Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)
Julie Elliott Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Q 121 You just said that your organisation has a strong record on representing patient interests. In what way do you engage with patients? How representative are you? Are you represented across the country? How do you conduct that information-gathering exercise? How can you validate what you are saying in terms of representing people? Representation is a strong word.
Julia Manning: I agree, and right from the start it was something that we thought seriously about in terms of engaging not just with the front-line people who are doing the job and delivering services, but with those who receive them as well. The way in which we engage in all the research we do is that we have steering groups. We engage with the relevant charities. We do polling. We do a lot of one-to-one interviews with people who are either on the receiving end of services or involved in delivery. There is a lot of dialogue with people who know what they are talking about, either from a position of being at the front line of delivering services or of having received treatment.
Julie Elliott
Q 122 To follow up on that, I represent a constituency in the north-east of England. I am not aware of anything you have done with patient interest in the north-east of England. You might have done something. How have you looked at things in the north-east, for instance, in terms of engaging with representing patients? Not speaking to charities or anything else, but representing patients, which is the term you used.
Julia Manning: The one thing we did in your area was to hold a workshop looking at the emergence of health and wellbeing boards and how they would engage with the local population.
Julie Elliott
Q 124 About 30 out of a population of 4 million? Out of a population of 4 million in the north-east, about 30 people attended a workshop about one specific thing. Would you say that that represents patient interest?
Julia Manning: What I would say to you is that we are a small organisation focusing on particular areas of research. When we undertake research we make every effort to make people aware that we are doing it and encourage people to get involved.
Julie Elliott
Q 125 I totally accept that, but you said you represent patient interest. Would you like to amend that? Is it still your view that a workshop of 30 people out of a population of four million—
Julia Manning: That was my answer in response to your question about what we have done in your area. Let me give you another example. We did a piece of work that came out last year, looking at people with HIV in the population. We worked alongside all the major HIV patient charities and we specifically looked at the needs of older people, because more than half the people in the country now who have HIV are aged 50 or older and services are still organised for 25-year-olds. That is the kind of work we do, where we are thinking about the needs of under-served populations whose concerns have not been represented. This is the kind of thing that we will pull together and put into a policy document to present to those who are commissioning services and campaigning for improvement on behalf of patients.
Julie Elliott
Q 126 That is absolutely fine, but I question whether that is actually representing patient interest, which is what you said your organisation does. I struggle with the concept that your organisation is a representative body of patient interest. That is the point I am getting at. I am not having a go at any of the work you have done or how you have done it, but I struggle to reconcile what you said your organisation is there for—representing patient interest—with what you outlined that your organisation actually does.
Julia Manning: I welcome you to look at the reports on our website and see the work we have done over the past eight years.
Rishi Sunak
Q 152 Picking up on something you said earlier, I am interested in how different types of people on different income levels are affected by strikes. You mentioned that people in certain jobs are probably more easily able to work from home—for example, people in office jobs—than people in shift work and lower-paid jobs, where that is more difficult. Will you talk about your experience of that?
Janet Cooke: We at London TravelWatch have not done much research on that. The only thing I could say is that we are in the middle of doing some focus-group research—not on strike action, but things sometimes emerge in focus groups that you are not necessarily expecting—and certainly one or two that I observed a couple of weeks ago were talking about the travel experience in the London area and ways of getting to work. Spontaneously, because there have been quite a lot of tube strikes, there was a lot of discussion about strikes and their impact on people’s lives. These were people on very low incomes whose employers had paid for taxis to get them to work. This is not necessarily statistically accurate; it just happened to be spontaneously coming up in focus groups I was observing.
Julie Elliott
Q 153 You have both talked about your organisations representing passenger feelings. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth said that the overwhelming numbers of days lost through delays and everything else—even in London, the figure is about 80%—is not down to any form of industrial action. I have to say that, outside London, I have not had any lost journey in my regular commute from the north-east in the past five or six years due to industrial action, although I have had many for other reasons. Have you got anything to say about whether the causes of a lost day makes any difference to the impact on the life of a passenger, a member of the community? Secondly, are you aware that nothing in the Bill would impact on any of the rail stoppages that have happened in recent years in London, because they would meet the thresholds on the ballot that they had already held?
David Sidebottom: On the general point about impact, the national rail passenger survey that we run gathers around 60,000 passengers’ views about their journey every year and the biggest driver of dissatisfaction is not just about the fact that there has been disruption but about the way it is managed. It is back to the information story and how you get me out of the situation you have put me in. So there is an impact there.
In answer to the earlier question about the impact on individuals, it is quite telling that when I was at Piccadilly station trying to travel home a few weeks ago on a delayed journey, listening to some conversations that were going on among passengers—people on zero-hours contracts, for example, who were not going to get paid that day because they could not get to their job—it does not just affect people who work 9 to 5. The level of impact can vary.
