Amendment of the Law

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). Perhaps he has caught a bit of the virus of optimism bias this evening, but it was a pleasure to hear what he had to say.

This is probably my last chance to speak in Parliament. I am sorry that it sounds to colleagues like a series of valedictory speeches, but we are all taking our opportunity, which I want to use to talk about an issue close to my heart, and it is what brought me into politics more than 30 years ago.

Poverty in Salford was all around me—poor housing, no jobs, but above all at that time a sense of hopelessness and a belief that things could never be different. I was brought up by parents who both left school at 14. They had no chance to stay on, but they were determined that their children would have the chance to do well and get on in life. I think my mum thought of the phrase, “Education, education, education” long before the former Prime Minister ever dreamed of it. Education was then and is now the key to progress and success, not just for individuals, but for our economy and our country as a whole. Social mobility is at the heart of that.

I shall start by saying a few words of thanks and congratulations—do not worry, it will not all be this nice—to the Chancellor and to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in particular for finding £200,000 a year for the next couple of years to support the Speaker’s parliamentary placement scheme, which has been such a success and has changed the lives of so many young people over the past four years. I set it up because I was very worried about the fact that so many of our leading Members of Parliament and our Ministers came from what I called the transmission belt—being a special adviser, working for a Minister, getting a safe seat and being fast-tracked into the Cabinet. In 1979 only 3% of all MPs took that route. At the last election the figure was 25% and rising.

Our scheme aimed to bring working-class young people to work in Parliament—people who would never have got a foot in the door. They included Kay Nuttall from Salford, who had a fantastic experience here, went back to Salford, got a great job and stood to be a parent governor at her child’s school—a contested election that she won, and she is Labour. It is amazing. Another participant was Siraj Odedra, who stayed in Parliament and is working for my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). He no doubt will have a long and, I hope, successful career in politics as well. Thanks very much for taking that step. I thank all the Members of Parliament who helped me establish the scheme and those from all parties who have agreed to take it on. I hope we will have a long-lasting scheme that gives young people the sense that they come here and can make a difference to politics.

I thank Alan Milburn for his work on the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. In his recent report, “Fair Access”, he said:

“Unpaid internships clearly disadvantage those from less affluent backgrounds who cannot afford to work for free for any length of time…Given their centrality to young people’s career prospects, internships should no longer be treated as part of the informal economy.”

That means that we should introduce proper terms and conditions, including remuneration. I am pleased to say that long-term unpaid internships are virtually a thing of the past in Parliament. When I came here, they were widespread. Unfortunately, they still exist in the media, fashion, culture and the creative industries. That means that unless young people have the bank of mum and dad, they cannot make that first step in life.

I thank the Social Mobility Foundation and Victor Blank, the chairman, and David Johnston, the chief executive officer, who have done so much to remedy that situation. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has just done an evaluation of the Social Mobility Foundation’s work. It found that those programmes give people the kind of back-up they would get if they had had a private school education or a good family background, which means that among those who go to university, the Social Mobility Foundation projects increase the likelihood of attending a Russell Group institution by between 17% and 27%, compared with those with similar attainment from similar backgrounds who do not participate in the SMF programme. It is making a real change to hundreds and thousands of young people’s opportunities in the future.

The final thing I want to highlight is a local project, because for all my political career, I have been extremely proud of the things that happen in my constituency. We have the RECLAIM project, which is a two-year leadership programme, again for young people, men and women, who would never get a chance to do such work. It aims to inspire, challenge and develop people to become true leaders for the future. A young woman called Jaimeel, a local girl, who has been through the project, says:

“When I started RECLAIM I had very little idea about who I was, who I wanted to be or where I wanted to go. Due to RECLAIM I have completed several work experience placements, including a project to design a gym. I am a member of a music collective. I have had a work experience placement with the Co-op and with Investec Specialist Banking.”

She is now on the second year of an accountancy degree at Birmingham university. Her life has been changed by the RECLAIM project.

The thing that concerns me most is that in real terms in the next period, education spending will fall by 7% and the widening participation budget has been slashed from £130 million to £67 million. This a false economy. All the examples I have given show that our young people have talent. If we give them hope, encouragement and support, they will have the same chances that people like me have had. I hope that the next Government will take that on and make it a reality.

amendment of the law

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James). I want to concentrate my remarks on the social economy. I draw the House’s attention to my—unpaid—entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Since the crash of 2008, there have been a difficult few years for countries around the globe. Many companies have struggled to find investment and to grow. Ordinary people have very often been faced with redundancy and unemployment. That particularly applies to our young people, of whom nearly 1 million are struggling to find work. Public services have been cut quite dramatically, and many are facing increased demand at the same time, none more so than in the spheres of the national health service and social care.

