Government Employment Strategy

Mrs. Anderson, I thank you for chairing this debate, which has been well informed. That reflects the dedication that the members of the Work and Pensions Committee, on both sides of the political divide, show to the responsibility that they have. I thank the Committee for its report on the Government’s employment strategy. Given today’s debate, it is clear that we largely share common aims and common concerns. The report was informed by visits to my home city of Glasgow—I am sure that that was of great benefit—and New Zealand. I understand that the Committee is also to visit California shortly. I can only quietly reflect that I am in the wrong job; unlike the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander), I have not had the opportunity to go to New Zealand or Australia. Generally, there has been warm acknowledgment of the success of the past 10 years; certainly all Labour Members who have spoken acknowledged that pretty freely. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey also did. To be fair to the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), he also acknowledged the real progress in one half-sentence at the start of his contribution, although his comment was tinged with the dig that a proportion of the jobs will have gone to migrants. That was his half-sentence acknowledgment of the progress of the past 10 years. I say relatively gently to the hon. Gentleman that it is sometimes instructive to reflect where we have come from in respect of the scale of the achievement. A decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for us to have had a sensible or legitimate conversation about an 80 per cent. employment rate. That was just not part of the political discussion or vocabulary, except perhaps among the frustrated fringes of part of the trade union movement in the Labour party. They may have asked why their ambition of full employment—the historic goal that the movement and the Labour party were founded to achieve—could not be achieved. However, here we are having a proper conversation about a proper Select Committee report and having a proper debate on how we can deliver on that historic demand for full employment. Ten years ago, more than 2 million were unemployed, the number on incapacity benefit had trebled over the previous 20 years and 6 million were dependent on out-of-work benefits. Of course, we still have a lot more to do. The debate has shown that there are still clear dividing lines, but they no longer seem to be based on the accusation that the introduction of a national minimum wage would be ludicrous and would cost 1 million jobs or that mass unemployment is a price worth paying. The modern dividing line on the labour market that has come across in today’s discussion seems to be about rates versus ratios and numerators versus denominators. A consensus seems to have been created by the Government, employers, trade unions and society at large that an investment in full employment is a price worth paying. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble), in particular, talked about the success of having 2.5 million more in work and an employment rate that is up in every region of the United Kingdom, as well as the fact that 900,000 fewer people are on out-of-work benefits today than a decade or so ago. A number of hon. Members from all parties, in particular the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and my hon. Friends the Members for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) and for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood, Fleetwood being the most important, reflected on the pilots and how much effort, analysis and retrospective justification it will take before we can get them to fly nationally. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood asked specifically about the new deal plus for lone parents. I remind her, the Committee and the House that in the child poverty strategy that we published recently as part of the response to Lisa Harker’s report, we have said that we will extend the new deal plus for lone parents until March 2011 in the pilot areas. We will expand it to all lone parents in London, in part in acknowledgment of the specific challenges of the London labour market that were alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney). We will also extend key elements to couples on benefits in the pilot areas throughout London. We have learned from that example of best practice and extended it through our announcements on child poverty. Phenomenal innovations are taking place across the country. This week, I have had the opportunity to combine one of my great passions, football, with my determination to go further with our welfare reform and employment agenda. I visited Middlesbrough football club and, earlier today, Millwall football club. They are two phenomenal examples of innovations whereby the voluntary, private or community sector has done things that would have been unimaginable for a Government to have achieved before, because of the power and pull of the brand of Middlesbrough football club, a community club, and, despite my preconceptions of Millwall based on its previous fan base, because of the remarkable things that Millwall is doing as part of its continued rehabilitation. Incidentally, when I lived in London before, I used to actively go and watch and support Millwall, until at a game against Portsmouth Millwall scored and, instead of celebrating, different factions of the Millwall supporters started to fight with one another. To me, that was symbolic of the problem that Millwall had, but it has worked remarkably hard to change its image. The work that I saw today that supports people from all backgrounds and ethnicities—migrants and others—in resolving the difficulties that they face in the labour market was pretty inspirational. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire asked about the new deal. I can sense in some Conservative spokespeople a continuing, decade-long retrospective justification for their opposition to the new deal in principle. The new deal has helped 730,000 young people into work and 85 per cent. of those job entries have been sustained. The new deal has helped us to have fewer than 10,000 long-term unemployed 18 to 24-year-olds in the United Kingdom. There is a strong case for a more flexible new deal, for additional discretionary powers for advisers and for all sorts of measures to refresh it, and we remain committed to the principles of BoND. We are actively discussing how to put proper shape to those principles so that we can refresh the success of the new deal.