Julie Elliott
Q 154 I am well aware that not all people work 9 to 5. I travel 300 miles from my home every week to come to work—at least, the London part of my work—but I was asking whether it makes any difference to the impact on somebody’s life what has actually caused the delay or disruption, bearing in mind the tiny percentage that is caused by industrial action?
David Sidebottom: Not from the research that we have done, no.
Janet Cooke: I do not have much to add. If your service is not running or you are delayed excessively, it really does not matter. With a strike, you think, at least it will be over tomorrow. If it is a problem on the network, then you might not be so hopeful.
Dr Cameron
Q 155 To what extent is the evidence you are presenting today applicable to the experience in Scotland and, perhaps, Wales, given that much of your work appears to be in England and particularly in London?
Janet Cooke: By definition, we represent transport users in and around London and its commuter belt. The experience is probably not dissimilar, but I could not comment.
David Sidebottom: On rail in Scotland and Wales, we are a GB-wide body on rail passenger representation. The information that we gather covers England, Scotland and Wales. We work very closely with Transport Scotland and provide information there. In fact, the rail passenger satisfaction survey is a key target with the new franchise arrangement between Transport Scotland and Abellio ScotRail.
Rishi Sunak
Q 198 Mr Wilson, I have a question for you. One of the things that the Bill will do is to put in place a four-month ballot mandate for industrial action. I think we have heard earlier today that industrial action has been called on ballots that were two years previous, so there ought to be a meaningful change. I would be interested to know how that would impact your business, and how you think about your population of employees and how that changes over the time, and whether this would be a helpful or sensible measure.
Tony Wilson: I think it is a very appropriate measure. Going back to the incident of the strike in January and February, the ballot for that was prior to Christmas, in December 2014. We are still not out of the woods on that. The action has not been called off; it is not over. There have been numerous discussions in the intervening period. We have a turnover rate of 14% or 15% per annum in our bus driver workforce, so by now, the workforce is very different to the one that actually balloted. Clearly, there could be other people who would come in and vote in the same direction, but it is not right to say that the same populace that voted the first time is there today; it simply is not.
I think it is appropriate that ballots run out of time. Purely from a fairness to proportionality perspective, to have a refreshed vote with a new look by the people who are in employment at the time and are now going to be affected by it seems perfectly appropriate to me. I do not think the unions themselves—I do not think Unite would see that as a particular barrier. I think they recognise that even if the legislation changes in the way set out, they will just have to try a bit harder to mobilise their workforce, and they are very effective at that. I do not know that in practice, things will actually change too much. I think they will get more people voting, personally, and we will have a slightly different scenery.
Julie Elliott
Q 199 In your answer to a previous question from a colleague on the Committee, you made great play of the collection of information. Would you accept that for the local authorities or other public bodies that do not do that, there will be a cost to the taxpayer from collecting that information?
Jonathan Isaby: In terms of the amount of time?
Julie Elliott
Q 201 Thank you. In your figures, which you quoted earlier, what percentage of trade union income are you implying comes from the taxpayer?
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know the total trade union income across the UK, so I cannot tell you what that is as a percentage.
Julie Elliott
Q 202 Well, it is very publicly available. It is the most transparent money in politics and campaigning, so I would have thought you would have looked up what percentage it is.
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know off the top of my head what that number is, but I do know that £108 million-plus a year is a large chunk of taxpayers’ money.
Julie Elliott
Q 203 So you are making a lot of assumptions despite not knowing all the facts. What grants were you referring to that trade unions get?
Jonathan Isaby: As I said to Sir Alan, I will happily give you the specifics on that. In terms of direct payments to trade unions, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills gave the TUC £20 million in 2012-13.
Julie Elliott
Q 204 Can I just interrupt? You specifically said that trade unions receive grants. I am not aware of any grants that trade unions receive. I think you will find the BIS figure is to do with the contracts that were won regarding trade union learning, which was something that lots of organisations applied for and deliver a service for. What grants do trade unions gain from the Government or the taxpayer? I am a taxpayer, as are many trade union members.
Jonathan Isaby: I presume they all are. We are all taxpayers. They are amounts of money that have been given to trade unions—
Julie Elliott
Q 205 Yes, but you specifically referred to grants. Are you aware of any grants that trade unions receive or did you use the wrong word?
Jonathan Isaby: I do not know how you want to define the word “grant”, but I am talking about amounts of money that are handed directly to trade unions from public sector bodies, quangos, local authorities and Government Departments.
Julie Elliott
Q 206 Can I take from that that you are not aware of any grants that trade unions actually receive? A grant is something applied for and given. Are you aware of any grants that trade unions receive from the taxpayer?
