Thank you very much for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to you, the House and the Minister that I was not hear for the earlier part of the debate. I was in a Select Committee upstairs and then in a meeting. I wanted to contribute to the debate because the Bill troubles me.
I will start by expressing concern about a couple of matters raised by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), which are relevant because they are about how we treat the rich as well as the poor. I am not party to what is going to be said tomorrow, but I hope that the Government will go ahead with having a tax system that requires a minimum amount of tax to be paid by everybody. It is planned that that will be in the Finance Bill for the coming year. I share his view that we need a system that does not allow people to escape their tax obligations and that that should be a general principle.
I also share the view of the hon. Member for Easington on who should pay more into the system in times of austerity: it should be those who are better off. As it happens, we disagree about whether the better-off now pay more or less. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) intervened on him to point out the hard truth for a Labour MP that during the whole of the Labour Government, the top rate of tax was lower than it is now and lower than it will be after the change this year. There is no backing away from that. I think that that was regrettable, whatever the explanation. However, I want mainly to talk about the Bill.
I understand why the Government read the judgment from the Court of Appeal and have come to the House. The Court did not overturn the principle that people should do some mandatory work while on benefits, but it found—to put it bluntly—that there was a flaw in the paperwork sent to people requiring them to do that. I would have preferred the Government to go to the Supreme Court and wait for that judgment before seeking parliamentary approval to change the law in relation to a large number of cases. I understand the financing and the logic, but I am always nervous when we do not wait for the courts to adjudicate.
I have not talked about this with the Minister but I assume that the Government are nervous that they will not win in the Supreme Court, which is why they have come before the House now. I am nervous about that, but it is not my principal concern about the Bill. My principal concern is about the system that the Bill will continue, which is—to put it bluntly—bigger than the Bill itself. I am sure that will have been the subject of a speech from those on the Labour Front-Bench, just as I have heard that point in speeches from Labour Members who have already spoken.
Despite difficult economic times, I am happy that over the past few months my constituency, which, as colleagues know, is just over the river, has begun to see a reduction in unemployment, both generally and among young people. It is not a huge reduction—I am not naïve about that—and when I checked a minute ago it was still ranked 214th in the country in terms of the percentage of those who are unemployed. We are still in the top half of the table, and 5.9% of the population are still not in work although they would like to be. Nevertheless, the figure has come down from its peak of 6.2% in September and October 2011.
I am concerned that we are still running a system—I would be happy to continue this conversation with colleagues from the Department—that does not work or achieve what the Government wish it to achieve, and I will illustrate that point with four constituency cases from recent months. The first concerns a constituent called Mr RE—I will use initials in all cases because I do not have permission to share the details—who wrote to me in autumn last year. I then wrote to the Jobcentre Plus manager for my constituency, with whom I have a good professional working relationship. Mr RE told me that he wished to dispute a sanction on his JSA claim. He said he had received a letter from Seetec, the providers of mandatory work activity in my constituency, asking
him to attend a mandatory work placement in June 2012 at the British Heart Foundation and a charity shop quite near to where I live on the Old Kent road.
On 21 June, the day before Mr RE was due to start, he received a letter from a voluntary organisation for vulnerable adults inviting him for an interview the following Monday—25 June. He told me that he intended to train as a social worker and that a work placement such as the one offered by Sova, the voluntary body, included a requirement to apply for an MA course in social work. He therefore needed to make that interview a priority. He had only a day’s notice, which he needed to spend in preparation and buying appropriate clothing. He telephoned Seetec as soon as possible to advise that he would not be able to start his work placement on 22 June, but said he would be available from 26 June onwards.