Malcolm Wicks
Main Page: Malcolm Wicks (Labour - Croydon North)Department Debates - View all Malcolm Wicks's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(14 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Duncan Smith
The Work programme will start well in advance of today’s proposal—we anticipate that it will start next summer. There will be a set of contracts on a regional scale that will involve the private and voluntary sectors. Organisations will run programmes against a set of outcomes, for which we will pay them, so that as they deliver and get more people back to work, they will be paid for those results. That will be carefully balanced so that we do not pay them for dead-weight costs that might otherwise have been in the system, but it will certainly be clear.
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)
I welcome very strongly the strategic direction of the Secretary of State’s statement, but comparisons will inevitably be drawn with the 1940s. That should remind us of the importance of the work ethic and the fact that citizens have both rights and duties when it comes to benefits and work. It also reminds us of the importance of employment policy. I say that not in a partisan spirit, but because I think there is a real difficulty. Churchill’s coalition Government and Attlee’s Labour Government took measures to move towards full employment—with great success. When a Government take 1 million jobs out of the economy, both public and private sector, does the Secretary of State understand my concern about the chances of success of the good strategy announced today?
Mr Duncan Smith
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s words of welcome—I particularly value them because I am a huge admirer of his, as he knows. He is right to draw the parallel with the 1940s, not for anything to do with Beveridge, but simply because high withdrawal rates were possible in the system that was set up at that time because the people involved were mostly men who were either in work or out of work—there was very little part-time work in that sense, so withdrawal rates had no effect. Today, because of the nature of part-time work, withdrawal rates cause real problems for people, particularly as they go back to work.
On jobs, I simply say this: yes, as the economy grows, those jobs will be created, but let us not forget that in the past three months, over 1 million jobs went through my jobcentres, and 450,000 jobs rotate through them every week.