Jonathan Isaby: Any grant given to a body would have to be something where you have to account for how it is spent, so it is a grant in that sense.
Julie Elliott
Q 207 But are you aware of any grants?
Jonathan Isaby: It depends whether we are disagreeing about the definition of “grant”. I am talking about money being given to trade unions from these bodies.
Julie Elliott
Q 208 So you are not referring to grants. Can we move on to your big bugbear of the afternoon, which is facility time? You seem to have a real problem with that. Would you accept that any agreements on facility time are made directly between employers or their representatives and employees or their representatives?
Jonathan Isaby: Yes.
Julie Elliott
Q 209 That is therefore working in both people’s interests. The employer, whether it be public sector or anyone else, and the employee or their representative body, the trade union, are happy and come to that agreement freely, without anyone putting pressure on them to do so. They want to make that agreement because they think it works in both people’s interests.
Jonathan Isaby: It may well work in both people’s interests, but at what cost? An important point to raise—
Julie Elliott
Q 210 No, I am asking whether you would agree that that is the situation.
Jonathan Isaby: Clearly it is agreed by both sides, but I should point out that the amount spent in the public sector on facility time is three and a half times the amount in the private sector. There is clearly an imbalance there. We have always said that we should be seeking to get the amount spent by the public sector in the same proportion as it is in the private sector.
Julie Elliott
Well, all I can say is that my anecdotal evidence—actually, most of what you are talking about is anecdotal evidence—as a trade union official for 12 years is that there are as many people on full-time or partial release in the private sector as there are in the public sector. That is my experience. I cannot back it up with factual information, but you cannot back up what you are saying with factual information.
Trade Union Bill (First sitting)
Julie Elliott Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I am a former Community trade union officer, current Community trade union member and chair of the Community parliamentary group.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I am a member of the GMB and a former trade union official.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Prior to the election in May, I was a director and partner of Thompsons Solicitors LLP, which is giving evidence to the Committee. I am also the partner of the chief executive of Thompsons, who is giving evidence to the Committee. Clients of my former firm included the Royal College of Midwives, GMB, Unison and Unite, which are giving evidence to the Committee. Finally, I am a member of GMB and of Unison.
Julie Elliott
Q 16 As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
Dr Marshall, I want to come back to something you have just said. What evidence are you referring to when you talk about all the indirect days lost? You have referred to that quite considerably in your evidence, but you then said that you looked to see what there is. Do you have any evidence?
You have also talked at length about what your members think. Can you advise the Committee on what surveys or interaction you have had with your members on the Bill and what came out as their top five priorities? Do the features in the Bill figure in that?
Dr Adam Marshall: Thank you for the question. The point that I have been trying to make and will make again is this: I would very much like the Office for National Statistics to begin collecting more data on the indirect impact of industrial action on the wider economy.
Julie Elliott
Q 17 So you have no statistics?
Dr Adam Marshall: The point that I made right at the beginning was that I want those statistics to be available. Vis-à-vis member surveys, we have not surveyed on this specific topic.
Julie Elliott
Q 18 And the second part of my question about your membership?
Dr Adam Marshall: I said that, vis-à-vis member surveys, we have not surveyed on this particular topic.
Julie Elliott
Q 19 To follow that up, you have said at length in all your evidence on this point that you are representing the views of your membership on this, but how can you say that if you have not surveyed members and asked them the question?
Dr Adam Marshall: We have a range of submissions and a range of comments made to us by chamber councils up and down the country. Like other business organisations, we take both formal and informal soundings of our businesses and we have done so on an informal basis.
Julie Elliott
Q 20 So this is subjective evidence that you are talking about? You have not specifically had any direct comments on this because you have not asked the question?
Dr Adam Marshall: We have had direct comments to us.
Julie Elliott
Q 21 Have you asked the question?
Dr Adam Marshall: Not in a survey format. Not in a quantitative format, but qualitatively, yes.
Julie Elliott
Q 22 So this is subjective evidence, with no objective evidence to back up what you are saying?
Dr Adam Marshall: That is your characterisation of it.
Julie Elliott
Q 25 It does not exist?
Dr Adam Marshall: As I said, it is evidence that has been gathered through qualitative means and not through hard evidence.
Julie Elliott
Q 26 Does it exist to present to the Committee, to write to us about, to show us?
Dr Adam Marshall: I have nothing to present to you in writing at the moment.
