Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

It is always a matter of regret when any person on benefits or indeed any person at all commits suicide. We always look carefully at reports that suggest any link between anything we do and people finding themselves in such a position. Let us be clear: the principle of trying to help back into work people who have been on benefits long-term is very important in supporting people who have mental health problems. If we do not reassess people, we will never be able to identify those who can benefit from that help.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Average earnings in my constituency, Stourbridge, are £23,700 a year, on which there is a tax liability of some £5,000. Does my right hon. Friend agree that to oppose or to equivocate on the policy of a cap on benefits is an outrageous insult to all hard-working people in this country?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The cap is fair and popular, and it helps to put right the welfare system that we inherited, which is in a mess and is trapping people in dependency when we could free them. My hon. Friend is right that the Opposition position is ludicrous. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) has taken more different positions on the issue than a Jane Fonda work-out.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right to suggest that we need to minimise the burden of quality workplace pension provision on firms. When the pensions Bill is published, she will see that all the changes we are making to the provision for enrolment in workplace pensions are deregulatory and will reduce the cost and burden for firms.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

20. What recent representations he has received on his plans to help disabled jobseekers into work.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)]

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave earlier.

[Margot James]

I thank the Minister for her earlier response. I have been concerned that the number of people with mental health disabilities referred straight on to jobseeker’s allowance has been greater than the number of people with physical disabilities. Can the Minister give an assurance that those undertaking workplace capability assessments will have access to high quality mental health expertise, and will she or the Minister responsible meet representatives of mental health charities from my constituency?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. That issue was looked at in detail as part of the Harrington review. The Government accepted all the recommendations put forward by Harrington and I assure her that mental health champions—one of the proposals put forward—will be in place by March. I believe that the Minister for Employment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), will be meeting my hon. Friend to discuss those matters further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

According to the National Pensioners Convention, 36,700 older people died of cold-related illnesses last year. Will my hon. Friend’s Department work with the Department of Health and redouble efforts to reduce that unacceptably high number?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right. Excess winter deaths are a scandal. That requires work across Departments, as well as our commitment to the winter fuel payment and the cold weather payment system. We are working with our colleagues not just in the Department of Health, but the Department of Energy and Climate Change, because proper home insulation is a key to tackling excess winter deaths.

Welfare Reform

Margot James Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

My question pertains to the upper limit of £26,000 on welfare payments. My right hon. Friend stated that that equated to a gross income of £36,000. Many in my constituency work long hours, sometimes putting in overtime, but bring in considerably less than that. I remind Labour Members that those people have housing costs to pay as well. Can we make sure that people understand that the £26,000 is very much an upper limit, and that we should not ever see the welfare equivalent of £36,000 gross income as the norm?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I made the point that we also have to balance taxpayers’ requirements alongside those of people on benefit. By the way, when seen in the context of the total number of people on benefits at the moment, the numbers that we are dealing with are much smaller than people make out.

Most of all, I should say that we will not be doing this for people on disability living allowance. Those in receipt of working tax credit, for example—those in work—will also not be caught. We are simply looking to those families who have become static and immobile. There is a disincentive against their going to work; the amount of money that they receive is such that they could never get it if they went to work. Therefore their incentive to work is non-existent. That is the benefits system that we inherited; that is the benefits system that we will change.

Jobs and the Unemployed

Margot James Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

There have been quite a lot of references to history in this debate. In the first few hours, which I sat through and enjoyed, many such references were made, including by the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who said that she left school in the 1980s and that many of her friends became unemployed in the early ’80s. As I was born a decade earlier, I had a ringside seat in the decades that led to the 1980s. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, various Labour Governments presided over truly disastrous industrial intervention policies.

I, too, come from Coventry, as does the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), who also contributed to the history lessons in the debate. She will remember the creation of British Leyland, the demise of our car industry, the massive subsidies that those Labour Governments poured into failing companies and failing industries, combined with marginal personal tax rates of up to 98%. In the end of course, as we all know, the country had to be rescued by the International Monetary Fund. That is what led to unemployment in the 1980s, not the Governments led by Margaret Thatcher.

A pattern developed during those previous Labour Governments, just as it has done in the past 13 years, and it results in the end in rising unemployment. Every Labour Government, I believe, have left office with unemployment higher than when they came to office. We must not forget that in a debate on unemployment. Unemployment among the young is greater now than it was in 1997. During the past five years there has been a 72% rise in my constituency of people on jobseeker’s allowance, more than a quarter of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24. Much has been said about the tragedy of unemployment among this age group with which I agree.

[Alison McGovern]

Does the hon. Lady think that it is appropriate to compare unemployment in 1997 with unemployment today, at two completely different points in the economic cycle? That is not how economists would normally do it.

[Margot James]

The previous Government inherited falling unemployment in 1997, and it steadily increased during the first decade of this century. We have been through a couple of economic cycles during that time, but historically unemployment is always greater when a Labour Government leave office than when they arrive.

Rising unemployment under Labour Governments is always followed by a lot of well-meaning interventions to try to support people back into work. That is a laudable aim, with which we all agree, but it leads, as it has during the past five or six years, to a confusing array of individual benefit programmes that create a flourishing array of different funding streams and agencies, and they grow like Topsy. They beget a flourishing cottage industry of providers, all of which make money out of the taxpayer in trying to deliver the same services. It is imperative that the Government simplify, as they are doing, the 12 support-for-work programmes. I congratulate the new team on the steps that they have taken to integrate everything into a single get-back-to-work programme.

