Welfare Reform Bill

It is a pleasure to follow my Blairite colleague opposite. May I say, by way of introduction, that I judge, as many of us would, that wise social security policy seeks to relate the issues of benefits to the issue of employment? I would argue that we should start the discussion with work. I wish to analyse the Bill and some of its proposals in that important context, because surely for those able to work the best social security policy is a job—things start from there. I often quote William Beveridge at this stage, partly because it reminds us that there was once an era of great liberal reform. In his famous 1942 report, he talked about the giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness standing in the way of social reconstruction once peace had come. He said that the giant of idleness, by which he meant unemployment, was the largest and fiercest of the giants and that if we did not overcome it all the other social goals of peacetime reconstruction would be out of reach. If one thinks about the implications for health and education, one sees exactly and empirically what he meant, so that is my starting point. Skipping forward 65 years from the great Attlee reforms that implemented the Beveridge recommendations and many others to the present day, it seems to me that there are three issues or obstacles that we must address or overcome if we are to get right the balance and relationship between what I still prefer to call social security—I find the term ““welfare”” pejorative—and work. The first issue is employment policy. Where is the Government's full employment policy? Is it their ambition to move back towards full employment? In my Croydon constituency, literally hundreds of job losses have just been announced at the Home Office's the Border and Immigration Agency. In addition, the council will contribute hundreds of job losses and there will be job losses in the health service with the reform of primary care trusts. That is just the start in an area that is very dependent on public sector work. What we are seeing is not ambition for full employment but a move towards further unemployment, which concerns me greatly. One of the great tragedies is that many of our fine young people leaving school and getting vocational qualifications and degrees are finding that no jobs are available. We must all think long and hard in the short, medium and longer term about whether we can somehow move towards a job guarantee for our young people, many of whom do so well in education and skills. We will betray a generation if we cannot soon offer them work that suits their skills, creativity and qualifications. On the contentious issue of immigration, it is clear to me, from a London perspective, that eastern European immigration has made it more difficult for people on the margins of the labour market to get jobs. It is a simple matter: if an employer is presented with a British person of whatever ethnic group who is not job-ready, as opposed to someone from Lithuania or Poland who is clearly eager to work and will probably turn up on time, who will they employ? How, in those circumstances, can we enable British people to get the work that our country owes them?