The Chair
Normally, we would go to the Government and then to Labour, but I do not want to be too formal. If somebody is bursting to ask a really telling supplementary, they can come in. I think Steve Doughty is burning to ask a question.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julie Elliott Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Vaizey
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. I tried to keep my answer as short as his rather radical haircut, which looks very impressive this morning. We are sympathetic to the concerns that the current framework for appeals against Ofcom’s decisions are costly and lengthy, but we need to strike the right balance between providing a proper right of challenge and allowing the regulator to make timely and effective decisions.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
14. What recent discussions he has had with the organisers of the 2015 rugby world cup on ticket touting.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
I meet often with the organisers of the rugby world cup and we continue to discuss ways to ensure that all fans can purchase tickets in a safe and secure way.
Julie Elliott
As a rugby fan, it appals me to see tickets for the rugby world cup being listed online for thousands of pounds. Will the Government now accept that they were wrong not to protect genuine fans from touts and support the amendment that their lordships have recently passed?
Voter Registration
Julie Elliott Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams.
Securing a debate on voter registration is timely with the general election now in the near future. It gives us the opportunity to discuss the enormous changes in the electoral register, a process that started in England and Wales on 10 June this year and in Scotland after the referendum on 19 September. For a democracy to work well, the system needs to be as easy as possible to enable as many eligible people as possible to vote. The first step in the process is to have an accurate, up-to-date and as complete a register as possible.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend absolutely about the importance of having as accurate an electoral register as possible. She began by indicating that the time scale is tight. Would it not be sensible for the Government to allow more time, so that we can be certain that we have as many people on the electoral register as is humanly possible?
Julie Elliott
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. In the main debate when the measure passed through the House, I said that I agreed in principle with individual voter registration, but that it had to be implemented in a way that works. The new system, however, is simply being rushed through. My fear is that because the changes are being done at speed, and because of the lack of funding available to implement them, they will disfranchise millions of people. That does not improve our democracy at all.
The groups being disfranchised that I am most concerned about are: students and young people; people who live in the private rented sector; and adults with no dependent children who are not yet claiming pensions or not on benefits. I will start with students and young people.
My city, Sunderland, is a university city, so in term time we have an influx of many thousands of young people. They do not always live at home—historically, their parents would have put them on the register at home—they move more frequently and they have a transient lifestyle, whether because they are students away in term time and back home in holidays or simply because they are young people leaving home for the first time, living with friends. Their national insurance number is often registered to the address of their parents’ home, so if they tried to go on the electoral register where they are students the data would not match.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Sheffield, like Sunderland, is a student city, and I represent more students than any other Member of Parliament—36,000. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the university of Sheffield on its work—which we hope to roll out to Sheffield Hallam university next year—in seamlessly integrating electoral registration with student enrolment to encourage maximum registration? The Government have given some support. Will she encourage them to take up such a process much more vigorously, working with Universities UK and the National Union of Students, and to look at the opportunities beyond universities in colleges, schools and other institutions?
Julie Elliott
I absolutely endorse what my hon. Friend says. I have been in discussions with the university of Sunderland in recent weeks to look at that very issue and how it can maximise the number of students on the register. If the Government are prepared to get involved in such a process, that would be a help.
A final point about students and their NI number is that they might have the wrong number allocated, although they would be unaware of that. MPs do not deal with this problem every week, but it is not an uncommon situation for people to come to us because they have the wrong NI number, which they only become aware of when they try to claim a benefit.
For example, not so long ago I had a case of a young woman who had left school and become a hairdresser. She had always worked since leaving school and paid her taxes and her NI. It was only when she applied for maternity pay, when expecting her first child, that she suddenly got a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions saying that she had made no NI contributions. Clearly, that was not the case, and she could prove easily through payslips and her employee records that she had a full NI record. She was not aware of the problem, however, until she got to the point of needing to use the record.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
My hon. Friend gives a graphic example of the issue with national insurance numbers. Is she aware that 35% of Muslim women do not have NI numbers? Where does that leave them when getting registered under the new system?
Julie Elliott
That is a pertinent point. The NI system is a good one in general, but it has flaws and is not perfect, and many issues arise from that. As I explained, many people will not be aware that there is a problem with their NI number until they do not data-match.
Given the housing shortage, the private rented sector has grown exponentially over the past 10 years. Even in my city, where house prices are relatively low, there is a shortage of social housing and people have difficulty getting mortgages, because of low wages, zero-hours contracts and so on. Even in Sunderland, therefore, we have a housing crisis and more people than ever, from all walks of life and all age groups, living in the private rented sector. It is a transient population, because of how our tenancies work, with short-term tenancies and people often moving home every six months, and they are difficult to reach.
The final group I want to mention are adults with no dependent children. They are not claiming benefits, their children are grown and they do not receive child benefit any more, and they are not yet at pensionable age. Often, that group of people are at a time in their life when they are downsizing and moving home. Does everyone remember to change the address in their NI records? Most people do not have that on their list of things to change. They are not doing anything wrong; they are still paying their contributions through their employer and so forth, but again their NI records are not as accurate as they should be. Again, only when those people seek a benefit from the NI system does that fact come to light. It is easily sorted out, but in the meantime they will not data-match. Furthermore, working people are busy people and they are often not at home when canvassers call, when the local authority is trying to improve their records. Again, through no fault of their own, they will be disfranchised.
