Oral Answers to Questions
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(8 years ago)
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The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, who highlights not only the entrepreneurial spirit of those two young people but what we are doing in government through, for example, the new enterprise allowance, which has seen more than 80,000 businesses start up over the past five years.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
T2. Changes to the walking assessment have led to nearly 14,000 disabled people across the country losing access to their Motability vehicles. That has caused some of my constituents to lose their jobs and their independence. Why is the Secretary of State punishing disabled people in this way?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)
Since PIP was introduced 22,000 more people have accessed the Motability scheme, so I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s account.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Duncan Smith
Again, the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. No money has been wasted. The roll-out means that, with all the work that we are doing, the vast majority is reusable through the digital system. I should be happy to invite him into my office to discuss the issue; the door has always been open to him.
Let me also say this, however. I wish that the Opposition would stop trying to play silly games and would recognise that this benefit, which is now being rolled out successfully and whose national roll-out has been announced, will be a massive benefit for those who are seeking work and those who are in work. It is time that the Opposition sat down with jobseekers and those who run the jobcentres, and got their story straight. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) spent about half an hour in a jobcentre, and then disappeared without talking to anyone there.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
3. If his Department will make an assessment of the potential effect on child poverty of a two-year freeze in benefits.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Under this Government, the number of children in relative poverty has fallen by 300,000. The Government have no plans to make any further assessment of this kind. Such an assessment would only be provided in reference to Government policy.
Rushanara Ali
The End Child Poverty coalition recently found that almost half of all children in my constituency now live in poverty. Of the 2.6 million children living in poverty across the UK, two thirds rely on tax credits and in-work benefits. How does the Minister square that with the recent changes to benefits, which are going to make matters worse, and is he today redefining poverty?
Mr Duncan Smith
I am interested in the hon. Lady’s question because in the report Alan Milburn brought out as part of his commission he recommended that we should
“supplement the existing child poverty targets with new measures to give a more rounded picture of those in poverty”,
and I agree with that. That is what we have set out to do. We took a consultation, and we are now considering that consultation and we will be bringing forward recommendations.
May I just say to the hon. Lady, however, that many of the forecasts about child poverty proved to be wrong? Child poverty has actually fallen, and, interestingly, I notice that the figures for her area show that Tower Hamlets has seen the largest fall of any local authority in England, down 7.1%, and down 9.6% since 2010 for those on tax credits and below the poverty line.
Jobs and Work
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Vince Cable
Quite a lot of those people have moved from unemployment to work, which explains the change in the definition. However, we want to ensure that people are in work and are properly paid in work, rather than being dependent on benefits.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
What are the Government doing to deal with the fact that people under 25 are four times more likely to be unemployed than those over 25? He has talked about youth unemployment, but that group really is not benefiting from any of the Government’s policies.
Vince Cable
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I know that in her constituency there is a particular problem with graduate unemployment, which we have discussed. Youth unemployment is a long-standing problem. It was very substantial even before we got into this major recession and financial crisis. We need to deal with it in a variety of ways: job training, apprenticeships and by providing a better-working market.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
This Government have totally failed to grasp the appalling situation faced by struggling individuals and families who remain unemployed or in insecure work. The Queen’s Speech offers little hope to the almost one in four young people in London who are unemployed. Nationally, 850,000 young people remain unemployed, and 975,000 young people are not in employment, education or training. This business-as-usual approach by the Government continues to put at risk the hopes and aspirations of our young people and shatters the hopes of another generation.
In my constituency, 42% of young people live in poverty. The figures released this week by the Government’s own commission estimates that 3.2 million children will be in poverty by 2020. It is said that two-thirds of those children will live in households in which at least one person is in work. We desperately need a more ambitious approach by this Government to tackle worklessness, unemployment and insecurity and low pay at work.
We should make no mistake that unemployment and insecure and low-paid work remain a massive problem in this country. London’s unemployment rate is still 12% higher than the national average. Although it has seen huge growth in recent months, there has been a failure by both the London government and the national Government to ensure that our young people and the unemployed benefit from the job opportunities. This could be addressed today, but there is great complacency. We need better training, more apprenticeships and more opportunities to get people into work.
