Early Parliamentary General Election Bill

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Neil Gray

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

Will the Minister give way?

Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Neil Gray

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates where my speech is about to go, but to come back to the point made by the hon. Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), in the hospitality and retail sectors, where this practice is known to be widespread—it is by no means exclusive to those sectors, but it does happen in them rather a lot—there is a difference between a person applying for a job to be, for example, a barista in a coffee shop or a cocktail maker in a hotel bar, and their demonstrating that they can do the things that they have said they can do, which is fine, and a trial shift in which the applicant is asked to work alongside someone on a paid shift, doing the same job as them, but is not paid.

The Government think that the existing law is sufficient to deal with and prevent that kind of thing from happening but, as the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said, all too often a company advertises an unpaid trial shift, and in some cases it might be two or three hours, but in some of the more extreme cases, including the case that first brought this issue to my attention, it is 40 hours. Yesterday, the BBC interviewed someone who had done four weeks of unpaid trial work. Here is the deeply cynical element: in a lot of cases, there is not actually a job to give the person—it is about covering sickness, staff shortages, busy periods over Christmas or wedding seasons in hotels. That is where the law is insufficient to prevent gross exploitation.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I hugely commend my hon. Friend for introducing this Bill and for the strong and erudite way he is presenting it. Is not the greatest tragedy of trial shifts that most often the people who are exploited have learning disabilities? They are desperate for work and see these shifts as their only opportunity. That is a key reason why the Bill must be passed.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Too often that is what happens. The people who fall victim either do not know their rights and cannot stand up for them, or are unwilling to challenge employers on their rights because they are in fear of losing their job. This practice hits the lowest paid and the lowest skilled in our economy, and this is a Bill to protect the lowest paid and the lowest skilled in our economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been a great supporter of the Bill from the outset and has had good input into it too. He is right—it is a deeply horrifying and cynical practice. Imagine if that was your first introduction to the world of work: how would it make you feel about trying to secure work for yourself in future? I think we are all united in believing that it is a good thing when people want to go out there and secure work of some kind.

[Neil Gray]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The MP of the constituent in the case I have mentioned wishes to intervene.

[Neil Gray]

The worst part of that story was that my constituent was rota-ed to be in that work the following week, which gave him the impression that he had in fact secured the job. He was told, on the last day possible, that he had not applied enough effort, which was clearly patently wrong. That type of behaviour is utterly shameful and must be called out.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I did not know that additional detail. It is shameful and it is right to call it out. It is the last time that I will be setting foot in B&M Bargains, which is a great shame because I pass it on the way to my constituency office every day. Let me say that I mean no malice to the workers of that company but instead the bosses who allow that kind of practice to go on.

Jobcentre Closures

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Neil Gray

Monday 5th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. Indeed, the issues he raises were the very motivations for our demanding that equality impact assessments be carried out before a decision was taken. It was obvious, though, that a decision was taken before the sham consultation that the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to hold.

I have asked Ministers about the impact of the closures on disabled people, minority ethnic communities and women. For example, in a recent written question, I asked the Government how many disabled people used Langside jobcentre, which they closed two weeks ago. They told me that they do not hold those figures. If that is true for one jobcentre in my constituency, what is the answer for all the jobcentres across Glasgow? What is the answer for all the jobcentres that they are closing throughout the United Kingdom? This is a ham-fisted decision that has been handled in a ham-fisted way. The Government have relied on Google and do not know how the closures will affect huge numbers of people because they do not hold the data. I suspect that they do hold the data. I have to be honest: when I read that answer, I did not quite believe it. We would like to see the data and I can see no reason why the Government cannot give us the answers.

The other issue is that the Government have not actually thought through what they want jobcentres to do. I would have loved to have had a debate, when the Government announced the closures in December 2016, about how jobcentres can properly serve the people who use them and the communities in which they are based. The problem is that we were not offered that debate. We were offered a straight up choice: closure or non-closure. Rather than have a discussion about how jobcentres can, for example, better work with citizens advice bureaux and other employment agencies, perhaps under the auspices of local or devolved Government, all we were offered was a straight up closure programme. The Government did not even want to consult the very people who would be affected.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for the tenancy that he and my other colleagues from Glasgow have shown in their campaign against the closures. Does he share my concern that, in such debates or when we talk about social security issues at Question Time, Ministers increasingly turn around and direct claimants to seek advice from jobcentres—the very same jobcentres that the Government are closing?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Consistency never was the Conservative party’s strongest suit, but there is a glaring hypocrisy in the fact that the Government are signposting people to jobcentres as they slash services up and down the United Kingdom.