I do not want to be wholly negative about the interventions under the previous Government. I was a governor of Stourbridge further education college in my constituency, and a good programme was developed with Westfield, the company that manages the retail centre, and it was known as the retail academy. It took long-term unemployed people, such as women who had left the workplace to have a family, who had not been able to get back into work and who had lost their confidence. They did not have to lose their benefits. The programme was a 9-to-5 commitment, and more than half of them managed to get proper long-term jobs in the retail sector. I would not want to imply that all the individual programmes were a waste of money—of course some of them helped, and I am sure that we will learn from them—but simplification and better co-ordination is key, as another example that I want to share with the House demonstrates.

A few weeks ago, like me, some Members will have visited the manufacturing insight conference that took place just off Westminster Hall. I was struck by the story of a managing director of a small business in Lincolnshire employing about 30 people who wanted to access training for her finance staff. They wanted NVQ level 2 finance training, but in order to qualify she had to guarantee that eight people from her workplace would attend the course. She did not have eight people who needed the course, but there was only one provider that she could approach, and it was subcontracted by another provider that had the contract with the college.

All these providers and subcontracted providers take a slice of taxpayers’ money, which is another reason why we must simplify and codify the work, so that just one company or social enterprise is charging the taxpayer a fee for delivering a much-needed service. Business needs support, but it knows, for the most part, what it needs to employ people, and we must give companies much more direct access to the funding. They should not have to go through all these multiple layers of provision, and they should not have to go through regional development agencies, Business Link and so on—they should be able to access the vital help much more easily.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that laudable aims sometimes have perverse consequences? She will no doubt have come across people on the doorstep—usually women—who want to work more, but because of the extremely complex tax credit system built up by the former Government, it is simply not worth their while working. They therefore have an incentive to stay at home and remain on benefits, which cannot be right for them, their families or the wider community.

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. It is absolutely true. We have to create a situation in which people do not fall off the face of a cliff when they lose their benefits overnight, as soon as they take on a job for not that many hours a week. It is a poverty trap—it traps the children as well as the parents—so we have to address that. He raises an important matter.

We have talked a lot in this debate about various Government support initiatives with which we will continue under the new simplified Work programme. However, let us not forget that what the private sector really needs is a vibrant economy. First and foremost, that is what drives jobs. It is not rocket science: we need an educated and skilled work force; controlled immigration, so that businesses are not tempted simply to seize on quickly available, easy and cheap labour—we really must stop that—a benefits system that does not discourage people from going into work, as my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) said; and, above all, a low tax and a light regulatory regime that encourages investment, rewards risk and stimulates growth. That is our golden vision on the Conservative Benches, that is what we will deliver over five years, and that is what the Budget was all about.

I am pleased to say that, despite the dire economic circumstances we are having to deal with, and the deficit reduction plan that has been forced upon us, we are making great headway in creating the conditions for business that I just described. I will conclude by running through some of the excellent programmes that will drive the recovery. For a start, the employers’ national insurance increase will be tempered and the planned increase on the employers’ side will not go ahead. Although the employees’ side will go ahead, it will be compensated for by the raising of the nil rate on personal tax allowances. We are also looking at tax relief for small businesses, and the first 10 members of staff in any business will be exempt from national insurance contributions.

Whenever I do a survey of businesses in Stourbridge, I find that one of the biggest complaints is the cost of business rates, and by increasing the small business rate relief for one year from October, we will help an estimated 500,000 small businesses. Furthermore, as a west midlands Member, I can say with great passion that the regional growth fund and the commitment of £1 billion will help areas and communities particularly affected by the spending reductions forced upon us. There are other regional policies designed to correct the balance as far as we can. The number of jobs in the boom years created in London, the south-east and the east rose at 10 times the rate of new jobs everywhere else in the economy. Having come from the west midlands, worked for many years in London and gone back to the west midlands, it is deeply striking to me how we have almost become two nations. I am therefore delighted that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is so committed to helping regions outside London, the south-east and the east.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the words of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who has said that

“the Government’s role is to create the right business environment and the right skills base. The Government cannot simply keep writing out cheques.”

That is the nub of how we propose to stimulate the recovery that this country so urgently needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison McGovern]

I will make a bit of progress, if that is okay.

We should recognise that the downturn that we have faced has been worse for graduates from lower-income backgrounds, and there are a few reasons for that. Graduates from lower-income backgrounds are much less likely to go on to further study. When I was studying philosophy at University college London, at a time when the economy was growing, I remember my tutor saying to me that downturns were always good for philosophy departments, because they kept hold of people who would otherwise have gone straight into the City, as their parents could pay for them to do a master’s degree or something like that for a few years.

We need to recognise that graduates from lower income backgrounds are less able to progress their careers, because they are less likely to have the informal networks that will help them as graduates to take the first steps into their careers. Unless we are able to rebuild business confidence, even graduates will continue to face difficulties. I return to my original point that the key to unlocking the problem of unemployment, especially among young people, is to improve business confidence and to ensure that the private sector and the public sector continue to invest in jobs.

In liaising with the CBI in the north-west on apprenticeships, I heard about companies in Wirral that were very keen to employ local young people. I talked to those companies at length about how we could support them in their endeavour to build new infrastructure in Wirral while training young people in my area. Those companies were working on vital infrastructure projects such as Building Schools for the Future, and the problem with the Government’s decision to cut the deficit more quickly than we would have liked is that the withdrawal of Government input into the economy will be counter-productive because those companies will no longer feel that they have the backing of the Government to hire young people and build up their skills.