Jobs and Social Security

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that only just over two in every hundred people referred to the Work Programme in its first year have gone into work; further notes that it has delivered a worse outcome than no programme at all; recognises that long term unemployment is soaring and that the welfare bill is projected to be £20 billion higher than planned; notes with concern that the Government is cutting £14 billion from tax credits and is taking £6.7 billion from disability benefits to pay for this cost of failures; and calls on the Government to implement a bank bonus tax to fund a Real Jobs Guarantee for young people and commission a cumulative impact assessment of disability benefit changes.

Our debate takes place in the shadow of the Chancellor’s winter statement next week. It is clear that a winter of misery lies ahead. The Chancellor has already had to revise up the cost of welfare spending for this Parliament by an eye-watering £20 billion, and now, after yesterday’s brutal exposure of the Work programme, we know a great deal more about who is to blame.

We already knew that the Chancellor had done his level best to throttle the recovery. He has cut so far and so fast that we have now been landed with the longest double-dip recession since the war; and our economy is so fragile that the Governor of the Bank of England has warned that we might lapse into another recession this year; but what we did not know until yesterday was just how badly let down the Chancellor, the Cabinet and our constituents have been by the complete inability of the Department for Work and Pensions to get our country back to work. No wonder the Chancellor is tearing strips off the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in Cabinet.

All over Britain, businesses and families are busting a gut to do anything and everything to find work. Some 60% of jobs created since the election have either been part-time or self-employed, and, amidst all that strain and effort, we might have expected a little more support and a little more of a helping hand from the DWP. Yesterday, however, we discovered that it has done worse than nothing. Ministers swept into office promising the biggest-ever scheme to help people back to work, but yesterday we heard, not the hype, but the reality. It has been trying to hide these figures for more than a year, and yesterday we found out why: the Work programme has proved precisely as useful as doing absolutely nothing—in fact, worse than nothing.

When the DWP went out to market to ask contractors to come forward and help with the task, it said, in its documents, that it could expect about 5% of people on long-term benefits to make it into work under their own steam each year. That is why it set itself a target of outperforming doing nothing by 10%—not a high bar—but somehow it managed to set a target as low as possible and miss it. It is right, therefore, that the House highlights, not just this failure, but the soaring cost of failure, which our constituents will now have to help pay down.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give us some positive ideas on what improvements could be made? I am sure that all people of good will in the House want more people to get back to work and will recognise that this large welfare spending needs to be used in a way that encourages them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

The right hon. Gentleman will be as concerned as I am about this question, because only 2.6% of people in his constituency on the Work programme got a sustainable job outcome. I will come directly to that very question, but I want to dwell first on the cost of failure.

Since the Work programme has been in place, the number of people out of work full-time for more than a year has risen by an extraordinary 210,000. This spiralling cost of long-term unemployment is now costing us, in the jobseeker’s allowance bill alone, £750 million. That is an enormous cost of failure. It is the cost, in fact, of 18,000 nurses, 16,000 teachers and 14,000 police officers.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend talks about the cost of the failure of this programme. Will he also mention the impact on our constituents? The message from mine is clear: when they go on Work programme activities, they are not given the sort of training or opportunities they are promised, by and large, and so there is little prospect, even from the start, of their getting a job, even if the jobs are there at the end. Does he agree that that is a common experience across the country?

[Mr Byrne]

I know this is of great concern to my hon. Friend. There are more than six people chasing every job in his constituency. What his constituents need is a back-to-work programme that actually works, pulling out all the stops to get people into jobs, but I am afraid the story he has told from his constituency has become all too common across the country.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman wants to get the record straight. Will he now tell the House that in the last two years of his complacent Government, long-term unemployment rose by some 400,000?

[Mr Byrne]

I would be happy to trade arguments about our record with the Secretary of State, because while Labour was in office, the amount of money that we spent on out-of-work benefits fell by £7.5 billion. That is why his noble Friend Lord Freud described Labour’s record in getting people back to work as remarkable. It is a shame that he could not arrive at the same judgment about this Government’s programme, which is now in place.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure that my constituents want a reflective debate today, not the sort of intervention they have just heard from the Secretary of State. As I remember, Lord Freud—or Mr Freud or Dr Freud, before he was ennobled—did a thorough piece of work for the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. What went wrong? Was his analysis wrong or was the way the Conservative Government interpreted it wrong? Was Freud wrong and his analysis abused, or was he right and something has gone wrong with the Government?

