Jobs and Work
Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Baroness Primarolo(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
There are few issues of more primary importance to our constituents’ lives and our wider economic health than jobs and work. After the deepest recession for a century, the economy, however tentatively, is improving. The news today of another fall in unemployment should be welcomed across the House. I am especially pleased to see the highest level of women’s employment in Scotland since records began. I am also pleased to note a further fall in unemployment in Banff and Buchan.
Nevertheless, employment is still not back to its pre-recession levels. We should all be concerned about some of the significant challenges lurking beneath the surface figures. The first of these is youth unemployment, which remains unacceptably high. I came of age in the 1980s, when mass unemployment left a generation of school leavers languishing on the dole. I remember how that was not only soul destroying for the individuals affected, but destructive of our whole social fabric. Unfortunately, I see the same mistakes and oversights being repeated before our eyes. Youth unemployment is still around 18% across the UK. The economy is recovering and employment is growing in the wider labour market, but young people are not seeing the benefits.
The scale of the problem and its potentially long-term consequences should shake the Government out of any sense of complacency. In Scotland, the modern apprenticeships scheme has meant that 77,000 new apprentices have had an opportunity over the past three years, and the follow-up shows that 92% of them remain in work six months after completion, the vast majority of it full-time. Additionally, the opportunities for all scheme has offered a training position, a work placement or an educational place for every single 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland.
However, from 2014 a new programme of EU funds becomes available to enable member states to deliver a youth guarantee that would offer those opportunities to any young person up to the age of 24. These additional resources would enable the extension of the opportunities for all scheme to other young adults. I would be keen to know what use the Government intend to make of that funding so that all our young citizens can benefit from the EU youth guarantee.
It is clear, however, that we still have an awful lot of work to do. The interim report of the Commission for Developing Scotland’s Young Workforce, chaired by Sir Ian Wood, highlighted the need for schools, colleges and employers to work much more closely together to equip young people for the workplace and to ensure that vocational education meets their needs and those of the labour market. The report also highlighted the need to tackle inequalities, whether the barriers faced by disabled youngsters and minority ethnic groups or the chronic cross-cutting inequality associated with occupational gender segregation.
In my constituency I have seen a lot of good practice, for example in the North East Scotland college in Fraserburgh, which is working with local employers and schools to create pathways for young people into work. Only a couple of weeks ago I presented prizes to pupils from Mintlaw academy who won this year’s Technology Challenge, a competition run by the college, sponsored by several energy and manufacturing companies and involving second-year pupils from schools across northern Aberdeenshire. The competition is a model of good practice because it involves all the pupils in the early years of secondary school, before they make their subject choices, with a view to making them aware of the excellent career opportunities open to those with qualifications in science, technology, engineering and maths. Importantly, the competition insists on the equal participation of girls.
That leads me neatly on to the other key issue I want to address today: the persistent gap between male and female earnings, even 40 years after the Equal Pay Act 1970. Occupational gender segregation continues to be a problem, and too many women are in low-paid, part-time or insecure work. I do not think that anyone would pretend that these problems are easy to resolve, but I would like to have seen the Government attempt to make more headway. As I have said before in the House, the austerity measures of the past few years have fallen wholly disproportionately on women, to a large extent because women are more likely to have caring roles, to be in part-time or low-paid work and to be in receipt of tax credits.
The availability of affordable child care is an acute issue for parents combining work with family life, but we have seen only this week how parents are falling foul of the Department for Work and Pensions’ new sanctions regime, which is making it impossible for some parents to meet their family commitments. This is carers week and it is also important to acknowledge the role that carers play in providing social care and the impact that has on their employment prospects.
It has become a truism of political discourse to say that work is the route out of poverty—indeed, the Prime Minister said it twice this afternoon. Of course, at the most obvious level, well-paid, full-time work is a route out of poverty, but over recent decades rapidly increasing wage inequality has meant the rise of the working poor. For those in minimum-wage jobs who are unable to secure full-time hours, in-work poverty has become a new reality. We are in a situation in which a family with two children, paying average rent, with both parents working full time in low-paid jobs, will be a family on the breadline. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation, those in the lowest paid jobs would be over £600 a year better off. We need to acknowledge that the minimum wage is no longer a living wage and that it needs to catch up with the cost of living.