Those are all genuine examples of people who do not actively want to be unable to vote, but have lifestyles that, under the new system and the speed of its introduction, make them difficult to reach. They will therefore fall off the register and be unable to vote.
I want to talk a little about my constituency. Sunderland Central falls within the electoral and local authority district of Sunderland. Our electoral services are famous. They do things well, they are efficient and quick, and they take enormous pride in what they do. It is a well resourced department, which does things well, to the extent that, historically, people from the department have gone around the world to help improve other countries’ electoral administration. That is how good they are. They have put Sunderland on the map. They are very quick at counts, to the point that at the past few general elections there has been no competition for us—nobody even tries any more. The votes for the three Sunderland MPs are counted, and the results are known, on the day that the votes have been cast, which is unique in this place. At the previous general election my seat was third to be declared in Sunderland, but my result was still in at 20 minutes to midnight, so I could relax a long time before many of my colleagues.
The electoral services staff in Sunderland have taken the changes incredibly seriously. They were part of the pilot and have been involved in working groups with the Government and the Electoral Commission to look at how to implement the system. Yet even in Sunderland there are massive problems. I want to read out a few things that the head of electoral services told me yesterday. She said:
“Following the Confirmation Live Run…Sunderland had a match rate of 84%. This was improved with Local Data Matching which brought the match up to 92%. This meant that in real terms Sunderland then delivered 15,753 Household Enquiry Forms…which were comprised of empty properties, student accommodation and non-responders to last year’s canvass. After reminders”—
that is, two things through the post—
“and a visit from personal canvassers, Sunderland has an outstanding total of 6,128 which is about 39% of the original total.”
Even after two letters and a personal call, Sunderland is still more than 6,000 people short under the new system.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
I very much agree with the points my hon. Friend is making. The Government funding for following up on non-responders and new electors is based on getting a 50% response to the first reminder and a 50% response to the second, but I believe that in some places the response to the first reminder has been as low as 10%. Does she agree that the Minister needs to put more money into the process if we are to get the response rates up?
Julie Elliott
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. More money and more time are needed to get the system right. As I said at the beginning, in principle we agree with individual voter registration, but the implementation has not been right.
Chris Ruane
On the dry run and the number of local government departments that then conducted their own local data-matching, there are 380 electoral registration officers in the country, but only 137 wrote to the Electoral Commission to say that they had done their dry run. My county was one—I pay tribute to our ERO, Gareth Evans, for doing so—and my hon. Friend’s county got an extra 10% registered. But two thirds could not be bothered. Was the Electoral Commission too lax in its monitoring and policing of the dry run?
Julie Elliott
The point is well made. Not enough information, time or thought has gone into how registration is happening. My hon. Friend’s electoral registration unit and my own are among the best in our countries, but quite frankly not all EROs are of the same standard. They vary enormously. They do not always use the same computer systems. Some are better than others, and some are better resourced than others. There is massive variation. We have one of the best electoral services departments in the country, but we are still having problems. The figures for some of the worst in the country will be dreadful.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate. Does she agree that it is also important to recognise the really hard work done by canvassers, who go out there and chase the information? I have talked to the canvassers in my constituency working on behalf of the ERO, and the reality is that they have not had proper pay increases for some time. There is even more pressure on them now. There is a real issue with capacity for that resource at this crucial time.
Julie Elliott
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, in Sunderland we have put a lot of effort and resources into the matter, but we are constrained by a massively reduced local authority budget. That is the backdrop to some of what is going on.
As I was saying, 92% of households matched after the live run but there may now be residents in those houses that we do not know about. They are deemed to have been matched, and have not been canvassed, so if new people have moved into the properties in addition to those who have been matched, we will not know about them. The figure is misleading.
We could have another mini-canvass in January or February. I understand that the Minister is currently considering whether to fund that. A mini-canvass is absolutely essential and should be mandatory for local authorities. As I have said, my local authority is doing everything it can to make its register as accurate and workable as possible, but so far many authorities have not done as we have. The Government need to look carefully at funding a mini-canvass and making it mandatory that electoral registration officers carry it out.
Sunderland sent out more than 13,000 invitations to register—they are for the red and amber mismatches from the confirmation live run—and have just started door-knocking for those. As yet, there has been no response for almost 11,000 of them. That is how hard to reach some people and places are.
