Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

Let me make a little more progress, then I will gladly give way again.

Labour has a real plan to get young people into work and to end the scourge of long-term unemployment. It is a tough plan as we will hold people responsible for accepting work when it is offered, but it is also a fair plan as it gives a young person the opportunity to work, earn a wage and develop skills. Our compulsory jobs guarantee will guarantee a real, paid job, most likely in the private sector—[Interruption.] Members just need to look at what has happened with Jobs Growth Wales, which we heard about a few moments ago. About 80% of the jobs provided on the same wage subsidy model—5,000 companies have been hosting those jobs—are in the private sector. We will guarantee a job for every 18 to 24-year-old who has been looking for work and claiming jobseeker’s allowance for a year, and for every adult aged 25 and over who has been looking for work and claiming for two years.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Let me quote him the statistics from Harlow. In May 2010, 605 young people aged 18 to 24 were claiming JSA, a rate of 8.1%. That was higher than the national average. Now, 235 young people are claiming JSA in Harlow—a rate of 3.1%—putting Harlow back in line with the national average. What does he say about that? Surely those figures are to do with not just the Work programme but all the investment in apprenticeships, the new university technical schools and other methods.

[Stephen Timms]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the national figures. Of course unemployment was hit hard by the worldwide economic crash, but over the past three months in particular there has been a steady, month-by-month increase in youth unemployment at a time when overall unemployment is coming down. I put it to him—I think many Government Members would sympathise with this view—that we need to ensure that young people have a fair chance in the recovery that is now under way of gaining the jobs that are being created. The measure that I am arguing for will allow that to happen.

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[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I say to colleagues that I will give way, but I am conscious also that, owing to all the pressures earlier on, Back Benchers will want to get their speeches in.

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who took a good shot at making a good fist of a bad job. By my calculation, it is over a year since the Opposition initiated a debate on jobs. I wonder why. So much for their being the party of work, which is what they used to say.

The Opposition have repeatedly avoided talking about the labour market, although my colleagues have been dying to intervene. When the Opposition have spoken about the labour market, there has been nothing but talking the economy down and negativity. They have made gloomy forecasts—I recall the Leader of the Opposition talking about

“the disappearance of...a million jobs”.

Then there was the misguided prophecy of

“a long ‘lost decade’...of...high unemployment”.

The Opposition have opposed welfare reform, and most importantly work experience, at every turn. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is right: work experience is what young people want, so why have the Opposition opposed our work experience programme, which has been unbelievably successful?

Meanwhile, it is this Government who have delivered 2.2 million more private sector workers, 2 million apprenticeships starts, work experience and training for over a quarter of a million young people, 60,000 businesses through the new enterprise allowance, and the Work programme, helping 600,000 people to get a job—a sustained job that follows. With the election approaching, the Opposition desperately want to sound as though they have anything positive to say about any kind of jobs programme, now that this Government have turned the situation around. Whereas this Government have a record of success, the more one examines the Opposition’s flagship jobs guarantee, the clearer it becomes that that is little more than a no-jobs guarantee, and certainly a guarantee of no jobs in the private sector.

Let me go through the jobs guarantee, as it is the subject of the debate today. We first heard about it in 2011, when it was said to be for young people who had been unemployed for a year. It offered a guaranteed job for 12 months. In 2013, that seemed to morph into a compulsory jobs guarantee for those who had been unemployed for two years, so the objective had already slipped a bit. It guaranteed a job for only six months—half the time previously advertised by the original statement. Yet there remained complete confusion in the Opposition ranks about how long this programme was meant to last. When pressed, the shadow Chancellor said:

“We would have a guarantee of one year for young people, two years for adults. Anybody who is out of work would be guaranteed a job.”

That is not quite what I heard from the Opposition today. How long will it last—one year, two years, six months? What exactly have they costed?

I can understand why the title of this debate was changed. One could almost hear what was going on behind closed doors between the shadow Chancellor and my opposite number, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), when they were hoping to announce all the details about how long the jobs guarantee would last. One could almost hear the shadow Chancellor saying, because it was in the speech from the right hon. Member for East Ham, “You’re not announcing anything that allows anybody to cost this properly, because that way they will tell us that this does not work.” Even the motion carefully leaves those questions unanswered. Why would not the Opposition put in their motion all the details of this apparently wonderful plan? The answer is that no such wonderful plan exists. They allude to certain other plans out there, but they do not tell us what they mean.

