William Bain
Main Page: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)Department Debates - View all William Bain's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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I do not recognise the statistics that the hon. Gentleman is putting forward, because since the election a record number of jobs—1.2 million—have been created in the private sector. As I said, 50,000 jobs were found by Remploy Employment Services in the past two years. We can find these jobs, and that is entirely what we are aiming to do.
With unemployment among the disabled having risen by 63,000 in the past year, this Minister, sadly, has presided over an unmitigated shambles of a tendering process in the Springburn Remploy factory in my constituency, with nearly 50 disabled workers not even given the dignity of her making a written statement to this House. Does she not accept that with the Daily Record in Scotland having made very serious allegations about the propriety of the tendering process at that factory, the only way she can restore confidence in her own policy is to bring in a moratorium so that she does not further preside over the incompetent chaos affecting hundreds of Remploy workers across the country?
It is a pleasure to debate with the hon. Gentleman again. I have had two Westminster Hall debates with him on this subject, and we have spoken on various occasions. He knows only too well, from the written and verbal replies that I have given to him, what we are doing, what is happening and what has happened in his constituency.