Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Neil Coyle and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

As I have not been feeling very well, I beg the Committee’s indulgence if I have to run out at any point. Actually, the Committee has made me feel a little better, so thanks everyone.

As my hon. Friends have said, we welcome the Government’s commitment to create 3 million apprenticeships by March 2020. I like the idea that the Prime Minister has 2020 vision, as stated by the Minister, but I am unsure that I have it right now. When done well, apprenticeships have huge potential to transform the lives of vulnerable young people through a combination of college and work.

I want to lay out why the amendment matters by describing a case study that fell into my lap this week—I promise the Committee that it is real. Since I have been on this Committee, I keep asking everybody I meet what benefits they are on and what is happening to them, and a woman came into my surgery on Friday with a housing problem. She had a private landlord who was a bit rogue, and she needed help getting on to the council housing list. She was my age and had seven children. If anyone thinks that that is not a hard-working family, I advise them to stay at home with any number of children. She had already been hit by the benefits cap, and was no longer receiving any help to pay her family’s rent.

As I am a member of this Committee, I thought that I would ask her some questions about the effect that the benefits cap had had on her life and do a bit of evidence gathering, but she was absolutely not interested in talking to me about her benefits and how they had been reduced. All she wanted to talk to me about was how she wanted to work when her youngest started school the following year. She told me how she had had a tough life. She grew up in the care system and had 32 placements. She wanted to be a teacher, or at least a teaching assistant. She had literally no idea how to start, so I simply talked her through what I might do if I were in her situation.

This woman is my peer. She is a mum the same age as me, but the gulf between us is enormous. Like her, I went to primary school for seven years and then secondary school. I have a nice, stable life. I was afforded the chance to spend my early adult years studying, living off my parents, working in all sorts of jobs, building experience, building me as an adult, making my chances and finding my path. She has had absolutely none of that—not because she is idle or lazy, but because she did not have the same chance that all of us in this room have had or the chance we would ever want to give our children.

The importance of the amendment is clear. Where the state has loco parentis for a child or young person, it must mean just that. We must treat the children in our care exactly as we would treat our own children and as we expected our parents to treat us.

I welcome the policy on apprenticeships. However, in its current form it is unlikely to benefit young people such as the woman I described in my surgery who are facing the greatest challenges, including those who have been in the care system. I contacted Barnardo’s, which is the national leader in working with care leavers, for information. It told me that the young people it supports struggle to obtain apprenticeships, often due to the entry requirements, which may include five A to C grades at GCSE.

As in the case study I outlined, school education is often disrupted for care leavers due to multiple placements. Combined with the impact of traumatic early experiences, that means that they are much less likely to achieve academically at the same rate as their peers—any of us in this room. One consequence of that is that 34% of all care leavers are not in education, employment or training at the age of 19, compared with 15.5% of 18-year-olds in the general population. That is nearly double—in fact, it is more than double; I will be good at maths one day. We are calling on the Government to amend the Bill to change the definition of the apprenticeship target by specifying that 20,000 apprenticeships will be reserved for young people who have been in the care system.

This cannot just be about numbers; we must also recognise the difficulties faced and act as any parent would—as my parents did, and as I act. These special apprenticeships should come with appropriate support to assist young people who have been in the care system overcome any barriers to the workplace, and employers should receive larger reimbursements to cover additional costs. There are many innovative schemes. As we heard in the evidence session on the very first day, the level of support given to people in these environments is so important. We must not exclude young people who struggled at school but who have the potential to achieve qualifications with the right support. That is crucial if we are going to give these young people a chance.

I also call on the Government to amend the Bill to specify additional information that must be included in the Secretary of State’s progress report on meeting the apprenticeship target. That information should include not just the uptake but the outcomes of apprenticeships for young people who have been in the care system.

Anybody who has ever worked with young, vulnerable people, as I have for many years, will know that there is a problem when they start work and begin to lose their housing benefit. How the Government allocate housing benefit and whom they protect in the cuts will make a big difference to those young people. When a vulnerable young person begins work, they start to lose their benefits. Vulnerable young people’s work is often unstable, chaotic and not well paid, so there is a balancing act for care leavers between wages and stable tenancies. Remember they have no mum and dad to fall back on; we are relying on the Government to be their mum and dad.

