in households where no one was working. No Government ever set out to achieve such a thing; it has happened for a number of reasons. However, it has contributed enormously to creating a state of mind whereby so many people look at what they cannot do, as opposed to what they might aspire to do. From a life of dependency, I am sure that they would prefer to move to a life of independence. I welcome the inherent measures in universal credit and the wider welfare reforms, because they enable people to move towards taking responsibility for improving their own lives, finances and skill sets. The state will never be able to do everything for everyone—that philosophy is wrong. We have almost empowered a generation to believe that the state will provide them with an answer to their problems. That is not the case in the real world—we know that. I therefore welcome the measures warmly, as they will provide a step-change for people towards independence and taking more control over their lives.

I listen carefully to the members of the Select Committee, who have been extremely thoughtful in discussing potential areas of weakness. As a constituency MP, like all of us in this House, I inevitably attract people who are caught up in grey areas. We have a duty—indeed, a passion—to help advise Government where those grey areas are and to make recommendations for changes. Sometimes we fight the bureaucracy that can so often stifle individuals, many of them vulnerable, into almost giving up hope of receiving the help that we have decided they deserve. I fully anticipate that there will still be work to do, but I engage constructively in that process, because I recognise that any system that is introduced is bound to create a grey area in which some people will be trapped. However, that is not a reason not to proceed; it is simply a reason to be flexible and to move forward, advise and gain consent to deal with those issues.

I conclude by saying that the House is at its best when it is arguing about detail and trying to highlight potential flaws. I welcome the cross-Chamber support for the big idea of this reform. The shadow Secretary of State has been characteristically robust on many occasions, and I am sure he is being so on Twitter right now. Some of his public remarks predicting complete doom and gloom for the system are perhaps uncharacteristic, because the mood of the House seems to be, quite sensibly, “We are behind this. The Government may not have got everything right and we will watch them on that score.” That is probably the right way to go and I hope that he genuinely believes that this is the right thing to do.

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

The hon. Gentleman is right that we support this idea in principle, but we have grave and growing concerns about implementation. He will have seen reports in The Guardian that prompt questions about whether there are IT personnel or contractors at Accenture, Atos Origin, Oracle, Red Hat, CACI or IBM UK who have been stepped down, or in any way notified by the Department, that they are to “suspend work”. We hope the Minister will be able to return that in his remarks.

[Nick de Bois]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

The right hon. Gentleman refers to 6,700 people in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). While he is bandying statistics around, he might be interested to know that there are 38,000 people in work who have benefited from the increase in the tax threshold. The way to raise incomes is not to have inflation of state support but to get people back into work where they can keep more of their own income.

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do—he is a numerate man and he understands the figures involved in this debate—that the personal allowance does not compensate for the whack that has been delivered to most working families in this country. The House of Commons Library says they will be £280 a year poorer by next year and the Institute for Fiscal Studies says they will be £534 poorer by 2015-16. He has to get real about the impact of his Government’s policies, because they are hurting 7,000 of his constituents.

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. However difficult these decisions are, if we look more closely at the numbers, we see that he is not highlighting the fact that people earning £50,000 or £60,000—which most people would consider a good income—are included in his figures for tax credits. That is disingenuous and merely a reflection of the trap and the legacy of the shadow Chancellor’s former friend, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown).

[Mr Byrne]

That is complete nonsense. This Government are taking £14 billion out of tax credits and the Bill proposes to take another £4 billion. That will hurt 7,000 of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, at a time when millionaires are being given a tax cut. I simply do not understand how he can justify that, either in this House or on the streets of Enfield.

Jobs and Social Security

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Work programme has been an abject failure in her constituency. Only 1.4% of people in her constituency who went into the programme were attached to any kind of sustainable job outcome. We know from Department for Work and Pensions research last week that the future jobs fund was a roaring success, delivering more than £7,500 of wider benefit to society. It was such a tragedy that the Government closed it down. Thank heavens that Labour is in power up and down the country, including in Wales, where we are building on the lessons of the future jobs fund, making it better and stronger, and now making a difference for young people across her constituency and beyond in Wales.

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

Before we get too engrossed in bandying statistics around, is it not worth remembering that a job outcome is measured over a six-month period? The Work programme has been in place for a year; therefore, the early statistics will inevitably not reflect its success accurately. Indeed, we could actually discount almost half the 800,000, simply because getting a six-month job outcome is almost impossible.

[Mr Byrne]

I am afraid that prompts the question why the DWP set the target in the first place. Indeed, yesterday on the television news that I watched, the Secretary of State made great play of the fact that the Work programme was only in its first year. However, the fact that the targets were set by the DWP was somehow missing from what he said yesterday. Indeed, they were targets for the first year. The challenge only gets greater in the second year. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the tender documents that the DWP put out, he will see that in the second year the Work programme has to get 27.5% of those on jobseeker’s allowance into sustainable job outcomes. That is about 10 times what the Government have managed to deliver in the first year. So I am afraid the argument that the Work programme is just warming up simply will not do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick de Bois]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman would accept, on reflection, that in achieving the goal of helping people to secure full-time employment, it is inevitable in these difficult times that some of them will need to take jobs that might not last six months in order to help them to get back into the Work programme cycle. The inevitable consequence of that is that we will do far better in the next year. So be it: let us celebrate that.

