Remploy

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Ann Clwyd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making that point. I received a letter about half an hour ago from my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), who would have liked to have been present but could not make it. He wants me to mention the Cleator Moor factory in his constituency and says that it has operated very successfully for many years and currently has a large order book. Some factories, therefore, have large order books and are, in fact, turning work away.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for calling for this very important debate. The Bridgend factory is in a similar position. It has a long-standing relationship with Ford and is currently bidding for a new contract with it, but it is in the difficult position of not knowing what its future holds and whether it will in fact be there and be able to fulfil that contract, if it is awarded to it. It then faces the problem of whether it will be allowed, if successful, to recruit more disabled people to work at the factory. That insecurity is affecting the whole of the work force.

[Ann Clwyd]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Uncertainty is having a very bad effect, both on the morale of the people who work in the factory and on that of their relatives. Everybody will want to make points about their particular areas and factories. Before I take another intervention, I want to mention the last round of redundancies in the Aberdare Remploy factory in 2008. Of the 18 disabled employees who took voluntary redundancy, only one person ever returned to work, although many others would have liked to have had a job and were able to have one had one been available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Lloyd]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. I agree entirely. Later on in my speech, I have a cunning plan about how Remploy could be better used, and that was a very good example.

There is a real need to step up the level of support available to disabled people, as well as tackling outdated and ignorant attitudes among career advisers and employers. I heard a good example only a couple of weeks ago. One of my constituents complained to me about the cost of fitting

“all these wheelchair ramps into shops.”

I agreed wholeheartedly on the proviso that rather than spending all that money providing, say, escalators for non-disabled people to use at underground stations, why do we not just chuck a rope over the edge so that they can climb up? I think I lost that chap’s vote, but there you go.

How best can we support disabled people into sustainable employment? That is the $64,000 question. The Sayce review makes a recommendation on how the coalition Government can use the £330 million budget for specialist disability employment support to help more disabled people into employment, and to help more effectively disabled people already in employment. This is the key: employment and retained employment. Currently, that budget is spent on Remploy, Access to Work and residential training colleges. To my mind, after years of studying these things, there are three key issues at stake: how our resources can be best used to help as many people as possible in the most effective way; whether disabled people should be supported in open employment or whether there is a place for sheltered employment; and how the future of current Remploy workers can best be protected.

On the first point, I offer some facts. We are spending five times as much on a Remploy worker as on a disabled person in open employment, yet with the right support, disabled people can have real careers—I know many disabled people who do—alongside their non-disabled peers in the open workplace. They are similarly skilled, similarly unskilled, similarly bright, and similarly less so. In fact, they are pretty similar to all of us here, but with different needs.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point that currently spending on a Remploy worker is five times more than on a worker in an ordinary job. Does he not agree that part of the problem has always been the high level of expenditure on consultants, the high level of over-management, and the high cost to each individual Remploy factory for central services? It is the management structure of Remploy, not the workers, that makes Remploy more expensive. Let us remember that and stop criticising the workers and start criticising the management structure and framework.

[Stephen Lloyd]

What is so hilarious is that I have been doing that for a long time. That point was being made years ago, when the previous Government were in charge. Yes, there is a grain of truth in it—of course there is. Remploy is top-heavy and sclerotic, but that is ancient history. I remember exactly the same argument when Labour was in charge. There is an issue and I will come to it later. We need to be smarter in the way we use Remploy, but that particular tack is so ancient, that if it was on the floor it would curl over and die.