Welfare Reform Bill

I have been contacted by the TUC on various aspects of the Bill, with particular reference to "work for your benefit" schemes. It is not surprising that the TUC contacted me, because I was for many years a member of the TUC General Council. The issue at stake for the TUC is the undesirability, in its view, of what it sees as unfree and unpaid labour. Obviously, requiring people to do work experience in return for their benefit is not as serious as extreme forms of compulsory work, but it is within the same spectrum. Equally, schemes that produce an hourly rate well below the minimum wage are not in the same class as unpaid work, but, in the view of the TUC, they are still a form of exploitation. A separate requirement of justice to other workers requires that no compulsory or unpaid work scheme should ever cover economic work—that is, work that would otherwise be undertaken by workers with employment rights paid the rate for the job. It is felt that that is unfair to workers in employment when they face competition from workers who are paid much less than them and have inferior rights. Workers whose pay and conditions are most likely to be undermined in such a situation are often the lowest paid and most vulnerable. In addition to being unfair, according to abstract principles of justice, mandatory unpaid work experience is, in the view of the TUC, not an effective active labour market policy. The failure to pay a proper wage in a work experience programme can undermine its effectiveness. The TUC believes that employers are often not impressed when a job applicant’s CV includes a period spent in such activity. The TUC says that the impact on a participant’s morale and motivation is unlikely to be very good. I place these amendments before the Committee. I should be very interested to hear the response of the Minister, because this view is apparently strongly held by the TUC, and it is important that, if the scheme is to be effective, unions should at least be benevolently inclined towards it. I beg to move.