[Mr Byrne]

There is an element of me that feels sorry for the Secretary of State. He is operating in an economy whose recovery has been throttled by the Chancellor, while another Cabinet colleague, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is implementing the biggest cuts to those local councils where there are the fewest jobs. So yes, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions faces a difficult challenge, but it was his Department that set out the bald statistic—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) cannot hear me because of the chatter from those on his Front Bench. It was the Secretary of State’s Department that said that if the Government did nothing, 5% of people on long-term benefits could flow into work. The Work programme has delivered less than that, and the benchmarks will get stiffer next year.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

We have indeed had discussions with our colleagues in the Welsh Government, who accept the importance of introducing different arrangements for London and other parts of the country and of a solution that recognises the need to localise the benefits system.

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

I am still confused about exactly what the right hon. Gentleman’s policy is. He may not know that the average salary in his constituency is less than £18,000 a year. Does he propose to reduce the cap to £18,000 in his constituency, or will his constituents be gutted to learn that he is defending the fact that they can obtain more on benefits than they can on the average salary in his constituency?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman would be wise to look to his own policy. I suspect that some people in his constituency would be better off on benefits than in work on the cap that is being suggested. Is that not true? Yes or no?

[Nick de Bois]

The right hon. Gentleman might like to know that according to the Office for National Statistics, the average annual salary in Enfield North is £25,500, which is close. I can assure him that many of my constituents do not think it fair that while they are earning a gross salary of £25,000, it is possible to receive the equivalent of £35,000 on benefits, which means that work does not pay.

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman will accept that there will be people, under the £26,000 cap, who could be better off on benefits than in work in some parts of the country, so surely he too will admit the wisdom of having a different cap in different parts of the country. That is why we suggest that principle, and why we suggest that an independent commission looks at the levels. We have seen the muddle that the Government have got into—a muddle that has cost the Exchequer £80 million this year, and will cost it £50 million in the year after that; that is the cost of sorting out the homelessness that it has, over the past year, been telling the House would not arise. If the Government tried to take politics out of the issue just for a moment, and focused on the good old-fashioned business of getting the policy right, they might be in a better position to put in place a cap that does not backfire.

Living Standards

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I will indeed come on to that topic in a moment, but I first want to talk about the impact on children of yesterday’s Budget. We knew before yesterday’s Budget that all the gains made in reducing child poverty over the last decade were set to be wiped out by the decisions of just the last year. Once upon a time the Prime Minister told us he would not increase child poverty. That was the rhetoric, but today the Institute for Fiscal Studies has given us the reality. It has already said that almost one in four children will be in poverty by the end of the decade, thanks to this Government. That was before the attack on working families in yesterday’s Budget. A generation of children will not thank this Government because hundreds of thousands more of them are now destined to grow up poor.

Then we had yesterday’s Budget, reversing any improvement in child tax credit for the poorest, and robbing 5.5 million families of £110 per child. There will now be 13 cuts to children’s benefits beginning in March, which next year will take out £2.5 billion in benefits for children. That is almost eight times the level of benefit cuts this year. Almost £12 billion is coming out of children’s benefits over the course of this Parliament; that is £1.5 billion more than is coming off our nation’s bankers. I therefore have to ask this question: what kind of Government take more off children than they take off bankers?

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

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to answer that question?

[Nick de Bois]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not recall that in his Government’s 13 years in office between 1997 and 2010 they increased personal tax allowances by only £2,400, whereas in only 18 months we have increased people’s earnings by raising those allowances by £1,800, and we will go further by the end of this Parliament by raising the figure to £10,000? Is that not a major contribution to addressing lower pay?

[Mr Byrne]

No, because what comes with that is the biggest raid ever on the benefits of children and families. Let us consider the bill that will be paid by families under yesterday’s announcements. An average family on the minimum wage with two kids will lose £320 a year as a result of the changes made yesterday. They would only ever gain £120 a year through the increases in tax thresholds to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Overwhelmingly, poorer families and children in this country are now getting poorer as a result of his Government’s Budget.

No wonder Save the Children said yesterday:

“For many families the scrapped £110 increase in Child Tax Credit could mean the difference between putting food on the table for their children or having them go hungry.”

The Child Poverty Action Group said:

“Britain’s poorest families have been abandoned today and left to face the worst…the government has actively decided to let child poverty rise.”

Those on the Treasury Bench should be ashamed of themselves; they should be ashamed of what they have done to children in this country. Labour will be the party that stands up for a fair deal for working parents.

