Work Capability Assessment

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

If the noble Baroness is referring to a newspaper story about 50p, I can assure her that that is not government policy.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, what progress is being made in getting more disabled people working, which is so important for their self-esteem?

[Lord Freud]

We have seen 116,000 disabled people return to the workforce this year. That is a 4% increase and is faster than the 2.6% rate of increase which is the average.

Unemployment: Young People

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

The Governor of the Bank of England has said that the only way that we are going to get growth in real wages is by recovering productivity in the economy. One way is clearly to reduce dependency and to get 1.7 million extra people into work. The second way is to get the skills base up, and there are now some really good signs that we are moving that up by serious percentage points. The third way is progression in work, so that people earn more. That is what universal credit is all about.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is it not the case that we have never had as many people in work as we have now?

[Lord Freud]

We now have 30.7 million people in work. It is not just about the number; we are now at a 73% rate of employment, which is little short of the all-time high.

Introduction: Baroness Smith of Newnham

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

As my noble friend said, the issue is that we are doing everything we can to help people into the workplace. It was a very encouraging assessment from the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, which said:

“A tightening in the eligibility requirements for some state benefits might also have led to an intensification of job search”.

That echoes something that the deputy governor had said a little while before. It is apparent that our reforms are working, with employment up by 1.7 million since 2010 and record numbers of people now in work.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, the Oakley review suggested that some claimants do not understand—or even open—their correspondence about sanctions. What are we doing about this?

[Lord Freud]

Matthew Oakley was very concerned about the communications aspects of talking to claimants about sanctions. We have taken that point very seriously. Indeed, we have accepted his recommendations on that and are going further; we are reviewing and improving all our claimant communications on sanctions across every benefit, and we aim to ensure that people understand that they have received a sanction and why they have received it. We have introduced a claimant communications unit that tries to get the language right—because, as many noble Lords know, some of the language that the DWP put out in the past was clunky at best.

Millennium Development Goals

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, our thanks are due to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for her work in this field as well as for introducing the report and the debate in the way she has.

The report is welcome, not least for its references to the importance of agriculture—which has been neglected, I fear, in the current crop of millennium development goals—and inclusive growth as a necessary precondition for jobs and the reduction of poverty.

My experience of growing up in Africa as the grandson of two African farmers—we should never forget that women play a greater role in agriculture in Africa than do men—has taught me, as has my experience outside this House in Africa, that in order to bring about the “profound transformation” to end extreme poverty and improve livelihoods, to which the report refers, it is necessary to do what it suggests: to harness innovation and technology to this end. The high-level panel is to be commended for that.

I ask the Minister—I warmly welcome him, as does the rest of the House, to his place—what can we do, what can DfID do, to support higher education, our research councils, our scientific bodies and our private sector in order to promote science, technology and innovation in Africa to underpin agriculture and agricultural growth.

If this report is a Christmas tree—and it is—it needs science, energy and infrastructure in order to bring it alight. Only with that can Africa fulfil its potential and the lion join the tigers as an engine of growth and prosperity, not only for Africa and Asia but for the whole world.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to say that we are doing quite well.