Against that very difficult background, and as we enter what I certainly hope will be a period of better economic news of sustained growth and job opportunities, we have a real chance not to do business as usual, but to take a new path towards what many of us have talked about in this House—a more responsible capitalism. At the moment, it is still a fairly nebulous concept, but I believe that we can start to put some flesh on the bones and to invest in the social economy.

For the past 18 months, I have convened a group of local authorities, social enterprises and some large corporate firms to consider how we might come together to get the public sector, the private sector and the third sector to work in a much more integrated fashion. We have done that under the banner, “Doing good is good business”. Social enterprise has always been a passion certainly of mine, but it is now taking a much more central position in our economy. In this country, there are 70,000 social enterprises, which contribute £18.5 billion to the UK economy and employ about 1 million people. It is no longer a niche part of our economy, but is becoming absolutely mainstream. In Europe, one in four new businesses that starts up is a social business. Some 35% of people who left private sector employment last year have gone into the social economy. It is really moving on apace. There are now many brilliant social enterprises. I have Unlimited Potential and Social adVentures in Salford. In the constituency of every hon. Member, there will be social enterprises that not just provide jobs and opportunities, but bring into our economy the absolute gold dust of innovation and creativity.

I want us to give a real boost to social enterprise on a cross-party basis, but we also need to do something about public procurement. The Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which I helped to take through the House, empowers public authorities to take into account social, economic and environmental impacts, as well as value for money. That can be absolutely transformational, provided that we get behind it, give it teeth and really make it work.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady, whose work in this area has been really first rate. I told her that last time we met, over dinner at Apsley House, but I am just dropping names. Will she take her point a little further, because the creation of social impact bonds is a very big and important area? I know that she is a big supporter, but how does she see that rolling out, particularly now that the Budget will bring in tax relief for it?

[Hazel Blears]

I am absolutely delighted that social investment tax relief has been set at 30%. Some estimates suggest that that might liberate up to £500 million of extra investment into the economy. At a time of austerity and when there is very little public money about—whichever party is in power—we must absolutely seize the possibility of mobilising private capital for public good.

I pay tribute to the Secretary of State, because he has been a pioneer. He set up his social investment fund, which has catalysed the market in Department for Work and Pensions areas. I have spoken to the Secretary of State for Education to try to get something similar in relation to social mobility and educational attainment, and he is very interested. I said to him, “The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is a bit of a pioneer, so why don’t you get involved in this as well?” I have also spoken to the Minister of State, Department of Health, who has responsibility for social care, to look at social investment bonds for the care of the elderly, particularly in relation to dementia, which is a huge issue for all of us and, indeed, countries across the world. Mobilising private capital to enable us to transform public services is an extremely exciting agenda.

I want to say a word about the Public Services (Social Value) Act, because a whole range of local authorities are now taking up the new powers, including my own in Salford, as well as Liverpool, which has declared itself a social value city, Birmingham, Wakefield, Hackney and Lambeth. People from all political parties and local authorities of all shapes and sizes want to commission in this new way. We now need transparency, through metrics and measurements, so that the people on this playing field can get some recognition.

One of the most exciting things is that some companies in the private sector want to do exactly the same in moving from traditional corporate social responsibility into using their mainstream business model to make a social impact. Companies such as Fujitsu, Veolia, Interserve and CH2M Hill are now looking at their supply chain to see how they can get social enterprises and small businesses to bring them the agility and creativity that such big global enterprises sometimes cannot put into the system. In particular, Fujitsu has done a report called “Collaboration Nation” about building a very different supply chain. It has told me that it absolutely sees the business case for doing so, because it is able to develop new products. It is also attracting the best talent, because these days young people want to work for an organisation that has values, and to go home at the end of the day being proud of what they do. All those private sector companies want to do that and be responsible capitalists in that way, but we must encourage them and recognise that this will be a long-term agenda.

I say to the Chancellor and the Secretary of State that if we could extend the Public Services (Social Value) Act to goods and infrastructure—that is where the big spend will be in the next 10 to 15 years, not necessarily on services and revenue expenditure—why can we not have social clauses in procurement for High Speed 2, for the possible new airport, or for regeneration projects that bring apprenticeships, get a better supply chain and make a social impact?

As I said, I am delighted that social investment tax relief is being brought forward. We now lead the world in that, and at the G8 meeting that I was privileged to attend we could see how much the United Kingdom’s creativity has taken that forward. There are now a whole range of new social investment bonds. We have just signed one off in Manchester to help young people come out of care, and to provide foster care and adoption, which is an amazing ability.