The scale of the cuts to children’s benefits is not the only story. There is more. Let us consider the cuts to working tax credits for working families. Working families are already in line for seven big cuts to their tax credits next year. That was going to lose them more than £1.7 billion, but that was not enough for the Chancellor, so yesterday they got an eighth cut to their working tax credits. They will now lose almost £2 billion next year. That is almost double the cuts they received last year.

Some 2 million families in our country now face a double hit, with the cuts to child tax credits and the freezing of the working tax credit. There is therefore a great deal of extra squeeze that will hit working families, but I want to flag up one cut in particular. It is the subject of a Westminster Hall debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), and I want the Secretary of State to reflect on it further, as I think it will have consequences that he would not intend. One of the changes he will make next year is to increase the number of hours a working couple must work in order to get tax credits. At present, they can qualify for tax credits if they work 16 hours a week. From next April, they will need to work 24 hours a week. At present, however, companies are not handing out extra shifts. Many families that will be affected work in the retail sector. If anything, big retailers are cutting back on their employees’ hours, not increasing them. A family that is on the minimum wage for 16 hours a week might bring in just over £5,000. Working tax credits and child tax credit might increase their take-home pay to about £11,000. If they cannot get an extra shift, all of that working tax credit will be gone. Those families may well find themselves better off on jobseeker’s allowance.

We must not create a situation in which cuts to tax credits mean families are better off on benefits than in work. I am sure that is not the Secretary of State’s intention, and I urge him to look at this matter in more detail before those cuts bite in April next year.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend speaks with some passion, because he is right. We cannot tolerate any longer a situation in which long-term youth unemployment continues to rise at today’s pace.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

I shall, because the rise in long-term youth unemployment in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency is three times the size of the rise in mine.

[Nick de Bois]

If the right hon. Gentleman is as interested as I am in developing sustainable long-term jobs to deal with youth unemployment in particular, does he agree with and welcome rolling back the heavy hand of employment rules and legislation, including vexatious employment tribunals, and will he commit his Front Benchers to do that and even go further, so that it is easier to employ people?

[Mr Byrne]

Before I became a Member, I started a business. I know what it is like to start a business with two people around a kitchen table, to grow it, build it, take on new staff and do well, but dealing with regulation was the easy bit; selling and making a profit was the tough bit, and that is why we need urgent action to get growth back into the economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

I know that my right hon. Friend will agree that it is curious that while unemployment is going down in America, the eurozone and Japan, it is going up in this country.

[Nick de Bois]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Byrne]

I will give way in a moment, because I want to turn to apprenticeships, which the Minister has mentioned. Apprenticeships have sometimes been seen in this debate as the Department’s silver bullet, so let us be clear: ours was the party that rescued apprenticeships. We inherited 65,000 apprenticeships; the figure was over 260,000 when we left office. This year, 85% of new apprentices will not be young people, but people over 25. Leaked documents seen by The Guardian show that Ministers have been warned that apprenticeships are actually a re-badging of existing jobs. It turns out that about 11,000 of this year’s new places have gone to 16 to 18-year-olds. I should point out for the House that 205,000 of those aged 16 to 17 are now on the dole. If they all applied for one of those apprenticeships, they would have a 5% success rate. Getting into Oxford university is less competitive than that. Given those figures, an ally of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said that the Chancellor thought that apprenticeships were

“a rare piece of good news, but it’s turning out to be a con”.

The unnamed ally is right: it is a con. We have a Work programme that is all programme and no work, a youth jobs scheme that costs less than the stationery budget and an apprenticeship scheme that is harder to get into than Oxford university. No wonder overall long-term youth unemployment is going through the roof. Let us hear an answer from the Minister.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Liam Byrne and Nick de Bois

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise that question, which underlines the dilemma so many young people now confront. With this morning’s numbers now on the public record, it is clear that young people face a summer of anxiety. If they do not make the grades to get into college—and we know the number of college places is now more limited—they will face a labour market that is tougher than ever. That is a worry for them and their families, and for older residents in this country who, having worked hard all their life, are now concerned about who will pay for the future.

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

Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that there is one significant distinction in respect of the figures he is discussing, in that there was massive over-reliance on putting people into the public sector through many of these programmes as a result of the legacy of economic failure that we have inherited? Therefore, there is naturally now some shrinkage in the public sector. That is the big difference. We have to create real jobs in the private sector for the long term.

[Mr Byrne]

I genuinely appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman is making and the argument he is rehearsing. Perhaps he could intervene again to let me know whether a job in the public sector is better than no job at all.

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his invitation. A job is very important to the individual, no one doubts that; but we are talking about dealing with youth employment by creating work in a real sector that will last. That is the difference. We will only deal with the problem when the private sector has the opportunity to deliver long-term sustainable jobs—however well intentioned the programmes to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman exposes the dilemma that now perplexes the Government’s entire back-to-work programme. Figures issued this morning reveal that private sector employment is dead flat, yet public sector employment is falling fast. What has become clear from those figures is that because the Government have put the recovery in the slow lane, the private sector is not creating jobs fast enough to absorb the scale of redundancies that are being announced.