In my constituency, the Work programme is still a categorical failure—less than 10% of young people who go on that programme achieve a proper jobs outcome. I raised this matter with the Work and Pensions Secretary a year ago. Although the numbers have improved slightly, they are still not good enough, and there is great complacency in his Department in sorting it out. Why is so much money being wasted, and why are no new job opportunities being provided for young people up and down the country, including in areas such as mine?
Many Members have spoken about the 1.4 million people who are on zero-hours contracts. We need to see action by this Government to tackle the exploitation that goes on in certain sectors with zero-hours contracts and other similar contracts, particularly in the care sector. I met care workers in my constituency who cannot earn enough on these contracts to pay their rent and pay for their food in some weeks. In the 21st century and one of the richest economies in the world, that is a disgrace.
It falls on us all to ensure that we address these kinds of scandal, and that is why it is deeply disappointing that the Government have failed to take action and introduce the appropriate legislation to protect people from such exploitation. The Queen’s Speech should have provided a clear target to improve the minimum wage and should have addressed our point about introducing minimum wage legislation to improve average earnings.
The Government have done nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address the real concerns of my constituents on the value and security of work and nothing for people across the country who face insecurity at work and have little hope or prospect of getting a job. They have shown themselves incapable of ensuring that many of these people get a decent wage and can provide for their families. The Queen’s Speech is meagre in its ambition and offers little hope to the millions of people who remain unemployed or in insecure work, struggling to make ends meet. I hope that the Government will think again, stop being complacent and get their act together to get those who are not in work back to work and to support those who face insecurity and low pay in work.
Job Insecurity
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Umunna
I will come on to zero-hours contracts shortly, if there is some patience on the Government Benches.
This living standards crisis is not just one of rising costs and falling wages. It is one, too, of increasing insecurity at work. People in work today feel less secure and more pressurised at work than at any time in the past 20 years, according to the most recent UK skills and employment survey. Members on the Government Benches shake their heads. It was the Government’s own UK Commission for Employment and Skills, which co-funded that survey, that described what we now have as a “climate of fear”. More recent research carried out towards the end of last year found that the number of people feeling insecure at work had almost doubled since this Government came to office, with half the working population believing that the economic policies of this Government have made them less secure.
There is a constant worry about whether people will be able to hold on to their jobs. There is a constant worry about whether they will be able to provide for themselves and their families—a continuing squeeze, yes, and an increasing amount of insecurity. That is the reality of life in this country in 2014.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this insecurity particularly affects young people? Nearly a million of them—940,000—remain unemployed, and this Government have failed to get them into work and to deal with the insecurity and sense of frustration they feel about not being able to make a contribution to the economy.
Jobs and Business
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The Government have had three years in office, and the Queen’s Speech offers us a timely opportunity to assess their record. As we have heard, what the Government have achieved and not achieved is striking. They have delivered rising unemployment, 1 million young people out of work, prices that are rising faster than wages, and a chronic drop in living standards for British families.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies this week forecast that the Government’s reforms since 2010 will lead to one in four children living in poverty by 2020. That is scandalous in the 21st century. The Child Poverty Act 2010 set a goal to set a target to reduce child poverty to one in 10, which is still not acceptable. It is therefore an absolute scandal that the Government are doing nothing to address that important problem.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend was not in Parliament before 2010, but I am sure she kept a close eye on child poverty in her work at the time. Does she share my frustration? Many of those now on the Government Benches signed up to the child poverty pledge and said that the abolition of child poverty was their No. 1 priority. I was sceptical of that at the time. The moment the Conservatives got into government, they spoke of revising the targets and said they did not want to assess child poverty in this way or that and so on. I am not allowed to say that people were misled, Madam Deputy Speaker, but does my hon. Friend believe that people will feel let down by the fact that Conservatives were vociferous in their support for the pledge and then reneged on it?
Rushanara Ali
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. That episode highlights the fact that the Conservative party was desperate to decontaminate its brand as the nasty party. As soon as it returned to power, all the bad old Tory habits crept in—and they are now flooding in. There is no pretence and no attempt to rebrand the party. The Conservative party stands up for millionaires and not for ordinary people or for children who live in poverty in constituencies such as mine—more than 50% of children in my constituency live in poverty, and that will get worse by 2020.