When I went to Brussels last week I met Commissioner Andor, who was hugely encouraging about social procurement and social investment. We are about to launch some local investment funds. The first was launched in Liverpool two weeks ago, and we would like to have 10 to 15 across the country over the next year. We are hoping to do that in Greater Manchester, bringing together European Union structural social funds with social investment, to provide unsecured loans to social enterprises of £50,000 to £100,000—exactly the kind of loans they need.

All that brings the social economy into the mainstream. We used to think about social enterprise as a niche or an add-on to the mainstream economy, but no longer. If we take what measures we can to make social procurement mainstream, including goods and infrastructure, and to support social enterprises to make social investment and the market grow in the long term, we can genuinely harness the innovation that is often in social enterprise, together with people who want to do capitalism in a more responsible way and the engine of the public sector. In doing that we will show that “doing good” really is good business.

Amendment of the Law

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That gives me an opportunity to put the shadow Chancellor right. He said in one of the Budget debates last week that the structural deficit was low as we entered the recession. We had the highest structural deficit in the whole developed world, and intriguingly he is in denial about that, so whether he talks about debt or deficits, in reality as we entered the recession, the economy had been badly run, leaving us with a record structural deficit.

Importantly, what has been Labour’s response as a result of that? Acceptance that it had lost control; perhaps even a little humility? Not a bit of it. Instead, we have seen a desperate scramble to find almost anybody else to blame for the problems, and it appears, even today, no attempt to make any amends publicly. In the Labour playbook, the previous Government were just innocent bystanders in somebody else’s evil game. Poor old Britain. Apparently, we were just minding our own business when along came some nasty industrialists and bankers who ganged up on us in some international capitalist conspiracy. It is like some ghastly, poor script. It really does read like some really poor script from an Austin Powers movie, and I am pretty sure that any minute now the shadow Chancellor is going to try to blame Dr Evil and bring him into the script as well.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman suffering from some kind of amnesia? Has he forgotten that, after some 20 years of the previous Conservative Government, we had almost 3 million people unemployed? In two of my inner-city wards, I had 50% male unemployment and 75% youth unemployment. Is the right hon. Gentleman about to embark on the same mistakes that caused such massive unemployment after 20 years of the previous Tory Government?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

It is always a pleasure to give way to the right hon. Lady, because if anything she is always honest with her own side. I understand that quite recently she said that her own party had been pretty much unrealistic about the situation, and I seem to recall that she even said that it should be more specific about what reductions it would make. She was a part of a governing party that left this country with the worst recession, the worst deficit and massive debts, so I do not need to explain where we were in ’97; she needs to explain why we got to where we were at the last election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I want to talk about work, the value of work, the economic necessity of work and the consequences of millions of people being without work.

Work is more than what we do; it goes to the very heart of who we are. When we meet people, what is the first question that we ask? “What do you do for a living?” In the early 1980s in Salford, in my city, we had two really deep recessions, high unemployment and flight from the city, leading to a completely unbalanced community, low self-esteem particularly among our young people, very high crime and antisocial behaviour and lots of family breakdown. Again, in the 1990s, after almost 20 years of Conservative government, I had 50% male unemployment in two of my inner-city wards and more than 70% youth unemployment. That scarred our city, and it has taken us a whole generation to recover, and I am very worried that we are about to repeat some of the mistakes that we made then.

Unemployment has risen to more than 2.5 million, the highest since 1994; youth unemployment is almost 1 million, up 70,000 since the Government took office; and almost 30% of unemployed people in Salford and Eccles are between the ages of 18 and 24. But every statistic, every number, is a real person and somebody’s life. Just in the past three days, I have been contacted by a young man called Jack, who is about to graduate in criminology. He has been a special constable for the past three years and is desperate to become a police officer, but he has very little chance of that now, with the cuts to our police service. I have also been contacted by Tracy, a young mum with three children, who went out and became qualified as an adult residential nurse, but again, we are making redundancies in the hospital, and she has very little chance of getting such a job.

The increase in apprenticeships in the Budget is of course welcome, but it is simply not enough. The future jobs fund would have given 150,000 opportunities to our young people, and in Salford and Eccles alone 800 young people secured opportunities through that fund and many have full-time work.

The enterprise zone at Airport City is also very welcome, but all the evidence, including from IPPR North in a good report by Ed Cox, shows that the previous enterprise zones were far more about displacement than about creating new jobs—and what we really need are those new jobs.