A really good example in my constituency of how to do that well is something special that a youth homelessness organisation called St Basils is doing. It has the live and work partnership with the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust in a community response to youth homelessness, which is an innovative scheme providing 27 apprenticeships for young people, including care leavers, who are homeless or at risk of homelessness throughout Birmingham and Sandwell. The trust has provided a block of apartments that were previously used as staff accommodation but are no longer in use. St Basils, with the help of partner Keepmoat Regeneration and an empty homes capital grant, has completed the refurbishment of the accommodation to provide on-site shared accommodation for the apprentices.

St Basils is managing the accommodation and supporting the young people in their homes—that support, as I have outlined, is so important—and the trust is providing a range of apprenticeship opportunities. A pre-apprenticeship programme is being funded by Health Education West Midlands, delivered by University Hospitals Birmingham. That particular innovation is a scheme in which the young people live benefit-free, as I am sure the Minister is delighted to hear. It is something we all want. The funding and the support structure have been developed to ensure that young people can have an opportunity to live and work without recourse to welfare benefits.

To meet concerns about housing benefit for under-21s, people getting on to apprenticeships and ensuring that we are doing our best for care leavers, there are innovative schemes to give care leavers—the most vulnerable people in our society—a real chance. The scheme that I have described recognises exactly what I am asking the Government for in my amendment. It takes a community to bring up a child or young person. That is exactly the sort of brilliant and innovative scheme that the Government should consider when looking at care leavers and apprenticeships. The amendment would give that vulnerable group impetus and show them commitment. The Government should do that, because it is exactly what a mum and dad would do.

[Neil Coyle]

I rise to speak to amendment 103, which specifies that the apprenticeship target of 3 million apprenticeships should include a specific target related to the number of apprenticeships undertaken by people with special educational needs and disabilities. The amendment is a probing one and links to some earlier discussions, so I will try not to repeat anything.

I have three quick points to make. The Government have an ambitious target of 3 million apprenticeships, but disabled people and their organisations think that a sub-target ought to be set for that under-represented group of young people. The Minister has already answered that some of the information is available, so no burden arises from the amendment. I will be intrigued to hear why specifically the situation could not be reported on or monitored, or a target provided. If the information is known, please report on it.

In addition, as has been mentioned, that reporting could help the Government meet the broader and commendable target to reduce the employment gap for disabled people. We have already talked about the statistics for disabled people and employment overall: disabled people are a third less likely to be in employment, and the employment gap represents some 2.2 million disabled people. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston referred to disabled people being four times more likely to be unemployed at the age of 26, which is evidence of the need for such targeting. Overall, disabled young people are twice as likely to be NEET.

The Minister mentioned that the number of disabled people in work had risen in the past couple of years—I think that was the time period—but in the past five years the percentage of working-age disabled people has fallen from 53% to 48%. Again, some additional emphasis and focus on ensuring that disabled people have opportunities would be welcome.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Neil Coyle and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Neil Coyle]

Well, I am asking it. Do you think it was design or accident?

David Orr: I am not prepared to opine on the thinking of others, but it will not aid simplicity in a very complex rental environment. It is just another level of complexity. The long-term implication is that there will be less housing of this kind if this measure goes through. I think that will be problematic.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Q 150 I am terrible at parliamentary protocol, but I feel that I have to declare now. If you look in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, you will see that I worked for Women’s Aid within the past six months; there it is, on the record.

I want to get some further answers on supported accommodation. It is my experience that, with the reduction of funding for Supporting People and other local authority supported housing schemes, housing benefit-plus, as we would call it in supported accommodation terms, has picked up the slack for keeping those places open. There are lots of refuges and lots of places like those you are describing for people with learning difficulties where funding for Supporting People was reduced. Organisations acted well to keep opening new beds for vulnerable people through housing benefit regulation. Will this have an effect on the supply of accommodation for, for example, victims of domestic violence, where there has already been a reduction due to the cuts in Supporting People? I ask you, Mr Graham.

Alastair Graham: I do think that the implication is that it will be more difficult to provide full supported housing and new supported housing for many types of vulnerable groups because—firstly, from a private investment point of view—it is difficult to lever in private investment on its own or in combination with capital grant, if you have to show a business model in which your rental income is reducing year on year for the next four years but there is profound uncertainty beyond year four.

As David mentioned earlier, we thought, in the sector, that we had some certainty on this for 10 years and it was much easier to have those conversations with private lenders on that basis. Any kind of new housing or new proposition that we want to make will be a lot more difficult if we have to have a business model that shows that reducing rental income.