Welfare Reform Bill

I am arguing my case for the very reasons that my hon. Friend outlined; the continuation of existing policies will lead to the apartheid that she mentioned. That takes me to my first substantive point. Let us consider the record of the new deal and making work pay. In doing so, let us record that we spent £75,000 million of taxpayers' money to finance those schemes. Let me remind the House of some of the success figures. Being in work for 13 weeks —permanent employment—is one. We do not collect data after that. Many hon. Friends with marginal seats would not perceive 13 weeks as permanent employment, but perhaps more of that on another day. I want to concentrate on the new deal for young people. When the scheme began, half of those on it went into a job for 13 weeks or more. Now, two thirds fail to do that. An escalating number of young people are just retreads on the schemes, participating for the second, third or fourth time, or many more. A quarter of those on the new deal for 25-plus people leave benefit, but then go on to incapacity benefit, and 0.3 per cent. of those on the new deal for 50-plus manage to get a job for 13 weeks or more. Given that we are now leaving the world of rapidly expanding job markets, and will sadly experience surging unemployment, I make two pleas to the Government. I would like them to say for how long we will continue with the schemes, with declining success. At what point do we pull the plug and realise that we could spend the money more effectively? The first reform I would like is for young people in my constituency and others, whom we have failed through our education system. Some can hardly put a sentence together after 13 years of public investment in their skills and employability. Many have not worked since leaving school. Of course, they left school early because it was so boring and irrelevant to them. I would like us to begin to use the money that we are currently wasting on many of them to establish the one job creation success of the previous Labour Government—the community programme. There should be real jobs for young people. It is not acceptable to allow them to go through the years after school never working. We need more direct intervention. I am asking not for more money to be spent, but for it to be spent differently. We should concentrate our efforts on that group. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has understood the nuances of Labour Members' concern about single parents. I appreciate that it looks good on a press release—the spin is good—when we say that we are going to rough up some more single parents to get them back to work, but unlike the group I have been discussing, they have a job to get on with. The unemployment figures since the downturn started show that women have been losing jobs at twice the rate of men. It will be much more difficult for single mothers to gain jobs in the new world into which we are entering. Of course, I accept the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) expressed so well: everybody must be in favour of single mothers maintaining, whenever possible, contact with the labour market. However, if we are considering sanctions, surely they should be linked to those who do not have family responsibilities, who have never worked and for whom we should provide an actual job. My first plea for reform is therefore to make the Bill relevant to those people. My second plea is for our many constituents who have worked for 10, 20 and 30 years and will sadly be made unemployed. They will get the shock of their lives when they sign on for their national insurance benefit and find how pitiful the sum is. Instead of continuing to waste money on cutting VAT, we should use it to double JSA national insurance benefit for those who have had, for example, five years' continuous employment. For those who have worked for 10 or more years, we should pay triple the rate. We know that those people will move back to work as soon as they can. Surely our system should provide them with a much better income than they currently get from an immaculate contribution record.