Government Employment Strategy

Then I wonder whether he came across the excellent family relationship centres that exist throughout Australia. They not only do remedial work and help with child support, but help families to try to stay together in first place. Whatever our politics, I hope that we all agree that prevention is better than a cure. I am not someone who just accepts that such things happen. We can do a little bit, as a Government and in the voluntary sector, to help couples to stay together. Organisations such as community family trusts do excellent work in this country; indeed, the one in my constituency—south Bedfordshire community family trust—does precisely that. In relation to the over-50s, I understand from the report that there has been no reduction in the past decade in economically inactive people aged between 50 and the state pensionable age. The over-50s make up 40 per cent. of the non-working population of working age, and so are a vast pool of talent and expertise that could be wasted if we do not get things right. Getting the training right for that age group is tremendously important, particularly as we have just put through the House a Bill that will raise the state pension age to 68. I have huge concerns, which I expressed in the Committee stage of the Pensions Bill to the Minister for Pensions Reform, about the lack of sufficient training for older workers. Someone who has worked in a steel foundry or elsewhere in heavy industry cannot continue in that work when they reach their early 60s. They need to retrain and be reskilled, in order to carry on working until they can claim their state pension, at the age of 68, but we are not doing enough. I pressed the Minister for Pensions Reform to provide information on the number of workers over 60 who are out of work in each local authority area, and on the training and retraining opportunities available to them in those areas, but he refused to provide it. I hope that what I am saying will strike a chord with all members of the Committee. I urge them, and particularly those Labour Members here, to put pressure on DWP Ministers to look at this tremendously important issue, on which we need to do more. I was also interested in what the Committee said about the issue of forced retirement, involving workers over the age of 65 who do not have adequate protection. A lady in precisely that position came to see me in my surgery last week. She had worked for Luton borough council all her life and, at the age of 65, had applied to keep her job. The council went through the process of deciding whether she could, but she was told that she could not. She was a bright, intelligent and capable woman, who needed the income and enjoyed going to work. As a result of having left the employment of Luton borough council, she now cannot work for any other local authority in Bedfordshire. Future generations will look back with incredulity at our society, for telling people when they reach retirement, ““That is it—you can be forcibly got rid of””. To me, that is the equivalent of saying that people who are 6 ft 5 in or who have brown eyes can be got rid. That is how we will be viewed. I am not blind to employers’ concerns that, effectively, they will have to keep a file on every one of their workers, if they should want to dismiss them beyond the state retirement age. However, I cannot believe that it is impossible to reach a workable solution that will give workers better protection, but also ensure that employers can get rid of workers over retirement age who are not up to their jobs, as sadly they will need to do on occasion. I note that the issue is currently before the European Court of Justice, as referred by the High Court in December, following the Heyday case, brought by Saga. The issue of ethnic minorities was another of the main points raised in the report. I agree wholeheartedly with what the Minister said recently: the disparities in employment among some ethnic minority groups—particularly the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, as the Chairman of the Committee also mentioned—are far too high. That is something on which we must make greater progress. The Minister said that he held a summit on the issue, and some suggestions were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) earlier. Benefit simplification gets a brief mention at the end of the report, although I was not hugely impressed by what the Government said about it. Benefit simplification is one of those issues on which parties can never make much progress in opposition, but there really is an opportunity to do something about it in government. We all know that the benefits manuals have grown larger and larger and that the debates on social security in the House are attended by fewer and fewer hon. Members. Why is that? Frankly, it is because even very few Members of Parliament fully understand the complexities of the benefits system. That is deeply worrying, because we cannot hold the Government to account or have sensible debates on the issue. Most importantly, the range of benefits that our constituents have to deal with causes sheer befuddlement. The National Audit Office has looked into the issue, as has the Public Accounts Committee, but much more needs to be done. The Chairman said in his opening remarks that the new deal needed to be refreshed, and I agree with him. There is now quite a lot of statistical evidence that the results of the new deal are not as successful as they were in the past, that taxpayers are perhaps not getting the value for money that they should and that the sustainability of the scheme for ongoing employment is not there. We know that almost one third of new dealers have been on the scheme on two or more occasions and that nearly 50 per cent. of young jobseekers who leave the new deal for young people end up back on benefits within a year. We also know that 23 per cent. of those leaving new deal 25-plus in August 2006 found jobs without claiming benefits, compared with 38 per cent. in June 2001. The figures are clearly going the wrong way. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues are into evidence-based policy making, because those are quite worrying statistics.