[Mr Byrne]

The Work programme has got only just over 2% of the people in my hon. Friend’s constituency in the programme into sustainable jobs. It is becoming clear that there is simply not enough fuel in the tank.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

In a moment.

The Government spent something like £63 million closing down the flexible new deal—a programme that was actually getting more people into sustainable jobs than the Work programme and was costing only something like 9.5% more per job outcome. The Government have, in effect, shut down a system that was working, spent an awful long time getting something back up and then overseen a programme that has dramatically failed to hit the target set for it in the first years. It is a catalogue of failure.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that yesterday’s figures for young long-term unemployed people were especially tragic? Would he be interested to know that Jobs Growth Wales, which was introduced by the Labour Government in the Welsh Assembly in April, has proved to be seven times as effective in getting young people back into work and was based precisely on the future jobs fund?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Work programme has been an abject failure in her constituency. Only 1.4% of people in her constituency who went into the programme were attached to any kind of sustainable job outcome. We know from Department for Work and Pensions research last week that the future jobs fund was a roaring success, delivering more than £7,500 of wider benefit to society. It was such a tragedy that the Government closed it down. Thank heavens that Labour is in power up and down the country, including in Wales, where we are building on the lessons of the future jobs fund, making it better and stronger, and now making a difference for young people across her constituency and beyond in Wales.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Before we get too engrossed in bandying statistics around, is it not worth remembering that a job outcome is measured over a six-month period? The Work programme has been in place for a year; therefore, the early statistics will inevitably not reflect its success accurately. Indeed, we could actually discount almost half the 800,000, simply because getting a six-month job outcome is almost impossible.

[Mr Byrne]

I am afraid that prompts the question why the DWP set the target in the first place. Indeed, yesterday on the television news that I watched, the Secretary of State made great play of the fact that the Work programme was only in its first year. However, the fact that the targets were set by the DWP was somehow missing from what he said yesterday. Indeed, they were targets for the first year. The challenge only gets greater in the second year. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the tender documents that the DWP put out, he will see that in the second year the Work programme has to get 27.5% of those on jobseeker’s allowance into sustainable job outcomes. That is about 10 times what the Government have managed to deliver in the first year. So I am afraid the argument that the Work programme is just warming up simply will not do.

[Nick de Bois]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman would accept, on reflection, that in achieving the goal of helping people to secure full-time employment, it is inevitable in these difficult times that some of them will need to take jobs that might not last six months in order to help them to get back into the Work programme cycle. The inevitable consequence of that is that we will do far better in the next year. So be it: let us celebrate that.

[Mr Byrne]

There is an element of me that feels sorry for the Secretary of State. He is operating in an economy whose recovery has been throttled by the Chancellor, while another Cabinet colleague, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is implementing the biggest cuts to those local councils where there are the fewest jobs. So yes, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions faces a difficult challenge, but it was his Department that set out the bald statistic—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) cannot hear me because of the chatter from those on his Front Bench. It was the Secretary of State’s Department that said that if the Government did nothing, 5% of people on long-term benefits could flow into work. The Work programme has delivered less than that, and the benchmarks will get stiffer next year.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has seen a successful job creation plan for the long-term unemployed in my city of Glasgow, run by the Labour administration on Glasgow city council. There are 1,320 long-term unemployed people in my constituency, but under the Work programme only 2.5% of them have found a lasting job. Does not that illustrate the difference between a Labour administration who know how to help to create jobs, and a Conservative-led coalition that is making an absolute hash of it?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Glasgow city council has lessons to teach all of us about what it takes to get young people back into work. Despite all the difficult decisions that the council has had to take, it has made it a priority to get young people back into work. The way in which it has built on the future jobs fund is a real lesson for everybody.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the Labour Government’s record of getting people into work. Can he explain why the number of households in which no one had ever worked doubled to 350,000 during the 13 years of his Government?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman should check his facts. The number of people on out-of-work benefits came down by 1 million under Labour, and the out-of-work benefit bill came down by £7.5 billion. That is in sharp contrast to this Government, who have put up welfare spending by £20 billion more than they projected. To pay down that bill, they are now having to cut tax credits from constituents such as those of the hon. Gentleman.

