Specialist Disability Employment

William Bain Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman has misread my tone. I can absolutely tell him that I am working very much with disabled people on the programme that we are putting forward today. It is led by disabled people, and the plan that we are following is very much led by the recommendations in the Sayce report. It is good news that we are able to do further work on the bid for the hon. Gentleman’s factory, and I hope that he will perhaps be able to support the factory in that. However, the broader reform that we are talking about will do much more to help the 12,000 disabled people in his constituency.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

I can assure the Minister that people in my constituency and throughout Scotland will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the workers and those campaigning to keep all 36 Remploy factories open. Given that she is prepared to consider bids for the Springburn factory in my constituency, will she give a guarantee to the 46 workers there that there will be no compulsory redundancies if the factory is sold?

[Maria Miller]

The terms of the bid that is progressing in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency are being dealt with by the commercial directorate of Remploy, so I cannot comment on that point. I would, however, again draw the House’s attention to the words of the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who is no longer in his place. He has stated:

“The reality is that without modernisation Remploy deficits would obliterate our other programmes to help disabled people into mainstream work.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 448.]

Is that really what the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) wants to see? I do not think so.