Remploy

Paul Goggins Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Strongly as I feel about the issue, Mr Havard, I shall bear your advice in mind. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) on obtaining this important and timely debate. I thank the Minister for the opportunity to meet a short time ago to talk about the factory in my constituency, which I appreciated.

I want to make the general point that it would be completely wrong and inaccurate to portray people who want to defend Remploy and keep Remploy factories open as opposing change and modernisation. I speak for myself, but I am confident that no one taking part in the debate, from whatever side, wants an old-fashioned model of factory life for any disabled person. There is no conflict between wanting to keep Remploy factories open and wanting Remploy employment services to do well. For those who can get into mainstream employment, that is great. I want the organisation to work well, but it is not for everybody. It is not an either/or question, but a both/and question. That is an important point.

The Wythenshawe factory in my constituency does print work and fulfilment work. I pay tribute to the manager, Mike Tarry, his predecessor, Alan Reeves, and Brian Anderson, the trade union rep there for many years. I worked closely with all of them. Altogether, there are 21 staff, 19 of whom are disabled. Their employment is life-changing for them and their families—we should not forget their families. That those people can go out and get a full-time job takes pressure off the family and gives parents a real sense of pride in their adult children, seeing what they can do in the world of work.

Four years ago, when the Wythenshawe factory was on a list, facing closure, I pulled together a support and action group including local housing trusts, the local hospital, Manchester airport and a number of private companies in my constituency such as Authentic Food Co., Virgin and Select Service Partner—serious organisations. We came together for two things: first, to save the factory, which, thankfully, we managed to do; and, secondly, not simply to congratulate ourselves on a successful campaign but to work with the factory to build up more sales and business. Based on that experience of the past four years, I want to make three points to the Minister, which I hope that she will bear in mind, along with the many others that will be made.

First—this has already been touched on—local factories must be given more autonomy and control over their budgets and business plans. There is no contradiction in making that argument and saying that we need Remploy to remain in place. The Wythenshawe factory contributes £135,000 to the central coffers of Remploy. It is particularly galling that the £3,700 a month rate relief from Manchester city council goes not to the factory but to the central coffers of Remploy, which simply cannot be right. The manager, Mike Tarry, has already demonstrated over recent months the kind of savings that he can make and the efficiencies that he can drive. If he had more control over the whole of his budget, he would drive efficiencies that, frankly, the centre of Remploy has failed to do.

Secondly, every Remploy factory should be a flagship in its own community, which is certainly the ambition in Wythenshawe. The ambition of the manager and staff is that every year 50 people will get work experience in the factory, so people can work there not full-time or for ever but in the short term on the road back to mainstream employment. People can use the experience of the factory in a variety of ways. The factory is about not only the long-term employment of 21 disabled people but all the other opportunities. My constituency has double the national average for people on incapacity benefit, and we need opportunities for disabled people to get back into work more than most. The idea of closing a factory as a way of getting more disabled people into work is ridiculous.

Finally, we, as Members of Parliament, all have a responsibility to promote our local Remploy factories. Let me give a couple of figures: this year, the Wythenshawe print factory will achieve its highest level of sales ever, £460,000; next year, sales are already predicted to be in excess of £600,000, including substantial contracts with JCB and the City Facilities Management part of Asda, which provides the in-house cleaning and so on for all its stores. Those are substantial contracts for the factory, and the trajectory of sales is upwards all the time. We work with the local authorities, other businesses, the hospital and the airport and airport companies to promote the business, so we are on the way. As has been said, however, the current uncertainty is making it difficult for the manger to get out there and to make sales, because people keep saying to him, “Aren’t you closing? What’s the point of doing business with you if you are facing closure?” So £600,000 sales have been predicted for next year, and if the factory can get sales up to £1 million a year, it will be self-sustaining and not need a penny from anyone.

I have a challenge for the Minister: locally, we are prepared to keep working to ensure that sales go up, but £250,000 of print from central Government would secure the future of the factory. Out of the millions of pounds that central Government must spend on print, that kind of figure must be possible. I openly admit that, when I was in government, we should have done more of that, but we did not. It now falls to this Minister to do more: £250,000 of print from central Government to the Wythenshawe factory would secure its long-term future without a penny of help or support from anywhere else. Then, perhaps, we can talk about different models of ownership, management and all the rest of it, but let us do so once we have the factory on a self-sustaining footing.