Mark Hendrick
My hon. Friend mentions those living in poverty. Given her role on the shadow Front Bench, she will be aware of the failure to include in the Queen’s Speech the Government’s promise of a law on the 0.7% commitment of gross national income. All three parties agreed to that before the general election, but the Government have failed to deliver it.
Rushanara Ali
The Government’s record in tackling poverty domestically is risible, and their inability to stick to the commitment to enshrine in law the commitment of 0.7% of GNI is deeply disappointing. I hope they will act on that. It is disappointing that the commitment was not in the Queen’s Speech, and that it was not in previous Queen’s Speeches.
I want to return to the Government’s failure to take child poverty seriously. In my constituency we also have some of the highest rates of youth and graduate unemployment. If the Government were serious about lifting families out of poverty, they would increase the number of training opportunities to help graduates into work and increase the number of apprenticeships. We have 10 young people chasing every single apprenticeship opportunity—that is completely unacceptable. The money spent on the millionaires’ tax break could have been used to create more apprenticeship opportunities. We cannot go on like this, with 1 million young people out of work.
Steve Webb
The hon. Lady said that half the children in her constituency are living in poverty. She will know that the official published figures on child poverty show a fall since the general election. Presumably, after 13 years of a Labour Government, half the children in her constituency were in poverty. Will she apologise for that record?
Rushanara Ali
The hon. Gentleman’s Government should apologise for their failure to reverse the increase. Child poverty in my constituency has gone up consecutively in the past three years. He ought to apologise for that and he ought to act. He should have lobbied his Government to propose measures in this Queen’s Speech to tackle child poverty. He ought to apologise and I give him the opportunity to do so today.
Clive Efford
I am reading the conclusion of the Institute for Fiscal Studies report into child poverty, and it states that relative child poverty is projected to be 6% higher, reversing the fall in relative poverty between 2000 and 2010-11.
Rushanara Ali
What can I say to my hon. Friend but, “Well said”? I wish the Minister would take these issues more seriously. Instead of tackling the substantive problem of child poverty, his colleagues in the Treasury have decided to redefine it. As with many things the Government are doing, they find it is easier to meddle with the figures and interfere with the statistics—rewrite them, even. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is not in his place. He has just had his wrists slapped once again by the Office for National Statistics for meddling with the statistics.
The Government should rebuild trust with the British people by coming clean on these issues. They should not try to rewrite the figures, but actually do something about child poverty, an issue that is of great concern to families and to all people. Doing so would address the point, made by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), that the Conservative party is not just in the business of pretending to change on these substantial issues. We live in hope, although there is not much of that left.
The Government’s approach to child poverty and the response of the Minister highlight how out of touch they are. If he and his colleagues cannot understand the seriousness of falling living standards and rising levels of child poverty—to name but two issues—and what they mean for ordinary people’s lives, I cannot understand how we are to trust them to get us out of the economic mess that they have put us in over the past three years. It is their mess: they need to clean it up and they have categorically failed to do so.
Julie Hilling
Does my hon. Friend agree that many Government Members do not have an understanding of what the cuts to living standards mean? It is not that people cannot just go to the pub one night a week. The cuts mean that people cannot feed their children, that there is no food in the cupboard and that they go to bed hungry. Does she agree that it does not feel like Government Members understand that that is what it is like?
Rushanara Ali
With a Cabinet full of millionaires, I think the empathy will be limited, but I hope that those Cabinet millionaires speak to Government Members who come from the kind of background that means they might have some understanding. If they even talked to some of their own colleagues—such as the former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who, I understand, grew up on a council estate, and raised the issue of the Government and the Prime Minister being out of touch—they might learn a thing or two about how people have to live their lives. If they paid attention to ordinary, poorer constituents, they might learn a thing or two about what it is like to live below the poverty line or to struggle on a modest income. The changes the Government have made in people’s incomes—a reduction of £1,700 a year—have had a devastating effect on families and children. [Interruption.] The Minister is heckling, but I cannot hear what he is saying. He is welcome to make an intervention. Does he wish to make an intervention? No. He does not have much to say.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Minister, either intervene or stop heckling. It does not help the recording of the debate to throw comments across the Chamber that not everyone can hear—the Hansard Reporters in particular.