Another issue is that the system of postal vote registration has changed; so has the information that could be used to match people and keep them on the postal vote register. In Sunderland we were part of a national pilot in 2004 of all-out postal vote elections, as a result of local authority boundary and ward changes. Since then, on average around 40% of the electorate in Sunderland has used postal votes. People like voting by post in Sunderland. It is effective and efficient, with a very high turnout. There are probably many reasons for that: although we are a university city our indigenous population is quite aged, and older people tend to like to vote by post. We also have quite inclement weather a lot of the time, so people often do not like going out to vote—the north-east coast is beautiful but it can be very cold.
Wayne David
I will not question for one moment the beauty of Sunderland or its weather. My point is connected to my first intervention on the speed of the introduction of the changes. One reason the Government are so keen to press ahead as quickly as humanly possible is the perception of fraud, particularly with regard to postal votes. Does my hon. Friend agree that the perception is not necessarily the reality, and we should go on the reality? The truth is that very little electoral fraud takes place.
Julie Elliott
I absolutely agree—that is my next point. There has been only one serious electoral fraud issue in the past 10 years or so. Electoral fraud is a serious issue. If is it happening anywhere it absolutely needs to be tackled, but it is not happening on a mass scale; in my experience it certainly is not happening with postal votes.
As I was saying, a lot of people in Sunderland vote by post. They are used to it and do it every time, so it is their normal voting pattern nowadays. According to the records in Sunderland, difficulties with matching, sign-up and other issues mean that some 1,740 people currently on the postal vote register are going to drop off it, and will not know that. It will get to the day when postal votes need to be cast and they will not have their postal vote. I am quite sure they will ring up to say that they have not received it, and will be told, “You are not on the postal vote register any more.” That simply is not good enough. Those people may not be able to get out to a polling station. If they can, they may go and vote in person on the day, but as I said a lot of them are older and are not in the best of health, so are not able to do that.
Does it really help our democracy to disfranchise people because of the situation with the postal vote register? Historically, other data that a council holds—perhaps council tax records—have been used to data-match, to make sure that people kept their postal vote. That is no longer going to be allowed to happen, and the Government need to look at that.
Will the Minister fund a mini-canvass? Will he make that decision urgently, because we are now into October? A mini-canvass needs to take place early in the new year, and I have outlined the reasons for that. Is he comfortable with the problems that are arising? Estimates are that 7.5 million people are not usually registered, and the latest estimates I have seen are that 5.5 million more will drop off the register under the new system. That means 13 million people will be disfranchised at the next general election. Is the Minister comfortable with that? What other plans does he have to put right the implementation and roll-out of the system?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Sam Gyimah)
I thank the shadow spokesperson for his remarks, and I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) on securing the debate, and I thank her for her interest in the important topic of voter registration.
Individual electoral registration is one of the biggest modernisations of electoral law in this country for 100 years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) mentioned, for the first time we are not relying on the head of a household to register everyone in that household; people can register themselves. In addition, we have online registration, so that people can register to vote in as little as three minutes. The introduction of online registration will allow the mobile populations that have been mentioned, such as students and private renters, to register from their smartphones. That is a big modernisation, which we should all recognise and celebrate.
Mr Gyimah
Since the launch of IER on 10 June, the digital service has processed more than 2.5 million applications. Almost 70% of those were made online through the “Register to vote” website, which has a satisfaction rate of more than 90%.
I am conscious of the time, so I will try to address all the points that have been raised as fast as I can. A lot has been said about the transition to IER, and there has been some bombast, hyperbole and conspiracy theory. The transition was speeded out as part of the coalition Government’s programme to tackle electoral fraud and rebuild trust in our elections. The timetable is phased over two years to help to manage the risk that the transition will impact on the general election. I want to put on record that no one who registered to vote at the last canvass will lose their right to vote at the general election in 2015. It is for Parliament to decide in the summer of 2015 whether the transition will conclude in 2015 or at the end of 2016. The phase-in of the transition to IER with a carry-forward will allow those who are not individually registered by the time of the 2015 general election to vote in that election. I hope that will provide some reassurance that no one will be disfranchised, which is the word that has been used so far.
Of course, we must be mindful of the pitfalls of introducing a new method of registering to vote, and we should focus on the completeness and accuracy of the register. Much has been said about the need for the register to be complete, and the Government and I agree with everyone on the need for that, but we cannot ignore the importance of accuracy. Without an accurate register, we risk undermining the very elections on which the system is based, so we must not simply sweep away the importance of accuracy.