Meeting these substantial challenges requires strategic interventions and a willingness to try innovative approaches, so I am disappointed that the Gracious Speech failed to address youth unemployment—
Public Service Pensions Bill
Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Baroness Primarolo(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Whiteford
I think I might be rescuing the hon. Lady from the point she was trying to make. Earlier, she stressed the importance of considering what is actually in the legislation rather than the world as we would like it to be. Does she welcome the fact that John Swinney has not exercised his flexibility to increase contributions to the local government pension scheme?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) will comment on that point only if it is relevant to the amendments we are considering. I remind hon. Members that we are not yet on Third Reading. The debate is going rather wide of the new clauses and amendments, so perhaps the hon. Lady could return to them.
Small Charitable Donations Bill
Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Baroness Primarolo(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Whiteford
I beg to move amendment 34, page 14, line 4, leave out ‘in cash’.
This amendment allows for gifts made by contactless cash card and mobile telephone transactions where it is impractical to obtain a gift aid declaration.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 35, page 14, line 5, leave out ‘of cash’.
Consequential on amendment 34.
Amendment 36, page 14, line 9, leave out ‘“cash” means coins and notes in any currency’.
Consequential on amendment 34.
Amendment 22, page 14, leave out line 9 and insert—
‘“cash” means coins, notes, cheques and money donated electronically in any currency.’.
This amendment seeks to include non-cash donations within the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme.
Amendment 2, page 14, line 9, after ‘currency’, insert ‘and any equivalent electronic payment as may from time to time be prescribed by the Treasury by order.’.
To future proof the Bill by enabling the Treasury to allow electronic payments to be treated as allowable donations.
Amendment 37, page 14, line 16, leave out ‘cash’ and insert ‘gift’.
Consequential on amendment 34.
Dr Whiteford
The last time the House debated the Bill, I raised the challenge of new ways of donating to charity. The purpose of the amendment is to take account of changes in the way people donate to charities, recognising the sea change that has occurred over the past 10 years or so in how they donate and the fact that people increasingly donate small amounts through text message giving. The technology driving us in that direction is developing rapidly. Conversely, and perhaps somewhat paradoxically, the amendment would also allow charities to benefit more from small donations made by cheque.
The thinking behind the amendment is derived from work done by the Institute of Fundraising. In a previous life, when I worked in the charity sector, I worked closely with the institute and so pay tribute to the immensely valuable research it undertakes to understand how and why people support charities in order to promote good charity governance and support large and small voluntary sector organisations alike.
The reality is that technological developments, especially with smartphones and tablets, mean that the number of electronic cashless donation options is growing. For instance, I am sure that many of us watched and donated to the BBC’s “Children in Need” appeal a couple of weeks ago, many of us doing so through text message donations. The use of mobile phones as cashless wallets is growing, and I think that the Bill would benefit by reflecting that. UK high street banks are already working on a mobile payments scheme to create a common infrastructure to link bank accounts to mobile phone numbers. That will help keep account details more secure, but it also heralds further changes in how we conduct transactions, including charitable donations.
There are now more than 30 million contactless cash cards in circulation, contactless functionality is now available on an increasing number of mobile phones, and 68 national retailers are already live with contactless payments, including the Post Office, Marks and Spencer and W.H. Smith. There are 135,000 terminals across the UK where donations can be made. I have to confess that I personally have not yet caught up with this technology beyond automatic top-ups for my Oyster card. However, I am aware that the Cabinet Office is working with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts to explore the possibility of using Oyster cards for spontaneous charitable giving through the “Chip In” project. We should encourage this kind of small electronic donation, as it has significant advantages over bucket-rattling. These donations are a lot more secure, they are significantly more auditable, and they are substantially less susceptible to fraud, particularly the small-scale fraud that has always been a risk associated with spontaneous cash donations. The upper limit of payments by contactless cash cards is currently £20, which could provide a nice compliance with the Bill.