The idea that we should close factories to get more disabled people into work is preposterous. It is time for the Minister to be clear that that should not happen and that we should use the factories that we have as a basis for building a progressive and better future for disabled people in work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Benton, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to respond to this debate on behalf of the Opposition and to serve under your chairmanship. I also particularly want to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for leading the debate today, and the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for it. If there is one thing that all of us have learned over many years, it is that Remploy and its future are of abiding interest to many Members from all parts of the House.

I also want to act slightly at odds with normal parliamentary procedure—since we are not in the main Chamber, I think that I can probably get away with it, subject to your ruling, Mr Benton—by thanking those disabled people from Remploy who have travelled to observe this debate, including members of the trade unions GMB, Unite and Community, who had not been mentioned before in the debate. It is an indication of how the staff at Remploy feel that they have made this journey at this point in the week and at this point in the day to hear this debate. Regardless of the views that have been expressed—there have been some differing views, including some subtly differing views—I hope that those staff will recognise that people in this place take Remploy and the issues affecting disabled people and the future of disabled people very seriously indeed.

I also want to thank my hon. Friends the Members for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon), for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), and the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) for their contributions to the debate. I will come back to the points made by the hon. Member for Eastbourne shortly. I am also grateful for the interventions that were made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George) and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams). I realise that I have missed out my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in my list, but I remember his very powerful contribution to the debate.

For very personal and obvious reasons, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), because he and I had many a long conversation about the Remploy factory in his constituency and the model that it provided; I will discuss that model later. He illustrated today that, where we can galvanise a community and put in energy and commitment, we can make a Remploy factory work. Indeed, that comment was echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who highlighted that where local leadership is shown, we can make a difference.

[Paul Goggins]

I pay tribute to the work that my right hon. Friend did as the Minister with responsibility for disabled people when we were in government and I thank her for the encouragement that she gave to me in the days when we were trying to establish the support group for the Remploy factory in my constituency; she has just referred to the conversations that we had about that issue. Does she agree that, as one or two Members have already mentioned, a key group in any area is local councillors? Councillors are community champions who provide links to the local authority and, because of their experience, they can also help to scrutinise some of the development proposals. Indeed, will she join me in paying tribute to the councillors in my area and elsewhere who have done that?

[Mrs McGuire]

Yes, indeed. We can also look at some of the more successful examples of supported employment, including factories where disabled people work, that have had unstinting support from local authorities. Not all of those factories are Remploy factories. For example, the Royal Strathclyde Blindcraft Industries factory in Glasgow has had enormous input and support from the local authority. It has supported the factory through thick and thin, and hopefully now through thick again, but obviously business conditions may change.

As I said earlier, I want to refer to the comments of the hon. Member for Eastbourne. I think that everybody who has spoken in the debate accepts—at least, I hope that can be said of everyone—that there is a change in expectation among most disabled people, and certainly among their spokespersons and the organisations that represent them, and that disabled people want to have a range of choice in employment. Disabled people want the same range of choice that non-disabled people have. Government support is crucial in helping to deliver on those aspirations. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman, who I know has a long and honourable history of working in the disability movement, that we cannot deliver on the aspirations for the majority if we trample over the expectations of the few. In many respects, that is the dilemma that we face in discussing the current issue.

I have heard today from many right hon. and hon. Friends and hon. Members about their own experience of the Remploy factory in their own constituencies. I share their admiration for those factories, because there is a Remploy factory in Stirling. I visited it on the international day of disabled people and took the baton from a young man who works there. As has been said of other Remploy factories, that company of people in that factory in Stirling recognise that Remploy is not only about a job but about a wider network of social support, economic support, health support and all the things that disabled people look for. Indeed, Liz Sayce, in her report, recognised the value of the Remploy environment, and I will read an extract from page 96:

“It was clear from this review that the best factories offer job satisfaction, a supportive and accessible environment and a reasonable income for those they employ. The factories have provided employment opportunities – sometimes for many years – to disabled individuals. They have also provided a sense of community for their employees. Some have pioneered learning and development, often led by Union Learner Representatives, through which individuals have (for instance) learnt to read for the first time, or worked towards qualifications. While some sheltered workshop environments pay staff less than the minimum wage, Remploy factories pay above the minimum wage and offer good terms and conditions.”