Rushanara Ali
I am interested in hearing the Minister, if he would like to say anything.
Mark Hendrick
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that we are debating the coalition Government’s Queen’s Speech, is it in order that only a Minister, a Parliamentary Private Secretary and a Whip are present? Not one Government Back Bencher is present for this very important debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Hendrick, that is not a matter for the Chair. Who is in the Chamber or who answers for the Government is a matter for the Government and Government Members. You have got your point on the record, but perhaps we can now return to the debate on the Gracious Speech.
Rushanara Ali
I was about to come on to that. Clearly the legislative programme in the Queen’s Speech is riveting, given the extraordinary presence on the Government Benches—just four Government Members, including Front Benchers. That says it all. The Government cannot even pull together more than a handful of Members to defend their legislative programme. [Interruption.] There are five of them now. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is here. Perhaps he can defend it singlehandedly on behalf of the two parties in government. It says it all that so few people are in the Chamber to speak up for the Government’s legislative programme—or, rather, the lack of it.
I want to focus on unemployment, which, yet again, the Government’s programme—or lack of it—fails to address. In constituencies such as mine, long-term and youth unemployment continue to soar. The lack of opportunities remains significant; the lack of sufficient numbers of apprenticeship programmes to meet the demand is a real problem and a real challenge. If young and other unemployed people were given the opportunity to get a foot on the employment ladder, we could reduce not only the level of deprivation in constituencies such as mine, but the burden on the taxpayer of welfare costs. The way to reduce the deficit is to ensure that we get people back into work and economic activity.
The Government’s Work programme has managed to find work for only 2% of participants in my constituency. It is a scandalous waste of public money that only 2% of people are in jobs through that programme. Will the Business Secretary and the Work and Pensions Secretary look again at why their programme has had such little impact? Why not consider improving the system for getting people into work so that we can give people, in particular young people, hope and a chance to make a contribution to our economy? That kind of wasted talent cannot be good for our society or communities, and is certainly not how to recover from the economic troubles that we continue to face.
One suggestion that my party has made, but which the Government have failed to take on board, is the compulsory jobs guarantee. We know that having training programmes with a genuine guarantee of a job works. We demonstrated that it worked when we were in power, through the future jobs fund and apprenticeship programmes. I believe that the Business Secretary and the Work and Pensions Secretary want to get people into work. What I do not understand is why, if a programme does not work properly and manages to get only 2% of people into jobs, the Government will not reform it. When the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions went on his journey in opposition to discover poverty in constituencies such as mine, I thought he might have learned a thing or two about how to get people out of poverty and into work, but he clearly has not. He is too busy focusing on punishing people, rather than giving them hope and the opportunity to get a job.
Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Lady is wrong about the Work programme. In fact, I will show her later that the UK Statistics Authority has taken her party and others to task for their use of the statistics, which it says is incorrect. The reality, as she will see when we come forward in June, is that the programme is a success, and it is cheaper than anything that Labour produced.
Rushanara Ali
Perhaps the Secretary of State can also explain why he got a slap on the wrist today—and previously—for meddling with the statistics, because people—
Rushanara Ali
No, I will not give way until I have finished my sentence. I will give way when I am done; then I will listen to the Secretary of State’s response.
The Secretary of State is damaging public trust in statistics—there is that old phrase about “damned lies and statistics”. That will lead to further distrust, not just of politicians such as him, but of important institutions that are there to provide independent, credible statistics. He should not be meddling with his figures. The fact that only 2% of participants in my constituency managed to get jobs through his Work programme is an absolutely appalling indictment of his performance in his role and shows his failure to get people into work. I find it deeply disappointing, because I happen to have admired his work with the Centre for Social Justice, which he set up before he got into government. Although I was a sceptic about his conversion to understanding poverty and deprivation and wanting to reform and improve society, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but no longer, because he has returned to the approach that the Conservatives have always taken and failed to do anything to give people genuine opportunities. That is summed up by his Department’s failure to get people into work in constituencies such as mine. The facts speak for themselves. I am afraid that he does not have much to offer, other than trying to rewrite statistics.