During the process, we have had to learn a lot of lessons from Northern Ireland, which is a point that was raised several times during the debate. We have introduced some safeguards, such as the confirmation process, the carrying forward of electors, online registration, the retention of the annual canvass and the maximisation of registration funding. So far, £4 million has been made available to help all local authorities and five national organisations to maximise the register and deal with the problems that have been identified.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julie Elliott Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Michael Gove
The architect of the free schools programme was actually Andrew Adonis, not Dominic Cummings, as he himself has said. Free schools were a Labour invention—a point that was repeated by the former Prime Minister Tony Blair when speaking to The Times today. As for the hon. Gentleman’s points about former special advisers, all sorts of people from time to time seek to visit the Department for Education to exchange ideas with old friends and colleagues.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
6. What steps his Department is taking to strengthen relationships between local employers, schools and further education colleges.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
8. What steps his Department is taking to strengthen relationships between local employers, schools and further education colleges.
Matthew Hancock
I would be absolutely delighted to do so.
As I was saying, more and more employers are engaging with schools and colleges to inspire young people. As discussed earlier, we have strengthened statutory guidance for schools so that those relationships can help to inspire students into their careers.
Julie Elliott
I thank the Minister for his answer, but a recent report from the university of Bath showed that 60% of school and college governors said that employers were not proactive enough about becoming school governors and thereby taking a formal role in education. Given the importance of employers in improving the employability of our young people, what are the Government going to do about that?
Matthew Hancock
Absolutely—strengthening the role of employers in governance and on careers advice, and inspiring pupils are vital, and a whole programme of work is under way to encourage more employers. One thing we can do is make it easier and bring about a brokerage so that employers who want to get involved can do so without too much bureaucracy and with the support of their local schools.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julie Elliott Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Willetts
Let us be clear: these students are studying for HNCs and HNDs, which are all legitimate and valuable qualifications. Whereas under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government there was no control whatsoever of the designation of alternative providers, we have introduced controls. The number of students going to alternative providers has increased dramatically, and in order to maintain budgetary controls, we have introduced further limits on the numbers, but these are worthwhile courses that we should support.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
15. What progress he has made on his review of zero-hours contracts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)
During the summer, the Department undertook a fact-finding exercise to explore how these contracts are used and to identify the issues involved. We found that this type of contract worked well in some circumstances, but could be open to abuse. As a result, we have committed to publishing a consultation seeking views on zero-hours contracts and proposals to address the concerns raised. It will be published shortly.
Julie Elliott
Does the Minister accept that job insecurity has nearly doubled since 2010 and will she support Labour’s policy, which would stop zero-hours contracts that require workers to work exclusively for one business and end the misuse of zero-hours contracts where employees are, in practice, working regular hours over a sustained period?
Jo Swinson
I commend the hon. Lady for her consistency on his issue and for raising this concern on behalf of her constituents and others. Exclusivity was one of the issues we found in the fact-finding exercise over the summer to be of real concern, so that will be one of the issues that we will look at further in the consultation. We will also consider whether the transparency of information can be improved between employers and employees, so that there is a bit more certainty about what is expected on both sides of the contract. Used well, these contracts should provide flexibility in our labour market that can benefit both employers and employees.
Adult Literacy and Numeracy
Julie Elliott Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) on securing this important debate. She has worked tirelessly and done a huge amount on adult literacy. As colleagues have said, this is not a party political issue—it affects all our constituencies and all who live in our country. I have always passionately believed that education is a lifelong journey and not one that stops at A-level, university or apprenticeship level. Improving standards of adult literacy and numeracy is fundamental both to our economy and to the well-being of every man and woman who struggles with those crucial skills.
I should like to talk about an under-reported but hugely important project helping and training thousands of people at all levels to improve their skills through learning. Unionlearn, in collaboration with the TUC, trains thousands of union learning reps and has helped hundreds of thousands to train and learn through their union every year. Before entering the House, I had the opportunity to see first hand the difference the scheme makes to real people in the real workplace, and the brilliant results.
Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)
I apologise for being late, Mr Speaker.
When I was a relatively young man, I took great advantage of, and was very well served by, the Workers Education Association. I was a secondary modern schoolboy who left at 15, and the WEA had the important effect of broadening my horizons. Will the hon. Lady help us by telling us whether that organisation is still doing that good work? If so, are we helping it as we should?
Julie Elliott
The WEA is very active, and certainly in my area. It often uses the skills of people who have retired from full-time careers in education—they do a little bit of work here and there to help to train people. It is an active but undervalued organisation.
Union learning dates back to the 19th century, with the establishment of colleges for working people. More recently, the union learning fund, set up in 1998, distributed £150 million towards training and education, which helped to recruit many union learning reps and expand the number of people in training and education. The fund, which has supported more than 50 unions in more than 700 workplaces, has several key goals: to embed learning and skills so that they become a core strategic objective of all unions; to help unions form active partnerships with employers, which I will mention later; and to raise demand for learning among the low skilled and other disadvantaged groups. Colleagues have mentioned people using their peers to access learning. When people are vulnerable and find themselves in adult life without the ability to read and write properly, peer groups are a crucial tool to making that first step into learning.