We find that some people are juggling two or three jobs on very low pay. They are desperate to make ends meet, they see little of their families and they have no leisure time. Others have no work at all; at least 10 people are chasing every vacancy in my area. Just last week, a charity shop opened on our local shopping precinct, and 200 people queued up for it to open. That is an incredibly grim existence—a really depressing life and no money to enjoy anything else. I remember the days when we talked about the future and how it would mean a decent home, a decent job and lots of leisure time. It was like a painting of utopia—we would have time to go to the theatre and have arts, beauty, culture and all of that. What we are left with is a reality where people have very little money and no time with their families, and cannot enjoy that better life.

If we are going to get through this undoubtedly difficult time and get our country on to a better footing, then we all have to pull together and do our bit. There is a big, resounding silence at this point. Yes, we need more volunteers, and public services do need to be more efficient, but if we really are all in this together, business has to step up to the plate, think hard and change the way it operates. Old-fashioned capitalism that simply maximises profit and squeezes its workers is exactly that—old-fashioned, out of date, and not always even very efficient. It is time to think hard about a new capitalism that is socially responsible, respects those who work and contribute, and makes good economic sense rather than one that is based on a race to the bottom with people competing for the lowest wage.

The best, most modern and most forward-looking companies “get it”, whether it is Google or Microsoft. Andrew Witty, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithKline, said in the papers at the weekend:

“I really believe one of the reasons we’ve seen an erosion of trust…in big companies is they’ve allowed themselves to be seen as being detached from society and they will float in and out of societies according to what the tax regime is...isn’t it better to be in a country and say ‘let’s try and work through the difficult times and get to the good times’?”

That is the kind of company that we need—one that is dedicated to this country and recognises the value of its workers. The Co-operative bank has increased its dividend payments by 16%, and it has had a 38% increase in the number of current accounts and 140,000 extra customers. That is because it operates ethically. It did not take the high risks that many other banks took, and therefore it has a sense of trust and reliability. That is the kind of new industry that we need.

The new model for successful industry is to embed companies in the UK. We should not close our borders through protectionism, but want them to come here and stay here, creating the conditions for growth and—dare I say it—a true sense of corporate social responsibility, not a bit of charity at the end of the year. That will not be achieved by limiting rights to request flexible working or limiting maternity and paternity leave. That flies in the face of a proper joint enterprise. This is a moment when we should take a step back and realise the damage that has been done to our economy and to our people primarily by the actions of greedy, risk-taking banks selling loans that could never have been repaid. Let us say, “Never again.” We want a responsible capitalism that recognises the interdependence of those who finance the wealth and those who produce it.

The future looks very bleak for many people in Salford and Eccles who have little or no shelter from the storms that are heading their way—people without savings who struggle to pay the rent and have an insecure job, and hundreds of thousands who have little hope of any job at all. The economic numbers are appalling, with unemployment going up, growth down and inflation up. I believe that this Government will live to regret the political choices that they have made with our economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give those details soon. I will not give them today, but I can say that we have already been working on the issue. We believe that, as things stand right now, we will manage the cost within our present budgets—it will not require anything extra for us. Of course, as the right hon. Gentleman said, it forms a challenge to us—I accept that—but localising elements of benefits is important to local people, and councils have very much wanted to do this. I will definitely give him the figures for that in due course, but we believe that we will be able to manage it, and I am more than happy to discuss that with him.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking to encourage social enterprises to become providers under the Work programme.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

As the right hon. Lady knows, involving the specialist skills of the voluntary and social enterprise sectors in delivering the Work programme is extremely important, particularly where they have expertise in helping the hardest-to-help groups. Across the summer, we held a series of consultation events across the country, and we have had meetings through some of the professional organisations that represent different elements of the voluntary sector. The Minister for Welfare Reform—Lord Freud—and I have held meetings in the City to try to encourage financiers to support the voluntary sector in its approaches to the Work programme. I cannot give the right hon. Lady information about the specifics of the process today, because we will be publishing more details in due course, but I can assure her that we are keen to keep those organisations present.

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. He knows that many social enterprises, such as Work Solutions, which does a fantastic job in the Ordsall area of Salford to get people back into work, have very tight margins, and often struggle with cash flow. If the national system is to be about payment by results, what measures will he take to ensure that small organisations, which are often without a financial buffer, can survive within the system and provide the specialist services that only they can provide?

[Chris Grayling]

We have introduced the Merlin standard, a new code of conduct for suppliers to the Department for Work and Pensions, which will apply to the prime contractors for the Work programme. They will be obliged to do the right thing to support their subcontractors appropriately financially. If they fail to do so, and treat their subcontractors financially inappropriately, they could lose their contracts. The system has just won an award for its role across Whitehall—there is potential for it to be used elsewhere in Whitehall—as best practice for dealing with small subcontractors. We must protect them, because they have a huge role to play.