[Andrew Bridgen]

The right hon. Gentleman did not answer the question. I asked why the number of households in which no one had ever worked doubled to 350,000 under the last Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Byrne]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has to check his facts. The truth is that Labour delivered 1 million fewer people on out-of-work benefits and a £7.5 billion reduction in the out-of-work benefits bill. That is why his noble Friend Lord Freud described our record of getting people back to work as remarkable.

If this Government had built on those lessons rather than ignoring them, they would not be presiding over the sorry state of affairs that was announced yesterday, when the Secretary of State and the Minister for unemployment—the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban)—were forced to come out and tell us that the only virtue they could find in yesterday’s figures was that the Work programme was cheaper than the flexible new deal. The truth is that a payment-by-results system will always be cheaper if there are no results. It is the lack of results that is now costing this country a fortune. That is what is driving up the welfare bill by £20 billion more than was projected at the beginning of this Parliament.

We have to ask who is going to pick up the tab. We know that it will not be Britain’s richest citizens. They have been handed a tax cut of some £3 billion. They will not be asked to pay for this failure. Instead, it will be Britain’s strivers and battlers—those whom the Prime Minister promised to defend. Well, some defence! This Government are now taking £14 billion off tax credits over the course of this Parliament. I think I am right in saying that tax credits are the only benefit that is currently frozen.

The tragedy is that the cuts are so unfocused and so unwise that Britain’s part-time workers will now be better off on benefits than they will be in work. How on earth can that be right? A couple with two children and some child care costs on £40,000 a year are set to lose £1,900—5% of their income—in benefits over the course of this Parliament, while 8,000 millionaires will gain an average of £100,000 a year from the Government’s tax rate cut in April. If that is the Prime Minister’s defence of Britain’s battlers and strivers, I would hate to see what happens when he starts attacking them.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not the reality even worse than my right hon. Friend paints it? [Interruption.] He says that he has not finished yet! Many of the battlers and strivers are young people, and in my constituency, long-term youth unemployment is up by 1,150%. The other options available to them are going on to university or staying in education, yet tuition fees have trebled and the education maintenance allowance has been taken away.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: there is a bleak future for many young people in his constituency, where the Work programme has delivered something like 1.3% of people into sustainable jobs, so it is one of the worst figures in the country. When young people in my hon. Friend’s constituency face tuition fees that have trebled, the cancellation of EMA and the shutdown of the future jobs programme, he is right to call in this place for a very different course of action.

Even more worrying for the future, the signs are that when universal credit is introduced, it will not get better for Britain’s strivers and battlers; it will actually get worse. We know that new rules for universal credit will mean taking in-work benefits away from anyone who has managed to squirrel away £16,000, and we know that it locks in cuts to tax credits. Now, in this morning’s Sun, we read that a couple working full time—over a million of them will be in the system—will lose something like £1,200 a year. That is, of course, if it ever happens.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Mr Byrne]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us what he thinks of that.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I would like to tackle him on the last Government’s record on what he claims was getting people into work. If that were the case, will he explain why the working age welfare budget increased by 40% in real terms during the 13 years of the last Labour Government?

[Mr Byrne]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman some statistics. If he looked at the amount spent on benefits in 1996-97, he would find that it came to about £51 billion, excluding pensions. By the time we reach 2009-10, that had fallen to £44 billion, so I am afraid that no matter how he looks at it, the truth is that the amount spent on out-of-work benefits over the course of Labour’s period in office fell by £7.5 billion. The hon. Gentleman is a member of a party that has presided over an increase in the projected welfare spend by £20 billion, and there are something like 8,000 families in his constituency that are now seeing their tax credits either frozen or cut to pay for that cost of failure. I wonder how he is going to explain that to his constituents as we get closer to the next election.

It is not simply people in work who are paying the bill. We now know that about 6 million families are working, yet are still in poverty. There is another group of our constituents that we must worry about, too—those constituents who are disabled yet are set to lose something like £6.7 billion of help over the course of this Parliament to help pay for the failure to get Britain back to work. These benefits are being taken away, without any cumulative assessment of their combined impact, and these cuts total more than the Government are taking away from banks. That, I am afraid, is a sorry indictment of this Government’s values.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend will know that growth is at a standstill because of the collapse in consumer demand. Given that poor people spend all their money while rich people can afford to save or hide it away, does he accept that focusing the cuts on the poorest—cutting disablement benefits, the working families tax credit and the like—is completely counter-productive for job growth as it deflates the whole economy?

