Specialist Disability Employment

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

I was pleased to have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman, who has been a doughty advocate for his factory and constituency, and obviously it is good that we will be moving forward with the bid. We will work hard to do everything we can to make bids successful, but obviously they have to be commercially viable and provide jobs for disabled people. Those are our priorities.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

My apologies, Mr Speaker, for the tiny burst of excitement earlier.

Will my hon. Friend remind me how many factories were closed down by the last Labour Government and what support package they put in place to help workers made redundant in 2008?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend will know that 29 factories were closed under the previous Administration, and it was an error not to put more support in place for people affected. I am sure, if Labour did it again, it would do things differently, because it became apparent very early on that, of the 1,611 disabled people who left factories as a result of the modernisation redundancy programme, very few got into work. However, given the package that we have put in place today and the record of Remploy employment services over the past two years—they have helped 35,000 disabled people to get into work—we are living under a very different set of arrangements.