Labour Market Activity

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely reasonable point. We are seeing more and more people being forced out of the labour market, or not able even to enter it in the first place, because of depression, stress or anxiety. If we reform the way in which we deliver employment support, we can get many of these people back to work, because being in work will be good for them in terms of managing their mental health. Obviously, that is not necessarily the case for everybody, but it will be for a significant proportion. The problem is that there are many who want to work, yet under the Government’s approach, which focuses just on the unemployed via the jobcentres, only one in 10 out-of-work older people or disabled people are getting any support. We reject that approach.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a good speech. For someone with a disability or a long-term condition, simple adjustments in the workplace, such as having a sit-stand desk, so that an office worker does not have to sit down all day, a vertical mouse, to help somebody who has problems with their wrists, or an ergonomic chair, to help somebody with a bad back, can make all the difference in how they are able to manage their health and how happy they can feel in the workplace. Lots of people do not know that they are entitled to ask for reasonable adjustments and that very often these items are available through the Access to Work programme. Does he agree that the Government need to do far more to publicise the support that is out there, so that not only can people get into work, but those in work can maintain their health and stay in work longer?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. It is not just that lots of people are not aware of the Access to Work scheme, but some people who apply for Access to Work are then faced with the most ridiculous waiting lists. A constituent of mine accepted a job and was told that there was a 26-week waiting list for an assessment. I raised that case with the Department in my capacity as a local constituency MP and I am pleased that the Department has looked at it again, but lots of people will not go to their local MP asking them to intervene, and we want to get people into work. It is no wonder that the disability employment gap is widening.

As a country, we should be aiming for the highest level of employment in the G7. That would mean living standards raised for every household. The reason we want to extend the opportunity of decent work to all is even more fundamental: when one in five people who have left the labour market in the past two years say that they would like to work, we have a responsibility to help them. Behind every statistic is a story of opportunities missed, talents wasted and extraordinary potential left untapped, none more so than for the now 1 million young people not in education or employment. Increasing numbers of young people are out of work for reasons of mental health. We know the long-term scarring effects of worklessness at a young age; it risks a life on the margins. To do nothing for this group of young people, as is, in effect, the case now, means writing them off. Its means tolerating a situation where only about 4% of people in the employment and support allowance support group return to work each year—to me, that is fundamentally unacceptable. It is a massive social cost and it has a massive economic cost as well, as we will see, because the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting that the health-related benefit bill will increase, costing us £8 billion extra.

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[Jonathan Ashworth]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me into very choppy waters by offering to disrupt the way in which we provide social security across the country, but I will resist the temptation to go off course.

At a time when local areas should be given more resources to deliver employment support, the Government are cutting resources. Not only did they announce out of the blue in December that they were cutting a scheme that helped those with health conditions to move into work in the west midlands and South Yorkshire—they then U-turned on that a couple of weeks ago—but, as I heard from the Salvation Army when I went to visit an employment project in East Ham this morning, they are also leaving the voluntary sector with no answers about its future because of decisions about the shared prosperity fund.

The shared prosperity fund, which is the successor to the European social fund, helps to fund schemes that support people with complex barriers into work. The European social fund money ends at the end of this year, and there is then a nine-month funding gap until the people and skills element of the new shared prosperity fund kicks in. How does the Secretary of State expect to get more of the economically inactive into work when that funding gap means that voluntary organisations in all our constituencies have no idea how they will fund their work for the best part of a year? That is not the way to go about it, and when the Department leaves those voluntary organisations with no funding, it does not suggest that the Government are serious about getting people back to work.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will, but then I need to make progress.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My right hon. Friend is making an important point about the shared prosperity fund and the funding gap that so many providers in our constituencies face. I have seen in my constituency the fantastic work they do. The people working in those charities and organisations have huge expertise. Does he share my concern that, if their jobs do not continue, we will lose a wealth of knowledge that is tailored to our local communities, which would be devastating for so many people looking for work?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It is a crazy situation. In fairness to the Secretary of State—I do always wish to be fair to him—decisions on the shared prosperity fund are made by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, but for a Government who say that focusing on inactivity will be a feature of their Budget, the fact that one Department does not seem to know what another is doing does not exactly fill one with confidence.

Shifting resources out of Whitehall would provide greater opportunities to better join up and co-locate employment advisers in health services, mental health services, addiction services and primary care. We know that increasing numbers of people are out of work, not just for depression and anxiety but for traditional musculoskeletal conditions, and if we are to get people back into work, they need to be supported into work. They need to be given the support to thrive once they are in work. This is urgent, because we do not want the increasing numbers who are leaving work as the short-term sick turning into the long-term sick. We know that, once someone is out of work beyond three months, they risk being out of work for a considerable time.

Obviously, some of this is to do with access to the NHS, given that there are 7 million on the waiting list. It is about access to primary care, to help people manage their health conditions, but there is also a role for employment advisers. Indeed, the new frontier of social security reform, in my view, is bringing together health and welfare in a way we have not before. That also means giving people proper occupational health support. In fairness to the Government, a few years ago they endorsed Dame Carol Black’s report on occupational health, and they piloted a Fit for Work occupational health scheme, but they pulled the plug on it before it had time to properly bed in and develop. That was possibly an incredibly short-sighted decision, given the numbers out of work today for reasons of sickness.

We need to reform sick pay, as Labour has consistently called for. We need to ensure that fit notes are about not just signing people off but sign-posting people to help. We need to give people flexible work options, so that they can stay in work. We also need to support women to stay in work with the menopause, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) has outlined today. My hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) have been elegant and brilliant champions for this.

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[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the 1.4 million figure is depressingly true. Under the last Labour Government, over 1 million people were parked on long-term benefits. Of course, when we talk about unemployment, we know that every Labour Government in history have left unemployment higher at the end of their term in office than it was at the beginning.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I very much appreciate the Secretary of State giving way. He was saying that he had been tasked to work across Government on tackling this issue. Adult education has a really important role to play in building people’s confidence—it can be particularly important for people who, perhaps in midlife, have had to give up work to look after a family member who was ill or whatever, and later find themselves struggling to get back into work and having really lost their confidence—yet the Government, as part of what they call their reorientating the vision for non-qualification provision in adult education, have plans that could actually remove some of the very non-vocational courses that people who may feel daunted at the prospect of having to go for a high qualification would none the less get. Could he please speak to his colleagues to ask them to look at this issue again?

[Mel Stride]

If the hon. Lady would drop me a line about the point she raises, I would be very happy to raise that specifically and to consider it myself as well.

Could I turn to economic inactivity, and to disability and sickness? This Government have been acting, and we will come forward with further measures very shortly, which I am sure will be of interest to the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth). For example, our Work and Health programme has now been extended to September 2024, bringing an extra 100,000 people into support. We have rolled out health adjustment passports to facilitate more structured conversations between those seeking work, those seeking to employ them and employees in jobcentres. We have been co-locating employment advisers alongside therapists in NHS talking therapies. For those with autism, which is often a very considerable barrier to employment, we have funded no less than 28 different initiatives across local authorities.