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right. The Work programme has delivered only about 1% of his constituents into sustainable work. What we will publish this afternoon is an analysis showing that the per capita cuts in councils across the country are biggest where jobs are fewest. Where there is something like £200 a head in cuts, it means two or three times the national average of people chasing every single job. It is not surprising that the Work programme, flawed as it is, is finding it hard work because the Chancellor has throttled the economy and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is cutting back where jobs are fewest.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should be redoubling their efforts to invest in the areas that need investment most—the areas that have been hit hardest by the welfare reform cuts? The Prime Minister implied that Stoke-on-Trent would have a local enterprise zone, but that never happened. We need to benefit from the regional growth fund, and we need a Government emphasis on what needs to happen.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend has been a consistent champion of Stoke, and has consistently drawn attention to the need for greater economic development there. The Work programme is not helping, the cuts in council funds are not helping, and the Chancellor’s wider economic strategy is not helping. My hon. Friend is right: we must redouble our efforts, particularly in those poorer parts of the country, to get people back into work. There is very little sign that that is happening at present.

Once upon a time we were promised a welfare revolution, and I think that we are right to ask this afternoon what on earth has happened to it. Universal credit is descending into universal chaos, punishing the strivers and battlers whom it was supposed to help. A climate of fear is being created for disabled people, and the Work programme quite simply is not working. The Chancellor knows that it is going wrong, and No. 10 knows that it is going wrong. Only the Secretary of State thinks that it is all okay. There he was yesterday, running from studio to studio, saying to anyone and everyone who would listen that it was all fine—that it would be all right on the night—although, quite obviously, it is all wrong. I am now sure that the Secretary of State is competing for Channel 4’s Comical Ali award for those who ignore all the evidence around them. It is not delusions of grandeur from which he suffers; it is delusions of adequacy, and the tragedy is that there is an alternative.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although it would be bad enough if just one of the elements that he has mentioned affected any of his constituents, many of our constituents will be clobbered by a combination of them all? They will be hit by the bedroom tax, they will be hit by the changes in tax credits, they will be hit by the housing benefit changes, and they will be hit by the localisation of council tax relief.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Many of our communities throughout Britain are being hit from all sides, and the Government simply do not seem to understand the combined impact of what is happening. We can only hope that next week’s autumn statement will contain a proper plan to get us back to growth and to get our country back to work.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

No group is being hit harder than the homeless, or the most recently homeless. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has had a chance to read “The Programme’s Not Working”, a report published yesterday by Homeless Link, St Mungo’s and Crisis about the experience of homeless people on the Work programme. It states that 58% of them were not even asked whether homelessness contributed to their difficulty in obtaining a job, and that the same number said they were not treated with dignity or respect. People who are losing their benefits are also being victimised by this dreadful scheme.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that report to the House’s attention. I have not seen it, but yesterday’s announcement made clear that for the groups who need extra help, the Work programme is failing particularly badly. I was extremely disappointed to learn, for example, that those receiving employment and support allowance were getting the toughest deal. Fewer than 1% of them were being helped into sustainable jobs. That is not a record of which any Member in the House can be proud.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is being very generous. To complete the picture, does he agree that the poorest areas often contain the largest public sectors? Would it not be a tragedy if regional pay in the public sector were introduced in those areas, including my own, and would not regional benefits compound the difficulty?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That is just one more element of the wider picture that we are presenting this afternoon. At a time when there is a huge combined impact on communities throughout the country, we do not have a plan to get Britain back to work. What we have is a welfare bill that is rising, and when it comes to paying that down, it is Britain’s working people—those in receipt of tax credits—who are bearing the brunt. The Government are taking £14 billion out of tax credits over the course of the present Parliament.

We are arguing for a different approach, and we hope that we will see it next week. We believe that that different approach starts with getting our young people back into work. They currently constitute some 40% of those who are out of work. That is one of the highest levels in any western country, and it is a badge of shame. Now, all over the country Labour councils are leading the charge to get young people back into jobs. In Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Wales, Cardiff, Glasgow and Birmingham, it is now Labour councils that are rolling up their sleeves and leading the drive to get young people into jobs. We should help them, so let us put in place a bank bonus tax to create a fund that would help us get young people back into work.