Unionlearn exists because of a fierce belief that access to learning is fundamental to every person’s life chances, and that such opportunities should be available to everyone—the entire work force—regardless of background. The access to opportunity, and the ability to reach people who may not have been reached by others, makes Unionlearn and union-led education so crucial to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of people.
Approximately 20% of the adult population cannot read to a level that allows them to do their job effectively or gain a promotion, and more than 5 million lack a good GCSE or equivalent in English. In my experience, I have seen examples of incredibly gifted people who cannot read and write much more than their own name, but who have tremendous other skills that have enabled them to get through a workplace and end up at a senior level. One of the most alarming and surprising things I learned when I was involved with Unionlearn was that some incredibly senior managers could do little more than write their own names. Obviously, they have huge skills to have the ability to work around that and get to that point.
Substandard reading skills are strongly linked to poor writing skills, so many adults are prevented from helping their children with homework, which exacerbates the problem, because it is extended to the next generation. As I have said, some people are barred from career advancement because they are unable to fill out job applications. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) mentioned online learning and the internet. People need a basic understanding of English and writing to access the help available.
A Government-backed study found that nearly 50% of working-age adults in England struggle with maths. Innumeracy does not just affect people’s ability in the workplace, but follows them everywhere, from looking at price comparison websites to reading bus timetables. Alex Smiles Ltd is a great example of union-led training in my constituency of Sunderland Central. The firm employs more than 100 people. Its core activity is the gathering, processing and recycling of waste materials produced by the construction and manufacturing industries. It is a non-unionised workplace, and represents an increasing number of employers that Unionlearn and the TUC regularly work with through partnership working initiatives.
More than 16% of the Alex Smiles Ltd workforce have completed a numeracy qualification and 15% completed a literacy qualification at either level 1 or 2. Becky Smiles, the training and development manager at Alex Smiles, has said of Unionlearn:
“Every interaction has been positive and business-led, driven by making us a better, higher-performing workplace in every respect. The learning activity is making inroads to upskilling our people and addressing front-line business goals that have bottom-line benefits, too.”
Adult literacy and numeracy skills are fundamental to our economy, and to the life chances and well-being of every individual in the country. Unionlearn and other union-led projects give all people the chance to improve their skills, and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to sing their praises and raise awareness of that excellent scheme.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julie Elliott Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
1. What recent progress he has made on apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
The number of 16 to 18-year-olds starting apprenticeships in 2011-12 was 129,900, down by 1.4% on the previous year.
Julie Elliott
With youth apprenticeships down on last year and the demise of the professional careers service as most people recognise it, what are the Government doing to ensure that young people receive the correct advice on starting apprenticeships, and, in particular, the route to higher level qualifications that some apprenticeships can lead to?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady is quite right that we need to encourage all students to consider apprenticeships as a high quality alternative to the academic path. I commend the activity that Sunderland city council and Sunderland football club are under-taking to ensure that more young people in that great city consider apprenticeships as a viable role for the future. I should add that the recent diminution in the number of 16 to 19-year-olds taking apprenticeships was due significantly to the fact that we were reducing the number of low quality apprenticeships where the duration was shorter than a proper apprenticeship needs to be and the quality of tuition was less effective than a good apprenticeship needs to be, but there is still more to be done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Julie Elliott Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Speaker
I gather that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) was banging on about car salesmen and his disapproval of the answer. If he would like to apply for an Adjournment debate, there is always a sympathetic ear; let us see what is available for him.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
The proportion of workplaces that have some employees on zero-hours contracts has increased massively in recent years with some 23% of companies having more than 100 employees using them. What are the Government going to do to regulate those contracts, which confer fewer employment rights and cause considerable financial uncertainty for workers?
Jo Swinson
The UK employment and labour market is flexible, which can be helpful. For some employees, zero-hours contracts can be helpful. Clearly, where there is abuse happening, it should be clamped down on. That is certainly what the Government will make sure is done.
Apprenticeships
Julie Elliott Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Matthew Hancock
Yes, that point is very well made. The fact that more than half of apprenticeships are in SMEs is a good sign, but we need to ensure that as we increase quality, we also increase the numbers as much as possible. The fact that apprenticeships are becoming more rigorous will help to encourage employers to get involved.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
With the demise of the professional careers service, how will the Minister ensure that the advice given to our young people in schools will be sufficient and that it will cover issues of diversity in making career choices?
Matthew Hancock
That is an important point. The statutory duty on schools is critical in ensuring that that happens, but there is more to it than that. From this summer, for the first time, the destination of people leaving school to go not only to university but into an apprenticeship has been published. With the statutory duty and the Ofsted inspection on the back of them, those destination data will help to push things in the right direction.