Unless the Secretary of State has something else to add, I will move on.
Mr Duncan Smith
I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the idea that I am rewriting statistics. She will see from the letter written to me today by the UK Statistics Authority that no mention is made of that. I continue to believe, absolutely correctly, that the work of the cap will help and will lead to people getting jobs. That was the whole purpose, which is why we left those on tax credits off the cap. I believe that people are moving into work, and will continue to do so, as a result of the cap, and I will be able to demonstrate that.
Rushanara Ali
Perhaps the Secretary of State could start by demonstrating now and explaining why only 2% of participants have got jobs in my constituency. What is the reason for such a ridiculously small number, when there are so many people chasing apprenticeships and job opportunities? How can that be acceptable? Why is he so complacent? I thought he was interested in getting people off welfare and into work. It seems that he is interested only in attacking people, rather than helping them to get back into work. That is deeply disappointing. I had more hope that he would do something constructive to get people into work, given his track record in opposition and his efforts to get to know communities in our country and understand where the barriers were, but perhaps I should not have given him the benefit of the doubt.
Julie Hilling
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State’s comment absolutely reinforces what seems to be his view that people are choosing to live a life on benefit rather than the fact that 2.5 million people are unemployed, the vast majority of whom would love to be in work? The benefit cap does not drive people into work; what gets people into work is the creation of jobs for which they can apply and then go and do.
Rushanara Ali
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The crux of the matter is that the economy is flatlining and there is no prospect of people having a chance to get a foot on the employment ladder. Such opportunities as are available are too few. We need an economy that can grow and a Government who can act as quickly as possible to boost demand and reverse the trend we have seen. We need more genuine training and employment opportunities, particularly for young people.
I raised with the Business Secretary the issue of graduate unemployment, as this is another pool of talent that is being wasted in our country. I was the first in my family to go to university and many in my constituency are in the same position. They have worked hard, played by the rules and just want to make a contribution.
Mr Steve Reed
Has my hon. Friend noticed that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions likes to claim that his benefits cap is responsible for the number of people moving off benefits into work, yet he does not comment on the fact that roughly the same number of people are moving out of work and on to benefits, with both those aspects being part of the usual cyclical change? His interventions have made not a blind bit of difference to any of that.
Rushanara Ali
What can I say? The Secretary of State made some interventions earlier, but they provided very little room for optimism. We need to look at how people’s everyday lives are affected by these issues. As I was saying, in my constituency, graduates, school leavers and those who have left further education just want an opportunity. They want this Government to answer their needs, but that is what is failing. Whatever our political leanings and whichever parties we happen to be in, the critical thing is to get people into work so that they can make their contributions. The fact that that is not happening is the Government’s failure, and they need to take responsibility for it and think again about their policies, which are not working adequately.
Let me deal in more detail with graduate unemployment. In a constituency such as mine, numerous family members are coming out of university, often having been the first in their families to have gained degrees, but they are often struggling to get into work. Despite some major economic opportunities around the City and Canary Wharf, there is a mismatch between people’s potential and their skills and the opportunities to get into those institutions. I believe the Government could do more to support graduates and those leaving further education by making it easier for them to make the transition into those institutions that are traditionally not easy to enter—financial organisations, the creative industries and many other sectors in our city. The cost of graduates being out of work and claiming benefits when they could be making a contribution and lifting their families out of poverty is an example of the missed opportunities. Taking action to deal with that could provide an easy win.
I therefore hope that the Business Secretary will think again about how to get a large number of graduates back into work, as they get very little help when they leave university to make that transition. Graduate unemployment among those from working-class or ethnic minority backgrounds is disproportionately higher than it is for other groups, but it is a real struggle for all graduates. I ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to think about this issue and to highlight in his response whether he has any proposals to deal with it.
I should like the Government to think again about whether they have set the right priorities in giving tax breaks to millionaires at a time when working families are losing so much as a result of the changes that they are making. It is proving incredibly difficult for those families to make ends meet, and to pay for such things as child care and heating. The increasing number of people who are going to food banks in constituencies all over the country shows just how much they are struggling.