This Saturday is the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge report. That report offered the blueprint for post-war social security. The truth is that 70 years later, working people in this country need new things from the welfare state. They need retraining when they lose their job. They need child care. They need better social care. They need help when they are disabled. Millions today pay in and get nothing back. They are short-changed Britain, when what we want is something-for-something Britain.

Those of us who want to modernise the system know we need to remember the most important lesson Beveridge taught us: social security is built on full employment. So let us get on with getting Britain back to work, and we should start with the young people, whom we will ask to pay for all of our futures—our young people who are hungry for work, yet are being let down by this shambolic Government.

I commend the motion to the House.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

The Labour motion is one of the stupidest motions I have ever had to deal with. It says very little and nothing at all about what the Opposition would do if they were in office. It also lays yet more spending commitments on an Opposition whose programme is littered with huge cost increases.

I will take no lectures from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne). I remind everyone again that he is the man who thought it was a joke to write a letter to the incoming Government saying there was no money left. [Interruption.] Opposition Members moan, but the reality is that the last Government bust this country, and we are having to pick up the mess. Furthermore, the right hon. Gentleman was hugely responsible for that mess, yet we have just got a lecture from him on the economy and on unemployment. The reality, however, is that unemployment is now lower than it was when he left office. We have higher employment. We have more women in work than ever before. We also have 1 million new private sector jobs. The reality is that he and his party left us with an utter mess, and we are having to take tough decisions to get ourselves out of it.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will take some interventions from the right hon. Gentleman after I have dealt with a few of the points that he made.

The right hon. Gentleman’s motion says that just

“two in every hundred people referred to the Work Programme in its first year have gone into work”.

That is complete nonsense. The Opposition have added, and then divided, the numbers in a very partial way, to come up with the worst possible figure, which is precisely what they wanted. They have added up all the total attachments, but taken into account only a small proportion of those for whom six-month job placements were found.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I have said, I will take some interventions after I have made a few rebuttal points.

If the Opposition had worked the figures out correctly, they would have noticed what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) has pointed out: some 315,000 of the 837,000 people who were attached were not in a position to have a six-month outcome because they had not been on the programme for six months. The Opposition do not want to incorporate that fact into their figures, however. Those people will come through into the next set of figures that we produce.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman after I have made this point. In fact, the total number in sustained job outcomes falls well within the target area that we were trying to achieve during the first year’s figures. If people want to gerrymander the figures, they should make sure that they gerrymander them all.

[Mr Byrne]

May I draw the Secretary of State’s attention back to the invitation to tender, which presumably he signed off? Under the heading of “Key Performance Measure”, which is in bold type and is the thing that we are interested in and debating, it says:

“Performance will be measured by comparing job outcomes…in the previous 12 months to referrals in the same period.”

The target for performance in the previous 12 months was 5%, and the Work programme statistics delivered yesterday showed that that target had been missed comprehensively.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yet again, the right hon. Gentleman has defeated the first point that he made. In other words, the figures that he has produced in the motion are wrong and he has just proved it. [Interruption.] If he wants to listen, he might learn something. No wonder he ended up as the man who told us there was no money left—with his kind of arithmetic, I am surprised that there was anything left at all. The reality is that in a year—if we want six-month referrals—a number of people will not have been in the programme for six months. So 315,000 people—[Interruption.] I am simply saying to him that the reality exists. This programme is on track; it is the best programme; and it will be putting some of the most difficult people back into work. Let me just deal with another point, which is the one about unemployment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

No, the figures we stand by are those we published yesterday. The point that I was making today to the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill—[Interruption.] No, actually the figure would be more than 5%, but I am not claiming that. What I am saying is that we stand by the figures that we published yesterday, and I believe we are on track. The point I was making, legitimately, is that the right hon. Gentleman spent his time deducting some numbers from one bit and adding them into another to create some bogus figure that two in every 100 people were found sustainable jobs. That is complete nonsense.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I stand by the figures that we published yesterday—3.5% is exactly correct. The reality is that what I have said today is what we said yesterday. The point that I want to make is that the thing that has gone missing in all this is that, without the Work programme, some 207,000 people who had been long-term unemployed would not be in work today—they are. Now, we work with those 207,000 people, many of whom have serious problems and difficulties, to make them longer-term employed, which is the key. The Work programme is all about resolving that.