I am not going to run away from the fact that, like the Minister, I have wrestled with some of the issues about Remploy. I understand the tensions between wanting to open up everything to disabled people and the fact that some disabled people want to make a different choice, and we have to be careful about how we interpret the perceived settled will of disabled people. We also must recognise the legitimacy of a position that is not the mainstream view of the disability movement—to close sheltered factories—which is that factories should be maintained, to give disabled people a choice. That was always the position, and those of us parliamentarians who are veterans of the Remploy modernisation programme will remember that my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) made it very clear that there was still a place within our range of opportunities for supported factory employment.

I want to probe the current consultation with a series of questions to the Minister, which I hope she will be able to answer, if not this afternoon, in the very near future. In opposition, the Government supported a five-year modernisation plan, so why did the Minister embark on a review nearly two years before that timetable had been exhausted? I suggest that the five-year plan effectively had only two years to run before there was a general election, so why did the Minister go for the current timetable? With the greatest respect to Liz Sayce, the five-year plan did not come out of a review, in a few short months, but was the result of extensive financial investigations, consultations with the disability lobby before a consultation document was published, and extensive and sometimes very robust discussions with the Remploy board and the trade unions, which some of us here will remember. We felt that there had to be a plan with a time frame that would allow Remploy to turn the business around.

We have heard today that some of the factories are being turned around, that order books are overcrowded and new businesses are coming in. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East that there are still some issues about top-heavy management and decentralisation, and we had the five-year time frame so that the issues could be worked through, between the board and the trade unions, with the continued support of Government. I can say this only in the kindest fashion: the current situation has created uncertainty among workers, and indeed among management, about what will happen, and that is stymieing the development of Remploy the business. I have some sympathy with colleagues who suggest that there might be a bit of a withering-on-the-vine strategy behind that.

Given the Minister’s intention to embark on this course of action, what action did she take to involve the board of Remploy and its trade unions in discussions about the issues identified in the Sayce report? What recognition did she give to the trade union analysis of the current operation of Remploy’s enterprises and the questions it raised about the company’s business practices? Did she take any opportunity to discuss some of the issues with the unions? I am not talking about post-consultation discussion, after the paper was published, but about developing the consultation in line with the people who have a strong input into the process. There is a feeling that the consultation is flawed, not least because the Minister perhaps did not appreciate all the implications of the phrase on page 18:

“Government is minded to accept the recommendations of the Sayce Review”.

I do not understand how someone can put out a consultation and then say what they are minded to do before the results have come in.

When the modernisation statement was made to this House on 29 November 2007, the now Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) made the following commitment:

“Let me assure Remploy and its employees that the next Conservative Government will continue the process of identifying additional potential procurement opportunities for them and the public sector work force.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 451.]

What efforts have the Minister and her ministerial colleague made to fulfil that promise? What discussions has she had with the major procurement Departments, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence? Has she looked to ensure that her own Department has considered even more ways in which it could open up procurement opportunities for a business in which it has a significant investment? What discussions has she had with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to encourage local authorities to consider opening up opportunities for individual local factories? What efforts has she made to encourage her colleagues to identify procurement opportunities under article 19? If she is still “minded” after the consultation process closes, what responsibilities will the Government have towards Remploy?

Why is the current pension scheme issue raised in the consultation? Currently the DWP guarantees the company pension scheme, but would it still exist? How would it be managed, and would the DWP have a role in that management? Is the pension fund currently in surplus or deficit, and by how much? If it is in shortfall, what measures will be taken to deal with that? It looks as though the Minister has the figures to hand, but if she does not I would be pleased if she could advise us after the debate. What range of companies does she have in mind that might wish to buy all or some of the Remploy factories? Has she, or have her officials, had any communication with any such interested parties?

The Minister indicates in her consultation that staff might wish to consider acquiring the enterprise businesses, and that they could do so. The consultation also indicates that expert advice would be there to assist, but would any provision be made for a front-loaded capital investment on the part of Government? Would the DWP consider a legacy to those factories, given the deep and extended relationship between Government and Remploy? Those are all unanswered questions in a consultation.