It is strange that the Government have stuck to their commitment to give tax breaks to millionaires rather than, for instance, introducing the mansion tax on which the Business Secretary was so keen before the election. I hope that he can persuade his colleagues in the Conservative party to take on board an excellent policy idea, which is supported by both my party and his. It would raise additional revenue and help us to meet some of the vital challenges that we face, especially in relation to getting people back to work.
As some of my hon. Friends have already pointed out, a temporary cut in VAT could help to stimulate the economy. When we were in power, there was evidence that a VAT cut could make a significant difference by boosting consumer demand. We desperately need to establish ways to stimulate demand in the economy. The Government should think again about how to generate growth and create jobs. That is not happening, and it has been not happening for too long, despite the promises that were made in 2010 and despite all the forecasts—which, thanks to the Government’s policies, have turned out to be wrong.
I want to make two points about the impact of unemployment on women in particular. The unemployment figures highlight its disproportionate impact on women, and the position is worsening. The Government’s attempt to water down the powers provided by the Equality Act 2006 is very worrying, given that in the current downturn the impact on ethnic minorities and women is greater than ever before. We need organisations that can ensure that those unequal impacts do not become even worse, and I hope that the Government will think again about their strange decision to water down the powers of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The pay gap between men and women—as well as the fact that women are more likely to lose their jobs and remain out of work—is deeply worrying. I hope that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will tell us what his Department is doing to address the real concern that is felt about the effects of that on women.
The content of Queen’s Speeches is ever-diminishing, and this year’s is particularly disappointing. It is clear that the Government have run out of ideas and energy in just a few years. My constituents, and constituents throughout the country, desperately need a plan for jobs, a plan for growth and a plan for economic recovery, none of which the Government are providing. If they cannot be bothered even to come up with a decent legislative programme in the Queen’s Speech, we have to wonder why the public should trust them to restore our economic future and create jobs and growth. I hope very much that the public will see through the Government and their failure, in these very difficult times, to understand and respond to their needs and to the fact that they are struggling.
Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Byrne
My hon. Friend speaks eloquently, and his remarks cut to the quick of the values now on show in this Government. Once upon a time—the Secretary of State will well remember this—he said:
“Conservative policies have to work for Britain’s poorest communities and every policy must be measured by that standard.”
That is what the right hon. Gentleman said on 28 June 2004, so let us weigh up the impact of this Bill on Britain’s communities. It will mean child benefit rising by 20p a week, maternity allowance by £1.37 and jobseeker’s allowance by 72p, while the income of a millionaire will go up as a result of the tax cut by £2,058 a week. How can he possibly justify that? He cannot. He knows that the Chancellor was in search of a dividing line on welfare and that he has obliged the Secretary of State to kiss goodbye to 10 years of campaigning to turn the Tory party into one that gave a monkey’s about poverty.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that child poverty in London remains stubbornly high, and that this Bill will make matters worse? My constituency has the highest level of child poverty, and this Bill will lead to more poverty across cities such as London and around the country.
Jobs and the Unemployed
Rushanara Ali Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Grayling
But the way that we will create long-term jobs for the future will be to revitalise and energise our private sector. The reality is that the Labour party went into the general election campaign promising to increase the tax on employment and to make it more expensive for the private sector to employ people. How can the right hon. Gentleman think that that is a route to long-term sustainable growth and opportunity for employment in this country?
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there will be a job guarantee with the 50,000 placements that will be arranged under the apprenticeship programme? Also, where is the logic in making people wait so long? There are still many unemployed people in my constituency. After someone has been unemployed for six months, the private sector will treat them as long-term unemployed. How can it be right to leave people waiting until next spring before giving them something to work on?
Chris Grayling
I know that the hon. Lady is a new Member, and she might not be aware of the changes made by the previous Government. One of the things they did was to extend the period that people had to wait before they could receive support on employment programmes. In the case of young people between the ages of 16 and 25, the period was extended from six months to 12 months. I agree with her that things need to happen sooner, and one of the things we will do in the Work programme is to give that support sooner.
The coalition Government are committed to supporting people in sustainable employment, providing opportunities that will provide skills, open doors and help people to stay in work. Our goal is not to get people off the unemployment register temporarily, but to work with them to achieve a goal of lasting employment. That means plotting a different course. The same tired old policies will not work. For too long, economic growth in Britain has been unbalanced, driven by the accumulation of unsustainable debt and a bulging public sector. We have been forced to deal with the largest public spending deficit in peacetime history, and the crisis in the eurozone has shown that the consequences of not acting are severe.