[Mr Byrne]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State, who is being characteristically generous in giving way. Broadly speaking, about 800,000 people were referred to the Work programme in the 14 months to which he extended the reporting period to flatter the figures, and 5% of 800,000 is 40,000. According to his figures, only just over 30,000 got into sustained jobs, so 10,000 more people would have got into jobs if the Government had done nothing. That cannot be a record of which he is proud; surely, he can admit that to the House.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is simply not true. I do not want to spend any longer on this, but the point that I made earlier about the right hon. Gentleman’s figures was that, when he concocted the figure of 200,000, he stripped out of his achievement figures the numbers for those who had been on employment and support allowance and so on and divided the total that was left, but those figures were in the other total. The Opposition have made a mistake and need to reckon that their adding up is wrong. The truth is that we have a programme that is helping people who are long-term unemployed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Of course it was a different world—it was a world in which the previous Government thought that every problem could be solved by chucking shed-loads of taxpayers’ money at it without caring what the outcomes were. That is exactly the point I am making. We have had to clear that mess up.

[Mr Byrne]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way, but I ought to deal with the other programme first, as the right hon. Gentleman might want to ask some questions about that, too. The other programme that the Opposition cited was the flexible new deal. If that was such a brilliant programme, surely it would have been rolled out nationally; it never was. When Labour left office, it was only just up to running across half of the UK.

Over an equivalent period and claimant cohort, the Work programme has got more people into work for six months or more—19,000—compared with 15,000 under FND, and it delivers better value for money. The £14,000 per outcome figure thrown around by Labour ignores the start-up costs of the Work programme, which covers five to seven years. An independent cost comparison by the Employment Related Services Association shows a figure of £2,000 per job under the Work programme, compared with £7,500 under FND which, just like other programmes, ultimately cost money and did not succeed in helping to get people into work.

[Mr Byrne]

This is an important point for us to debate. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has seen the analysis that was published yesterday by Inclusion, but it is pretty clear on this question. The proportion of people flowing into sustained jobs from the flexible new deal was 5%, which is much higher than the figures for the Work programme. The flexible new deal was more expensive. Inclusion calculates that the cost per job outcome under the Work programme is £14,000. The flexible new deal was 9.5% more expensive, but the Secretary of State is failing to be level with the House about the fact that doing nothing costs his Department less, but it costs the country more, because the welfare bill goes up. A payment-by-results programme is cheaper if there are no results. That is the problem that we have to fix, and that is why the Chancellor is so cross.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Many Members wish to speak in the debate, so we must have shorter interventions and replies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

I am not sure that I am the best person to answer that question. However, when we have a programme that is running for seven years, with people being put on to it for two years, we cannot draw many conclusions from the data in the first few months of its operation. A decent period will have to elapse before we get some reliable data that will have some meaning and can be used to look at trends. I see why we have official data to the end of July this year, but data since then would have more relevance if we also had data from the first three months of the programme.

No Member of this House seriously disputes the need to provide those with most barriers in their way with the additional support that they need to get back to work. Many such people have been out of work for a long time and will need help with serious issues in order to build up confidence and have any chance of getting back to work. To be fair, the scheme of the previous Government towards the end of their time in office was not radically different from that introduced by the current Government. This Government have accelerated the change, introduced a more consistent programme over the whole country and brought the strands of different schemes into one programme, but the direction of travel is not entirely different. In fact, many providers involved with the previous scheme are also involved in the current one. It is not sensible to say that the Work programme is doing the wrong thing and is a terrible idea, and that its support is completely wrong. Where does that leave us? Surely it is not the Opposition’s policy to have no support at all for the long-term unemployed.

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. Our point is that there is not enough fuel in the tank. I am sure he is as worried as I am that on current performance, the Work programme may not hit its second-year target to get 27.5% of those on the programme into a long-term job. The Opposition motion says that we should start putting more fuel in the tank by providing extra resources for young people.

[Nigel Mills]

One problem of the Work programme is that the year we are looking at contained the second part of the double-dip recession. We all accept that it is hard for anyone to find work in a recession, let alone those who have been out of work for a long time and have the most barriers to overcome. We hope that as the economy gathers strength in the coming year, that will give the Work programme even more chance of success in meeting its second-year targets.