What we heard today sounded rather familiar, so I looked it up. Back when Labour was last in government, there was a programme called StepUp. It was piloted by the previous Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, in 20 areas between 2002 and 2004. I shall not go over the names of the programme, but it was supposed to give paid employment to those failed by the new deal and out of work for two years. StepUp was never rolled out nationally by the previous Government because the evaluation from 2006 exposed its failings: for those nearest the labour market and those under 25, StepUp actually had a negative impact on work prospects, at a massive cost of £10,000 per place.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the programme in Wales. The hon. Member for Leeds West has been even more explicit that the Opposition’s jobs programme is a rehash of Jobs Growth Wales. She said:

“I went to see a scheme very similar to this in Wales last week and...that’s what we would aim to do across the UK”.

But that is not what was described from the Opposition Front Bench today. A closer look at what has been announced about Jobs Growth Wales reveals that in many senses it is an exercise in cherry-picking. The hardest to help are not eligible; no one on the Work programme, Work Choice or any similar programme is allowed to go for the new programme; and places are given to only one in three of those who have applied, so a place is far from being guaranteed for all. In any case, although Jobs Growth Wales has trumpeted a success rate of 80% of participants in work, an apprenticeship or learning after six months, already 90% of all—not some—young people in Wales move off jobseeker’s allowance within nine months. That has nothing to do with the programme and all to do with what is happening to them through the jobcentres and through the Work programme.

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that general unemployment in Harlow has gone down by 50% since 2010, youth unemployment has gone down by 56% since 2010 and 83% of the jobs created are permanent positions, yet the Labour councillor Emma Toal said last week at a council budget meeting in Harlow that she feels sick to the stomach when I quote the fall in unemployment and the jobs created. Is that not shocking? Is that not a shame? Does that not show that we are the workers’ party and Labour is the party of dependency?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, it is appalling that the councillor is unhappy about the idea that more people are getting work in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The reason why she takes that attitude, I think, is that Labour wants only to be elected. The Opposition do not care about anyone else. They would rather tell bad news to get elected than have a success that they could trumpet. Perhaps that is the real point.

Ninety per cent. of all young people in Wales move off JSA within nine months, so at £6,000 a place, the alleged success that is being trumpeted is nothing like the value for money that the right hon. Member for East Ham mentioned earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

We have more people employed now than at any time in our island’s history, and I am saddened at the way this debate is going on across the country. The millions of people who have been employed are now able to provide for their families and are, for the most part, off benefits. For Labour Members to say that these are not real jobs is not just an insult to these people and their families; it is not a fair reflection of what is taking place. I say that because last week a Labour councillor in my constituency, Emma Toal, said that she feels “sick” to the stomach every time I do a

“lap of victory about unemployment statistics”.

Since I have been in this House, I have worked incredibly hard to try to bring jobs back to Harlow: I fought for two years for a new university technical school; and I championed apprenticeships, including by having the first full-time apprentice in my office. The number of jobs in Harlow is growing—we have got jobs back.

Let me briefly mention a few figures. In May 2010, 605 young people aged 18 to 24 were claiming JSA in Harlow, which was a rate of 8.1%, whereas the current figures are 3.1% and 235 people. I am proud that there has been a 61% decrease in the number of young people claiming JSA, and it is worth remembering that 83% of the jobs created in 2014 were full-time positions. I know that because year after year I established three jobs fairs, which we entirely set up ourselves. We had hundreds of jobs on offer, of all kinds—permanent jobs. Thousands of jobseekers came and I received many messages from people who had got jobs as a result. So for the Labour party in Harlow to say it is sick to the stomach because the number of jobs has gone up in Harlow and unemployment is down is shameful and shocking, and Labour has done the same thing on apprenticeships. The number of apprenticeships has increased by 106% in my constituency. In 2009-10 there were just 450 young people in Harlow starting apprenticeships, whereas last year’s figure was 770. According to Ipsos MORI, 88% of apprentices said they were satisfied with their course, and only 7% of employers expressed dissatisfaction.

So there is a good story on jobs and on apprenticeships. It is important to see job creation not only in terms of individual schemes that the Opposition are proposing, which are very expensive and have been proved in Wales not to work; we also need to look at it holistically. This Government have created a programme by investing in new schools, in university technical schools, in apprenticeships, in real welfare reform and in our businesses, with lower taxes.