Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

I think that the hon. Gentleman does not really understand what happened with the whole set of Remploy factories. In 2008, the Labour party put in £555 million for a modernisation plan that failed. Those factories that can exist as viable businesses are doing so. We have helped them in that. We have supported them, and more than nine have reopened. Of those that could not, we have got some of the employees into work and others are opening up as social enterprises. The Opposition tried and failed. We are doing something about this and supporting those people.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to get the long-term unemployed into work.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

From next April, those hardest to help jobseekers returning from the Work programme will get the intensive support they need to get a job. A third will sign on every day; a third will go on community work placements for six months; and a third will receive intensive support from Jobcentre Plus.

[Mr Raab]

Research for the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that since 2010, the Government’s welfare reforms have already increased tax incentives to work and cut welfare disincentives by 6%. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must continue this recalibration of the system to end the dependency culture that the last Government left behind and ensure that hard work pays?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is spot-on. That is exactly what we said we would do—a recalibration; a rebalancing of the economy—to get more people into private enterprise and to make fewer people state dependent. We have done that with 1.4 million jobs in the private sector. Opposition Members said that it was not possible. This is down to an environment that we have set and the great British businesses that have provided this employment.