It is a huge privilege and pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), who speaks with such knowledge, expertise and passion in this most important area.
At a time when there seem to be days for celebrating pretty much everything in this country, I do not think that there will ever be a national Department for Work and Pensions day. That is a bit of a pity, because the areas it covers represent some of the major challenges that any Department faces. For instance, how do we deal with the issue—I prefer to see it as a good thing—of people living longer lives? How do we incentivise work? Critically, how do we empower and enable people whose lives often seem to be blighted from the very start, if not from before they were even born?
I want to start on a note of consensus. Several years ago, the centre-right Centre for Social Justice had a point in relation to some of its arguments in the debate about broken Britain. Some of the arguments went over the top, but it pointed out that bits of our social fabric were not working as well as they could or should have done, and some of the questions it asked then are just as valid today.
How are we helping and enabling people who are battling to make a decent livelihood for themselves and who are often hampered by the system? How is family stability supposed to be enhanced by the burgeoning practice of zero-hours contracts? Most of us would contend that it will not be, and there is also the whole issue of the pension provision or the lack of it for people on those contracts. Can it be right that a family with a severely disabled child—so disabled that they require large medical equipment—should be penalised for essential space in their home? What about the taxes of ordinary people the length and breadth of our country subsidising ever-growing housing benefit payments to buy-to-let landlords? Why have we turned food banks from charitable outlets for emergency use, primarily for
rough sleepers and certain immigrant groups who have fallen on hard times, into what they have now become—monuments of a failure to tackle systemic poverty? This Government will still not listen to the Trussell Trust and call an in-depth public inquiry on food poverty in Britain. That is broken Britain Cameron-style.
There can be no serious debate about welfare that does not speak the language of jobs and job opportunities. That is the one issue of greatest concern in my constituency. I welcome the fact that youth unemployment fell in January, although not that it rose again in February. This Government all too often have the approach of a bad post-Christmas dieter: gaining half a stone in weight at Christmas, but back on the scales at the end of January thinking it has been a great triumph in losing 3 lb.
It is a disgrace that the number of young people stuck on jobseeker’s allowance has almost doubled under the current Government. More than 900,000 young people are out of work, at a time when bank bonuses are rising and the wealthiest are given tax cuts. That is why I am proud of my party’s proposal for a jobs guarantee that will give young people real job opportunities. It is right that we as the Labour party—that is what it means by Labour—want to invest in a high-quality scheme such as that, and it is important that we put the emphasis on Labour and make clear that we will not put up with abuses from the minority, because that is not fair on everyone else.
What does that type of programme mean? In Wales we have seen it with the Labour-led Welsh Assembly, and we are seeing the benefits. We have delivered the sharpest reduction anywhere in the UK among NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—with figures falling faster in Wales than anywhere else in the UK. Let it be known that under Jobs Growth Wales, a programme for 16 to 24-year-olds, 80% of those traineeships are in the private sector, and 78% of participants secure work. That compares, I think, with 15% under the UK Government’s Work programme which, as one Government Member said earlier, had teething problems.
Job opportunities for young people matter. I recently saw that very clearly in Chirk in my constituency at what we will always think of as Cadbury’s, although now it goes under the name of Mondelez International. One thing that struck me as I spoke to the apprentices in Chirk is that they were a pretty diverse group of young people. Some had got on well in traditional school settings and some had not, but they were all enthused by their new programme of work and the prospects their new skills offered. That is why tailored apprenticeships in different fields matter, and we need to be passionate about working with different types and sizes of employers in providing them. Absolutely nothing matters more than providing job opportunities for young people, because how can we hope to develop a work ethic where there is no serious work?
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