Welfare Reform Bill

Malcolm Wicks Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my Blairite colleague on the Government Benches. May I say, by way of introduction, that I judge, as many of us would, that wise social security policy seeks to relate the issues of benefits to the issue of employment? I would argue that we should start the discussion with work. I wish to analyse the Bill and some of its proposals in that important context, because surely for those able to work the best social security policy is a job—things start from there.

I often quote William Beveridge at this stage, partly because it reminds us that there was once an era of great Liberal reform. In his famous 1942 report, he talked about the giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness standing in the way of social reconstruction once peace had come. He said that the giant of idleness, by which he meant unemployment, was the largest and fiercest of the giants and that if we did not overcome it all the other social goals of peacetime reconstruction would be out of reach. If one thinks about the implications for health and education, one sees exactly and empirically what he meant, so that is my starting point.

Skipping forward 65 years from the great Attlee reforms that implemented the Beveridge recommendations and many others to the present day, it seems to me that there are three issues or obstacles that we must address or overcome if we are to get right the balance and relationship between what I still prefer to call social security—I find the term “welfare” pejorative—and work.

The first issue is employment policy. Where is the Government’s full employment policy? Is it their ambition to move back towards full employment? In my Croydon constituency, literally hundreds of job losses have just been announced at the Home Office’s Border and Immigration Agency. In addition, the council will contribute hundreds of job losses and there will be job losses in the health service with the reform of primary care trusts. That is just the start in an area that is very dependent on public sector work. What we are seeing is not ambition for full employment but a move towards further unemployment, which concerns me greatly.

One of the great tragedies is that many of our fine young people leaving school and getting vocational qualifications and degrees are finding that no jobs are available. We must all think long and hard in the short, medium and longer term about whether we can somehow move towards a job guarantee for our young people, many of whom do so well in education and skills. We will betray a generation if we cannot soon offer them work that suits their skills, creativity and qualifications.

On the contentious issue of immigration, it is clear to me, from a London perspective, that eastern European immigration has made it more difficult for people on the margins of the labour market to get jobs. It is a simple matter: if an employer is presented with a British person of whatever ethnic group who is not job-ready, as opposed to someone from Lithuania or Poland who is clearly eager to work and will probably turn up on time, who will they employ? How, in those circumstances, can we enable British people to get the work that our country owes them?

[Stephen Lloyd]

That is an important point. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that a key area in the Bill—within the black box that was discussed earlier—is the fact that the Department will pay providers upwards of £14,000 to help into work people who have been away from work for a while and to sustain them in work over a couple of years? Does he agree that that is a positive step?

[Malcolm Wicks]

Of course, which is why the Labour Government, under the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), established such policies with Jobcentre Plus. Of course that is the right thing to do.

The second of the three issues I mentioned is wage levels. I recall from my history that the Speenhamland system was created in the late 18th century. As far as historians can judge, that was the first direct wage subsidy in Britain. Since then, we have had a number of policies, starting with family income supplement, tax credits and so on that could be said to subsidise low wages. I am proud that a Labour Government introduced the minimum wage, but Conservative Members will not be so proud that their party vehemently opposed it. As we move back towards economic growth and greater affluence, should we be talking about not just a minimum wage but a living, or adequate, wage, not least for people who are employed by multinationals that make large profits? Otherwise, the social security system will continue to subsidise low and sometimes exploitative wages.

The third issue is the work ethic, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) touched. I believe the work ethic is alive and well in many parts of Britain. I also recognise that because of the de-industrialisation during the Thatcher years the work ethic among some individuals in some communities had the stuffing knocked out of it, and there are now communities where three generations of people have been nowhere near a job for a very long time. We need to think through the implications of that.

Where people can work and where jobs are available, working-class people on our estates are angered by spongers and shirkers. Those people do exist and we should not ignore that fact, but in a culture in which bankers can stick two fingers up to democracy, to Parliament and to the Government and in which multinationals brag about avoiding paying tax, we have become an amoral, if not sometimes an immoral, economy. If we are to preach honesty and responsibility to the poor, as I think we must, although it can be difficult at times, then responsibility is also good enough for the rich and powerful.