Chris Grayling
The key to supporting people with mental health problems and other disability issues is winning the confidence of employers, and the role that can be played by providers—whether in the private or the voluntary sector—in forging relationships with employers. I believe that as that relationship strengthens, as people start to obtain work placements and as employers start to work with some of those who have been on incapacity benefit, employers will become more ready and willing to provide extra opportunities.
I have no doubt that many businesses in this country want to do the right thing. I believe that, in general, members of our society recognise that we cannot go on with the same number of people stranded on incapacity benefit. I am confident that if we get the programme right and deliver effective back-to-work support for those people, the opportunities will be there and will grow as time goes by. I know there is consensus across the House on this proposal. We came up with it originally, and the previous Government adopted it. Now we are taking it forward, and we will work hard to refine the work capability assessment to ensure that we get it right. I look forward to working with the Select Committee and the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg) to achieve that. It is fundamentally important that we actually make a difference to those people, about a quarter of whom have claimed incapacity benefit for more than 12 years. That has had a devastating impact on the people themselves, and it is a burden we have had to carry as a society. We must do all we can to help as many as possible of those people to make something better of their lives.
All that, of course, is in addition to the support that will continue to be provided by Jobcentre Plus. I agree with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford that its staff do a first-rate job, which in recent years they have done under great pressure. I am glad that that work is recognised on both sides of the House.
Our package of reforms is not just about getting people into a job, and it is not just about saving money; it is all about helping people to make more of their lives. We have heard so much from the Labour party in recent weeks about its policies and how they would have made all the difference, but I do not buy that; I do not think they are right. What we inherited from Labour was a series of commitments it could not afford and a series of plans that involved short-term solutions to its political problems, rather than long-term solutions for the individuals concerned and for our country. We need a fresh approach, which is why we believe so strongly in focusing on apprenticeships rather than the future jobs fund.
Apprenticeships provide an opportunity to learn new skills that are actually valued by employers. They give people a chance to learn a trade and to embark on a career, while also improving productivity and developing a talent pool. A Labour Member mentioned skills. I happen to believe that a well-run apprenticeship is a much better way of giving someone a platform for life. That is why we are spending £150 million on a programme involving 50,000 apprenticeships that can make a difference.
Chris Grayling
I will give way once more, but then I must wind up my speech so that others have a chance to speak.
Rushanara Ali
May I ask once again whether there will be a job guarantee for those 50,000 apprentices? My question was not answered when I asked it earlier, and it is the kind of question to which my constituents want an answer. There is no point in people joining those programmes if there is no opportunity for them to get jobs when the programmes end.
Chris Grayling
We intend to continue the young person’s guarantee until the launch of the Work programme. However, there is no guarantee of a job at the end of any programme. The programmes are intended to create opportunities for employment. None of the last Government’s programmes involved a guarantee of a job at the end. The best we can do is to ensure that people are as work-ready as possible, and then try to provide an environment in which jobs are being created for which people can apply.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I wanted to speak in this debate because employment is of such great concern in my constituency. It is absolutely vital that we invest in the talent of local people in different areas around the country, and that their talent is not wasted. The hopes and aspirations of people who want to contribute to our economy must not be cast aside in the way that I believe that this Government will do.
In Bethnal Green and Bow, unemployment is just under 11%, significantly higher than the national rate. The experiences of white working-class groups and of ethnic minority groups—especially those of British-Bangladeshi or Somali origin—are particularly challenging. They face the double whammy of trying to find work in difficult circumstances and in a difficult economic climate, but also of the social class barriers, and the ethnic penalties that are well documented by Cabinet Office research.
Unemployment in my constituency is faced by people who live only a stone’s throw from the City and Canary Wharf. They see the wealth and opportunities there, but struggle to reach them. Even during the boom years, unemployment was higher than the national rate, and youth and graduate unemployment were also high. Businesses in the City and Canary Wharf made efforts to recruit people, but not enough. We need the private sector, Government and local agencies to work together to create opportunities, and we need the Government to support those opportunities and enable that sort of cross-organisational working.
