Government Employment Strategy

There is no complacency on the Labour Benches about what more needs to be done on welfare reform in the labour market. We brought forward the Welfare Reform Act 2007 to support the 2.7 million who are on benefit and others who flow on to it, so that they can be supported in getting off the benefit. The hon. Gentleman is wrong; the long-term youth unemployment claimant count is less than 10,000. That is a remarkable transformation from when his party was in power for those 18 years. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need a family-friendly policy on employment and welfare. For me, that is not about the moralising of the right, nor a sense of tub-thumping and lecturing from some sort of bully pulpit, but an acknowledgment that two parents supporting a child, all other things being equal, have better outcomes. However, the vast majority of lone parents do an exceptional job—in what is probably the most difficult job imaginable—of bringing up children with phenomenal educations and with the love and support that enables them to get on in the labour market and, perhaps more importantly, to develop their character. The family-friendly approach to the politics of welfare is why we extended maternity and paternity leave and why we introduced adoption leave. I rue the fact that that was opposed by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire and his party, but such extensions in flexibility and the chance to work are part of a continuing family-friendly labour market. The Select Committee is underpinned by the acknowledgment that if we are to achieve our ambition of supporting those who have multiple barriers to work and are furthest from the labour market, we need to extend the boundaries of welfare much further than we have before so that we can help those whom we have not been as successful in helping as the Labour party might traditionally have had the ambition to be. My hon. Friends talked about those who might suffer from an experience of drug addiction, disability and family pressures, such as those that might come from having a disabled child. As we continue to reform the welfare state, not only through the new deal but with other employment programmes, we need to design systems in the public sector and the private and voluntary sector that acknowledge that a person is an individual rather than someone on a specific benefit. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North and I have spoken about the specifics of how to achieve that on numerous occasions. My hon. Friend also talked about the employment gap among ethnic minorities, as did other hon. Members. My hon. Friend is more than informed enough publicly to acknowledge that the employment disadvantage is not uniform among all ethnic minorities. Part of it is to do with language. I would like to confirm that my announcement in February was not about migrants but about those who wish to have access to the system and are legally entitled to claim benefits, and about the fact that in future the jobseekers’ agreement would take account of language barriers. It was not about migrants because, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire knows—and as the Daily Mail knows, although we do not always read it—migrants do not have automatic access to benefits in the United Kingdom in the way that some of the tabloid press, and that newspaper in particular, like to suggest that they do. On the subject of the disadvantage for ethnic minorities in the labour market, my hon. Friends know that the Business Commission report commissioned by the Treasury will report shortly about what more employers can do to break down barriers and drive out whatever racism exists in their practices, and about what changes can be made to recruitment practices. But it is absolutely the case that the disadvantage of ethnic minorities in the UK’s labour market is partly down to discrimination. There are other contributory factors, of course, but discrimination is a substantial part of it. One way to look at it is that, as we all know, there are two bulges in ethnic minority performance in education. There is a disproportionate tendency for ethnic minorities to underperform in education and the academic world, but there is another bulge at the top. A disproportionate number of those from ethnic minorities are likely to outperform the UK average in academic performance. So there are two bulges—one at the top that we celebrate and one at the bottom that we bemoan. In the labour market there is only one bulge of over-representation among ethnic minorities, and it is at the bottom. The above-average performance in the academic world is in no way translated to an equivalent bulge in the labour market. That has to be partly down to discrimination. The Business Commission will come forward with proposals about what more business can do.