Jobs and Social Security

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). I think that I agree with most of what he said. I certainly agree that on this issue we need cross-party consensus and not political point-scoring. It is a pity that his Front Benchers did not take note of that in drafting their motion and chose to play politics instead of dealing with the substance.

Whatever our concerns about the performance of the Work programme to date, it beggars belief to suggest that people would have been better off left to their own devices, with none of the support that it has been providing, and that more of them would have found work in the difficult economic climate we have seen over the past 18 months. That is a grave insult to the providers and their employees who have been working hard trying to help people who have been unemployed for a long time. We have to give the programme somewhat more time than its first year before we draw any real conclusions about its success. We can see from the data published by the trade association that its performance is improving, and that is consistent with what I have seen on the ground in my constituency.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The problem I have with quoting the additional figures that have emerged from the trade association is that for the past year and a half we have been lectured on the fact that we could not have any interim information about how the Work programme is going because the data had to be properly evaluated and reliable. Yet because the published data do not suit the Government, we are suddenly having all these unverified data thrown at us to tell us that things are not really how we think they are. Why was all this kept secret?

[Nigel Mills]

I am not sure that I am the best person to answer that question. However, when we have a programme that is running for seven years, with people being put on to it for two years, we cannot draw many conclusions from the data in the first few months of its operation. A decent period will have to elapse before we get some reliable data that will have some meaning and can be used to look at trends. I see why we have official data to the end of July this year, but data since then would have more relevance if we also had data from the first three months of the programme.

No Member of this House seriously disputes the need to provide those with most barriers in their way with the additional support that they need to get back to work. Many such people have been out of work for a long time and will need help with serious issues in order to build up confidence and have any chance of getting back to work. To be fair, the scheme of the previous Government towards the end of their time in office was not radically different from that introduced by the current Government. This Government have accelerated the change, introduced a more consistent programme over the whole country and brought the strands of different schemes into one programme, but the direction of travel is not entirely different. In fact, many providers involved with the previous scheme are also involved in the current one. It is not sensible to say that the Work programme is doing the wrong thing and is a terrible idea, and that its support is completely wrong. Where does that leave us? Surely it is not the Opposition’s policy to have no support at all for the long-term unemployed.

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[Guto Bebb]

Indeed. My experience of going around Tesco’s partnership stores, for example, has been quite inspiring. I found somebody who had been unemployed for eight years and was given an opportunity to work in the bakery section; 18 months later she was the manager, and famously said, “They’ll be carrying me out of here in a box, because I’ve been given an opportunity.” That is the reality of what creating a job and helping people into a job is all about.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The points the hon. Gentleman makes about the importance of employment are clearly correct. The reason I have any criticism of jobs in the retail sector, for example, is not because they are not important jobs, but because people are increasingly being offered short-hours jobs, on zero-hours contracts and with little security, which simply does not work for those trying to organise child care. That is the problem.

[Guto Bebb]

I disagree on the whole. Quite often the current restriction means that when people go over a certain number of hours, they are penalised. That will be dealt with when we introduce universal credit. What I have found is that there is a feeling out there that people are still being penalised for wanting to work more. Universal credit will certainly deal with that, which is an important change that is required.

We have heard a lot in this debate—from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman and some Opposition Back Benchers too—about youth unemployment. Obviously it is absolutely problematic if too many young people are not working, but between 2004 and 2010, youth unemployment in my constituency of Aberconwy increased by 192%. If I recall it correctly, I think the Labour party was in government at that point.

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[Geraint Davies]

I have been the housing chair for London and for Croydon. I know that it is possible to devise strategies involving incentives to encourage people to move to smaller homes—and, of course, as people die over time, housing is recycled in any case—but the suggestion that a group of people in social housing should be evicted once their children have grown up and that, because suitable housing does not exist in their own communities, they should be moved around is not only despicable but completely counter-productive. It is economically insane as well as socially immoral.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that this is not an attempt to ensure that housing is distributed more evenly. It even applies to people with disabilities. Couples who have to sleep apart for medical reasons will be suddenly told that they have too big a house. It is a draconian measure.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. There is a danger that those who wish to make a speech later will not be able to do so. I am sure that the hon. Lady understands that if she does not have an opportunity to make a speech herself, it will be her own fault.

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[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Whenever any Government Minister, from the Prime Minister down, is asked what they are doing to tackle unemployment, they always answer by setting out a litany of schemes, starting with the Work programme. The problem is that the Work programme does not create any jobs. Jobs are created by other aspects of the economy. In the past financial year, the number of affordable homes in Scotland has halved compared with the previous two years, so we can see where the problem lies. An awful lot of building jobs are not being done, because houses are not being started, because the funding is not in place. Since the start of the Work programme, one of our issues has been that it does not create jobs, and if the jobs are not there in the right areas for the right people, no amount of money put into the programme will resolve that. Perhaps the Government have just convinced themselves of their own propaganda. They have spent so long saying that the employment problem facing Britain is that people either will not or cannot work and that benefits are too generous that they have swallowed their own propaganda.

Another question about the Work programme is whether it is actually effective in doing what it sets out to do, namely training people, giving them confidence and skills, and helping them to meet employers to get jobs. We were told a lot about the black-box approach, the trouble with which is that we do not know and are not allowed to know what is happening.

The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) spoke about visiting one of his Work programme providers, which I have also done. I heard a whole load of stuff—this was near the beginning of the programme—about how it would give people personalised programmes, have medical people on hand and give people counselling. It sounded wonderful, but the anecdotal evidence from my constituents—yes, it is anecdotal; we are not told much about what is happening because of the black box—is that all that is lacking.

I met one constituent last weekend whose view was that he could have done what his Work programme provider got him to do equally well at home. He went there once a fortnight—it was not an intensive programme—to do a job search on a computer, but he already knew how to do that and had been doing it himself. It was what he did with the jobcentre before he ever went on the Work programme. There did not seem to be a huge amount of value in what was happening.

The problem lies partly with the Government’s pride in cheapness. If we pay peanuts, we do not get very much. Gingerbread, an organisation that represents single parents, has told me of single parents on the Work programme who, because their provider does not provide child-care costs—it is not funded to do so—cannot necessarily take up any available training opportunities. Perhaps we are not investing enough in the programme to get the job outcomes. It may be cheap, but it is not producing the outcomes.

I have also visited in the past couple of weeks a social enterprise in my constituency that does employability services work, mainly with people with mental health problems. It gets some of its funding and a substantial number of referrals through Edinburgh’s health services, which is probably just as well, because that at least gives it some steady income. It is also a Work programme subcontractor. It carries out an intensive programme with people with mental health difficulties and understands the lack of confidence that they often have. The constituent I mentioned who had had the bad experience could have done with that, because he had suffered a nervous breakdown previously. The enterprise does 95% of its work with people who are got into work, and it is successful and involves less than half the contract price. Might it not be more efficient to contract directly with such organisations, which have been a proven success? That could be done locally through Jobcentre Plus or local councils. I offer that as a possible solution to the problems with the Work programme. I am not just criticising it but suggesting how to make it better.