We also need the voluntary sector. Through organisations such as City Gateway in my constituency, and with the help of the future jobs fund and the working neighbourhoods fund, it has made enormous progress in trying to get people into work. Funding like that is an enabler, and we need that kind of support if we are to get people into work.
Tower Hamlets has managed to cut unemployment—not enough, but it has made significant progress. The current proposals stand to damage that progress. In my constituency, a lot of positive work is being done across sectors. I hope that this Government will look at ways to enable that to continue.
I am saddened that £1 million of the working neighbourhoods fund has already been cut. That is not a good sign. Figures show that 9.6% of young people are NEETs—that is, not in education, employment or training—and that is too high, but in Tower Hamlets we have managed to reduce that proportion to 6%. That is a fall of 40%, and it could not have happened without help from the Government, or without the September guarantee and the future jobs fund.
I remind the House that 8,500 young people across London managed to stay off the dole queue thanks to the help of Government interventions. I also appeal to the Government not to delay the introduction of the programme of setting up 50,000 apprenticeships that has been announced. If they do delay, it will be a case of “too little, too late”: we cannot afford to waste the talent and potential of people in this country.
The Conservative mantra in the 1980s was, “If it’s not hurting, it’s not working.” The unemployment rate then was very high, but that is not a price that is ever worth paying. I hope that people across the House recognise that. Research by Cardiff university found that unemployment was associated with a doubling of the suicide rate, so let us not forget the kind of damage that can be done, especially by unemployment of men.
Jake Berry
Does the hon. Lady agree that, after 13 years of a Labour Government, it is a disgrace that one in five people under the age of 24 are out of work? Does she think that has been a price worth paying for 13 years of a Labour Government?
Rushanara Ali
The Labour Government made every attempt to help people into work. There are great challenges and complex circumstances in helping and enabling people to work, but at least the Labour Government did not shirk their responsibility. At least they tried to support people, as Labour Governments will always do. I appeal to the coalition Government to try to provide support, so that people can achieve their potential. This is not about handouts; it is about giving a helping hand. That is the progressive route to supporting communities.
Rushanara Ali
I am short of time, so I would like to make some progress and share the following example. At a recent employment fair in my constituency, 10,000 people were queuing up for jobs, but there were only 1,000 places at the work fair. That does not show that people are not interested in jobs or that people will sit idly by waiting for opportunities to come to them; they want to work, they want opportunities and they need support from the private sector, the Government and the voluntary sector. I hope that that is the spirit in which this Government will seek to work.
The cost of unemployment is ill health, depression and anxiety; it is many social consequences that we cannot afford. I regret that unemployment remains high for some sections and that some people continue to feel left behind. I acknowledge that my party did not achieve as much as it would have liked, but the fact is that my party never walked away from people who needed support in constituencies such as mine.
Matthew Hancock
I thank the hon. Lady for a very thoughtful speech. Will she join me in welcoming the new Government’s proposal to increase the number of apprenticeships, because she mentioned that earlier?
Rushanara Ali
I welcome any effort to try to help people to get work but, as I said in my earlier intervention, it is important to ensure that training programmes are meaningful. I would say that to my own party and my own Government—in fact, I lobbied my Government to keep making progress, because that is the right thing to do. The point is that there is no guarantee of a job at the end of this. Young people, with whom I have spent some years working, need to be convinced that when they get involved with these programmes, there will be a result and the programme is meaningful, not a fudge. That must be our focus. I welcome the 50,000 apprenticeship opportunities, but people will have to wait until next spring. What am I meant to say to my constituents, who have been waiting for help from this Government? We contributed support. The problem is that the recent announcements, whereby all this is to be left until next spring, are not good enough.
I wish to conclude by saying that we must not fail the challenge of trying to help people get into work. We must give them hope, we must realise their potential and we must help them to meet their aspirations. We have not seen evidence of investment in the aspiration that the Prime Minister talked so much about when he was campaigning. I hope that we will see that, and that this Government will not turn their back on the people who want to contribute to this society and this economy, and whose potential we need for economic growth. I hope that this coalition Government will deliver a progressive solution, not one that leaves people behind.