Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Margot James and Mark Hoban

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I am pleased to be able to say that performance is improving. Across the country the performance of Work programme providers has improved, and about half of providers have significantly exceeded the minimum standards. That is why people are getting into work; that is why we are seeing lives transformed. I wish the Opposition would stop carping and congratulate the work the providers are doing to get people into work.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

18. Until recently, a significant part of the labour market, including young people, was referred to as unemployable. May I congratulate my hon. Friend and the Secretary of State on challenging this deeply negative assumption? To be getting 132,000 previously unemployed people into employment is a considerable achievement. Does my hon. Friend agree that the payment-by-results model has been instrumental in this achievement?

[Mr Hoban]

Under previous schemes, money was paid upfront to providers without much attention being paid to whether people got jobs and work. Under this scheme, the interests of taxpayers, the unemployed and providers are closely aligned, because providers get paid only if they get people into work for six months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Margot James and Mark Hoban

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

When the hon. Lady’s party was in government, the number of people in long-term unemployment doubled, but this month we have seen a reduction in the numbers of people unemployed for more than one year and for more than two years. I would have thought she would be welcome that. It demonstrates that ours are the right actions to tackle the problems of long-term unemployment.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Employment in the west midlands has increased by 4.3% in the past 12 months and the average time spent on jobseeker’s allowance is just three months. What can my hon. Friend do to bring all Work programme providers up to the standard of the best providers, such as EOS in the black country?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Margot James and Mark Hoban

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

As the hon. Lady will know, in contrast to schemes produced by the previous Government, Work programme providers are incentivised to perform well to get people into work. They are paid by results, so they need to be as effective as possible in working with local partners to get the right outcomes. For example, I know that the contract that covers her constituency includes close work with further education colleges to improve outcomes for participants in the scheme.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

May I welcome my hon. Friend to his post and congratulate the Government on the progress made under the Work programme? In my area, significant numbers of participants have now been in work for more than six months. Does he agree that one of the best ways of reducing unemployment further is to improve labour mobility at the lower end of the income scale?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a range of interventions that we can make to help people get back into work, and mobility is one. Welfare reform and universal credit are another, because they will ensure that people are better off working than not working. We want to see which levers and which policies work, to get as many people as possible into employment.

Banking (Responsibility and Reform)

Debate between Margot James and Mark Hoban

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would come up with some ideas, yet he took a rather lengthy intervention to demonstrate that Labour has no ideas about what to do. Let me set out some of the structural measures we are taking to tackle the supply of debt and equity finance to businesses, and SMEs in particular. We are continuing the enterprise capital funds, and we are simplifying and refocusing the venture capital trusts and enterprise investment scheme to encourage more equity investment in start-ups.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

The issue of lending to small and medium-sized businesses is much more complex than the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) suggested. Some months ago I spent a day at Barclays SME sector lending centre in Birmingham. It is clear that many small businesses are focusing on paying down their existing debts, building up reserves, and using their existing overdraft facilities at around the 50% mark. Does my hon. Friend not agree that that is one of the causes of the problem?

[Mr Hoban]

Indeed. My hon. Friend has made an important point which should be noted by the Opposition. Net lending takes into account not just banks’ gross lending but decisions that businesses make to pay down their debt, and that is what we are seeing. We are seeing businesses deleverage in the same way as banks are deleveraging. I do not know whether the Labour party believes that banks should stop businesses paying down their debt in order to force up the net lending figures.

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Margot James and Mark Hoban

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I should not have given way to the hon. Gentleman. He has identified the problem. The previous Government could have dealt with the matter, but it is left to the present Government. We have to sort out not just this mess, but the mess that Labour left behind in the state of the public finances. That is the problem that we have to face in dealing with the Equitable Life issue.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Might the state of the public finances guide the Chancellor in his autumn statement on the public spending review to advance a compensation pot that would be in line with the rest of the Government’s overview of public spending reductions, that being of the order of 25% for the majority of Departments, and nothing to do with the 90% reduction advanced by the Chadwick report?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend will recognise that the spending review is not simply a linear process. Some projects will be scrapped completely; some will suffer a small cut. We need to look at each case on its merits, rather than assume that an across-the-board measure will apply to all spending bids in the spending review.