Specialist Disability Employment

Anne McGuire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for advance warning of her statement and indeed an advance copy of it.

I am somewhat surprised, however, that the Minister failed to identify the factories where there are no agreed business plans. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I shall quickly run through them: Acton, Ashington, Barking, Birkenhead, Bolton, Cleator Moor, Gateshead, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, North London, North Staffs, Oldham, Penzance, Pontefract, Preston, Southampton, Spennymoor, Wigan, Worksop and Boston Spa; in Scotland, Wishaw; and in Wales, Aberdare, Abertillery, Merthyr Tydfill, Swansea and Wrexham. Other staff at risk include modernisation staff. It is disappointing that the Minister did not put that on the record.

May I try to lay to rest the issue of segregated employment? As the Minister and many others in the House are aware, there are strong views about so-called segregated employment, but many people who work in Remploy factories, and in other supported businesses throughout the UK, do not see themselves as segregated. They see themselves as exercising the same choice as non-disabled people have when they choose employment. We need to get away from the split between segregated and so-called non-segregated employment. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.

May I ask the Minister one or two questions about her statement? Why does she continue to declare that she is implementing the Sayce review, when Liz Sayce stated:

“Employees and management of Enterprise Businesses should be given a sufficient window (for instance, six months) to put forward a business plan to this expert panel setting out how the business will become viable without Government subsidy”?

That refers to six months. What we have had is a 90-day window to implement a closure programme. I am astonished that the Minister continues to use Liz Sayce’s report as some sort of human shield to disguise what she is doing.

The scale of the closures announced today vincidates Liz Sayce’s view that if only nine factories have been able to put together a business proposal in that 90 days, her six-month window would have given a far greater opportunity to some of the other factories to access such business expertise. The Minister made great play of the £10,000 for business advice for employee-led bids. Those involved would be hard pushed to get business consultancies for £10,000 to put together a business plan for some of the factories.

The time frame for closure does not take into account the challenge of winding up businesses and supporting people, many of whom have complex disabilities. Why has the Minister also decided to renege on the agreement made with those in the so-called modernisation group? There was an agreement with former employees that was supported in all parts of the House when the modernisation programme was announced, and many will be disappointed, if not surprised, that what was supported in opposition has been abandoned in government.

Will the Minister clarify the position of the Remploy pension scheme and how the Government will honour their responsibilities to that scheme? Given that the Government’s Work programme is missing its target for disabled workers by 75%, what new support is the Minister putting in place to support Remploy workers who will lose their jobs?

Frankly, there are times when I wonder whether the Secretary of State understands any of Remploy’s arguments as he sits and sniggers when he is not making disparaging comments about disabled workers.

Can the Minister distance herself from the harsh economic climate in which we find ourselves? Even if she is minded to make this decision, doing so in the current economic climate makes it look as if she is abandoning her duty of care to disabled employees who have given many years of service to a company that the Government own—a company that this country owns.

The Minister mentioned the Access to Work programme. She might wish to remind the House that Access to Work numbers are plummeting under this Government—[Interruption.] Well, the DWP figures seem to indicate that the Access to Work uptake has not been as good as she sometimes indicates to the House. In 2007, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) announced the modernisation programme, the now Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), said:

“Let me assure Remploy and its employees that the next Conservative Government will continue the process of identifying additional potential procurement opportunities for them and the public sector work force.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 451.]

Where is that Minister now, and what action has he taken in government to fulfil the promise he so glibly gave in opposition?

Finally, there is a programme that the Government have paraded around, telling us how wonderful it is: the regional growth fund. The National Audit Office has said that jobs created by the regional growth fund cost the taxpayer between £4,000 and £200,000. It has also said that 90% of the jobs could have been delivered at a cost of £26,000 a job, which is slightly more than the subsidy for Remploy workers and those losing their jobs today.

I do not disagree with the Minister that this is a difficult decision—many Opposition Members have been through some of these issues before—but I charge her, in a situation in which tens of people are chasing every job in some of the constituencies where Remploy factories are closing, with having abrogated her responsibility to disabled workers who have given a lifetime of service to Remploy.

[Maria Miller]

The right hon. Lady has very strong views on this matter, but perhaps I could ask her to consider the views of disabled people. Let me bring to the House’s attention a quote from Disability Wales, an organisation whose views many hon. Members on both sides of the House might value:

“Disability Wales… does not see Remploy as either progressive or forward thinking in their approaches to service provision. Although they may once have been seen as providing opportunities for disabled people, they are now standing in the way of full integration and indirectly hampering individuals’ chances of progression.”

I am afraid that that is what the people of Wales feel, and that reflects what many other organisations that represent disabled people in this country feel.

The right hon. Lady talked about the important issue of jobs, but I really wish that she would check her facts before coming to the House. If she were to do so, she would see that Access to Work is actually spending more money than ever before in supporting disabled people across the country. Yes, there is more that we can do, and that we are doing, because what we inherited was what Liz Sayce called the best secret in government. We are going out and marketing Access to Work actively to make sure that more people can use it to get into work. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) says from a sedentary position, “You have to get a job”, and she is absolutely right. The individuals affected by today’s announcements live in areas where Remploy’s employment services arm has actually helped 10,500 disabled people into work over the past year alone, and indeed 35,000 over the past two years. She might be happy about having disabled people shut away in segregated factories but I am not, so on that we will have to disagree.

The modernisation plan is four years into its five-year process, and what is clear to us is that at least we are able potentially to take out of Government control some of the factories that have been subject to the initial phase 1 stage, which were judged by our independent advisers not to be financially viable. We still have to look at phase 2 factories—some 18 of them—that are judged to have more chance of financial viability, and I look forward to bringing hon. Members up to date on our progress with that in the summer.

On the pensions scheme, I reassure the right hon. Lady that we will protect in full all the accrued rights of participating members. As to the modernisation group, I also assure her that we are having ongoing conversations about how we can help to ensure that some of the people involved are not affected by redundancy. Perhaps I can talk to her in detail about that at a more appropriate time.