Universal Credit Project Assessment Reviews

Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and Neil Gray

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

Absolutely, and I will be coming to the cost to the taxpayer later in my speech.

It is also worth noting that the ICO gave the DWP a rap over the knuckles for not replying to Mr Slater

“within such time as is reasonable”.

However, for me, paragraph 38 of the ICO ruling is the most important and sums up why the UK Government must publish the reports in full. It says:

“The Commissioner’s decision is that the balance of the public interest favours disclosure of all of the PAR reports. The age of the reports show that the need to protect free and frank advice is lessened…the reports provide a much greater insight than any information already available about the UCP…there are strong arguments for transparency and accountability for a programme which may affect 11 million UK citizens and process billions of pounds, which has had numerous reported failings in its governance. These arguments outweigh the need to protect advice provided in the now historic PAR reports.”

Essentially, the UK Government said these reports should be kept confidential to protect those who wrote them, but the ICO disagreed and said not only that the UK Government should publish, but that the names of the senior civil servants involved should not be redacted.

The ICO gave the DWP 35 calendar days from its judgment, which was on 30 August, or the Department would face being taken to court. The Secretary of State has essentially confirmed to me just now that it is his intention to take this matter to the High Court. Therefore, the position we are now in is that the UK Government are happy to see taxpayers’ money being spent to have this issue heard at the High Court. A Tory Government who say there is no money to properly fix universal credit find the money to go to court to stop the publication of reports on universal credit. It really makes me wonder what they are so desperate to hide.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that there is a worrying pattern? During a campaign led by myself and other hon. Members from Glasgow to save city jobcentres, the same Department refused to publish equality impact assessments on those closures.

[Neil Gray]

Absolutely. The Department does not have a very good record in this regard.

If the reports were as glowing about universal credit as Ministers have been—indeed, just now—surely Ministers would have released them publicly. Perhaps we will find that, actually, the UK Government know just how bad UC is in its current stripped-back and cut-to-ribbons form. Perhaps the reports will confirm what all the expert charities and MPs from all corners of this House have been saying. Perhaps they will confirm the need for the UK Government to finally invest in universal credit and properly fix it.

The SNP is not opposed to the idea of universal credit—we have said that for a number of years. We gave universal credit a cautious welcome when it was first mooted: a welcome because the idea of simplifying the social security system was good, and cautious because it is a Tory Government in charge of social reform.

The “cautious” element has proven to be canny. The universal credit we see before us now is unrecognisable from that first presented in the early days of the coalition Government. Work allowances have been decimated, housing benefit stripped and child tax credits cut and given a disgusting two-child limit. The rape clause is surely the ultimate low of any social reform in these isles since the poll tax. The resulting campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) deservedly saw her named as the best Scot at Westminster at the recent Herald politician of the year awards. Unison and some Labour MPs are now looking to pick up that campaign, in support of the work my hon. Friend has been leading for 18 months, and that is welcome.

All these cuts to aspects of universal credit have been compounded by the welfare cap and, of course, the benefits freeze. From expert charity after expert charity and think-tank after think-tank, every time we see a public report on universal credit, it is damning. Even now, the Government accept that universal credit is failing in its current form. The Chancellor accepted that when he made his Budget announcements on minor changes to universal credit—minor but welcome first steps to fix it.

The Government have taken pelters on this for months. The SNP Scottish Government, SNP MPs, Labour MPs and even Tory MPs have been calling for a pause and fix—and it is the “fix” part that is so important. Sadly, the well-trailed intervention from the Chancellor does not go far enough or fast enough. It does not address the main issues with universal credit, which are not just about payment delays but payment cuts. Universal credit was vaunted as the benefit to make work pay, and it could have gone some way towards doing that. However, work allowances—the money recipients can keep as they return to work—have been cut to ribbons. Coupled with this decade being the worst for 210 years in terms of wage growth, we clearly see that the UK Government’s narrative is a faint hope rather than any policy-driven ambition.

Universal credit is about making recipients pay—pay for the economic failure of this Government and pay for the failure of austerity. Making work pay is important. The stagnation of wages was cited by former Social Mobility Commission chair Alan Milburn as he resigned from it. He also said that the UK Government have been so preoccupied with Brexit that they do

“not seem to have the necessary bandwidth to ensure the rhetoric of healing social division is matched with the reality”.

Recipients of universal credit are being let down by this Government as they seek expert advice and support. Citizens Advice Scotland is concerned about the removal of implicit consent for it to act on clients behalf on UC.