Welfare Reform Bill

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry). He is always worth listening to, but he was particularly worth listening to tonight. I am sorry that he was unable to continue longer because of the time limit. I agreed with him about the desperate need to examine the issue of social care packages, and I also agreed with what he said about the treatment of blind people. It was also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). They, too, made powerful speeches. It is a shame, in my view, that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead does not sit on the Government Front Bench: I think that he would be a great asset to the country, given his radical views and ideas. I agree with him that the Bill was drawn up at a time when things were very different. I am sure the Prime Minister genuinely believed that the boom would go on for ever—he always said that it would go on, and there would not be a bust—but I am afraid that he was totally wrong, and that we may now face not a recession but a depression. Because I find the whole issue of welfare reform very difficult to deal with, my speech will cover a number of issues that will not necessarily be ““joined up””, and I apologise to the House for that. One issue arises in my constituency time and time again. I do not want to use the word ““underclass””, but there is a class of constituents who know nothing other than being on benefits. They do not relate to jobs. I am sure that the thrust behind the Government's proposals will be very useful in helping them to break that cycle, I know that the devil is in the detail, and no doubt there will be plenty for us to examine in Committee. If we could only break the cycle and get those people into employment, that would surely be a very good thing, and I hope that the Bill will help us to achieve it. There has been mention of people being interviewed again and again about incapacity benefit. I met a charming gentleman—along with his wife and daughters, who were his carers—who was permanently bedridden. There was no chance of his being able to get out of bed, yet he has been asked for the second time to undergo an interview to establish whether he is entitled to incapacity benefit. That cannot be right, and it is a waste of everyone's time and money. However, there are clearly people receiving incapacity benefit who should cease to receive it because they should not be receiving it in the first place. I am not sure whether there is a one-stop solution that fits all those cases, and I find this a difficult issue. However, I believe that we are now living in a different age—an age in which unemployment will go up and up. Whatever the Government do at this stage and regardless of whether they succeed, unemployment will increase significantly over the next few months. We are slightly ahead of the game in Wellingborough, because our unemployment has been much higher for a considerable time. We now have 56.3 per cent. more people unemployed than in 1997, and unemployment has increased by more than 80 per cent. in the last year. I am not making a party-political point; I am merely saying that I think the position in my constituency is different from the position in many others. We are faced with the fact that, whatever welfare reform we bring about and however well we prepare people who are currently not in work and are receiving incapacity benefit, the jobs for which we prepare those people will simply not be there. If I advertised a job at the moment, there might be a couple of hundred applicants. Would I take on someone who had been unemployed for a number of years, had been on incapacity benefit and had been retrained, or someone who was experienced and had only just left the workplace? Any employer—and I would not blame him—would take on the person who had just left work and had the experience. That is a serious problem about which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead made some interesting points. I hope that they can be discussed in Committee, because the issue concerns me. One of the aspects of welfare reform that we should be considering is the need to maintain people in jobs if that is at all possible. There is an unusual, although not unique, situation in my constituency, which contains a well-established boot and shoe company that has been in the family for more than a hundred years. It is highly respected, and its employees have worked for it for many years. In the current recession, it has run into serious problems and has had to cut its work force by a third, which has meant laying off 40 people. Some of those employees might have been employed for up to 30 years and are entitled to significant redundancy money, but the company cannot pay it because of the reasons it had to lay the staff off in the first place. If it were to try to pay the redundancy money, the company would put itself into administration; it could not carry on trading and the other 80 jobs would be lost. I have brought this case up in the House and Ministers have been helpful, but this case goes back to mid-December. These 40 people still do not have their redundancy money. The company is still trading and we hope it will trade out of its present situation. I understand that the Insolvency Service could provide the money to the employees and then get the money back from the company over a period of time as it traded out of its difficulties. The problem is that the company, as can be imagined, is under enormous pressure. The directors are working exceptionally hard to keep it going. The Insolvency Service would like to help but, unfortunately and unbelievably, the rules say that it cannot approach the company and must wait for an approach from the company. That sort of red tape needs to be looked at. That sort of help in terms of welfare reform would allow the employees to get the money to which they are entitled and allow the company to continue to trade. After all, the Government would not be losing any money by doing that. If the company went into liquidation, the Government would have to pay anyway. I know that that case is slightly removed from the terms of the Bill, but I wanted to raise it.