Another aspect is online transactions, which continue to grow. Between 2007 and 2012, the number of adults buying goods online increased by 9 million to 37.6 million —74% of the UK population. It would be valuable for the Bill more overtly to keep pace with these significant changes in behaviour. The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill suggests that current text giving systems make it easy to comply with the gift aid scheme, but I am not convinced that this is borne out by the evidence. Fundraisers say that only 20% to 25% of donors properly complete gift aid declarations for text donations, but some charities report that the figure is as low as 5%. That compares with 85% of sign-ups for online donations.
The Institute of Fundraising points out that when a text donation has been made the provider usually sends a bounce-back text message with a link to a website page that the donor needs to visit to make a declaration. This is because the donor needs to complete their full name and address and to provide a declaration statement, which is a rather long thing to include in a text message. We do not have typical texting rates across the sector because providers do not give that information, but we do know that charities that have spoken out on the issue are concerned about the amount that they lose through people not completing this rather cumbersome bureaucratic process. Nevertheless, those forms of giving are auditable and would fit quite closely with the spirit of the Bill with regard to cash donations in recognising that, as time moves on, more and more of us are using different forms of contactless payments to make donations.
JustTextGiving does not give people’s phone numbers to charities, so if someone does not respond to the initial text bounce-back there is no other way for the charity to get the donation, and declaration rates therefore remain very low. Where charities get the details, they will typically call the donor back if they have not had a response to the bounce-back. However, we have to bear in mind that if it is a mobile number, it might be a fairly expensive phone call, and if the donation has been only the £1 that the donor would otherwise have thrown in the bucket, we have to measure the cost-effectiveness of that relative to the amount of gift aid that might come back. This only really works for higher value donations.
In its evidence to the Committee, Camphill Scotland said that as a charitable organisation it frequently uses the newer methods of collection, and that it was keen that the Bill should start to explore the possibility of new ways of enabling donations by text messages. It went so far as to say that
“the Bill as drafted would either discriminate against those choosing to use this technology, or discourage charities from making use of this technology.”
My amendment—this is somewhat ironic—would also cover small donations made by cheque. Very often, cheque donations are made by donors who are already known to a charity, but cheques handed over at one-off fundraising events or plate collections at funerals, for example, might not be so easy to identify, and it might not be worth the administrative costs of chasing up the donor. In some circumstances, filling in the gift aid declaration is a time-consuming process, and therefore not something that everyone will be able to do.
Another reason why the amendment would strengthen the Bill is that younger people have different giving habits from other parts of the population. The Charities Aid Foundation, with Bristol university, commissioned a report entitled, “Mind the Gap—The growing generational divide in charitable giving”, published in September 2012, which identified a widening gap in giving between the over-60s and under-30s. Of course, many young people do give very generously to charity and are very involved in charitable activities, but a lower proportion of younger people are giving than older people. Making electronic giving more relevant and attractive could be one way to help to reverse this decline.
Reputational risk is one of the greatest threats to charitable giving. A failure by one charity is felt by other charities in the same sector. While collection cans still have a valuable part to play and are a very effective means of raising money quickly, they carry an inherent susceptibility to fraud. Electronic giving diminishes the opportunity for money to go astray. It is a win-win situation. The amendment would strengthen the Bill, increase the benefits to charities, and help legislation to keep pace with the accelerating changes in technologies. I therefore commend it to the House.
Pensions and Social Security
Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Baroness Primarolo(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Whiteford
Obviously I cannot speak for the Northern Ireland Member who raised the issue pertaining to his constituents, but as I represent a rural constituency in which people pay excess prices for their fuel and often have no access to social tariffs, I am very concerned about that as well.
The underlying issue, which I raised with the Minister, is that older people and people with disabilities who spend a lot of time in their houses are increasingly more affected by inflation than those of us who spend most of our day outside our homes. Both the Office for National Statistics and the Institute for Fiscal Studies have pointed out that older people experience inflation at a higher rate than the rest of us, as do people on low incomes. The evidence is there. What concerns me is that CPI does not measure accurately the actual experience of people’s costs, which are higher than either CPI or RPI—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she is making an intervention, not a speech—yet.
Before the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) resumes her own speech, may I point out to her that we are discussing uprating orders, not projects in Cornwall, however fantastic they are. She must make her speech relevant to the uprating orders, not to future grant applications for very worthy projects in her constituency.