"I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) for securing the debate.
Does my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes recall that when he was elected in 2008 the unemployment rate for …..." William Bain - View Speech
"The 1.4% rise in employee national insurance contributions and the 3.4% rise in employer contributions appear to involve an initial windfall of about £6 billion a year for the Treasury. What guarantees will there be in the Bill that current members of public and private sector pension schemes do not …..." William Bain - View Speech
"When my right hon. Friends the Members for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) and for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne) and I met members of the disability community in Scotland recently in my constituency, they expressed concerns that tens of thousands of disabled people in Scotland might lose their access to passported …..." William Bain - View Speech
"With unemployment among the disabled having risen by 63,000 in the past year, this Minister, sadly, has presided over an unmitigated shambles of a tendering process in the Springburn Remploy factory in my constituency, with nearly 50 disabled workers not even given the dignity of her making a written statement …..." William Bain - View Speech
"The Treasury’s own analysis shows that the measures announced yesterday and today are regressive towards people in the seven lowest income deciles. Given that three-quarters of the cuts in tax credits will affect people in work and that the Government have made no steps to deal with the looming work …..." William Bain - View Speech
"It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Streeter, and to have secured this debate on behalf of Remploy workers and their families in my constituency and across the country.
Tomorrow is the day of judgment for the Chancellor’s failure to grow the economy, but today …..." William Bain - View Speech
"Absolutely. My hon. Friend highlights precisely the complete lack of logic in the proposals, at this time when the disabled, young people and people in long-term unemployment are encountering the toughest employment conditions in decades...." William Bain - View Speech
"Indeed, and the Government should be looking at the application of procurement rules, striving every sinew within the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, the Scotland Office, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that good industries such as these have the accessibility to public service contracts that …..." William Bain - View Speech
Those 35 people are not in jobs of equivalent pay and skills to the ones they had with Remploy; they are the only 35 people who have got any work at all. Additionally, the Work programme is placing only 2.5% of long-term jobless …..." William Bain - View Speech
"Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right that, given the scale of the disaster being faced by people in the disabled community, the only answer is for there to be a moratorium so that this incompetent Government can produce a strategy for disabled employment that actually works...." William Bain - View Speech