Welfare Reform Bill

I am following my neighbouring MP, the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies), in this debate; there is particular experience in the valleys of south Wales of economic incapacity and worklessness. My experience of trying to deal with the local organisations is slightly different from that of my neighbour. Interestingly, many local initiatives have been undertaken and they are beginning to achieve success. The incapacity rate in my constituency has dropped by 8 per cent. over the past 18 months—the problem now is that its unemployment rate is rising rapidly. So we have experience of starting to make inroads into the process, but my concern is that in order to do that, we have to be very careful about issues such as conditionality. Many speeches have been made about conditionality today, and what is important is to go to the people who have actually experienced things and find out what their direct experience is. I commissioned a research project jointly with some local universities back in 2006—it is on my website, should hon. Members wish to read it—dealing with conditionality and the problem of how you apply it. It is not the case that you do not need any, because you clearly need some; the question is when and how to apply it appropriately, because it can be a disincentive rather than an incentive. The project describes some experience of that. I am concerned that in the architecture of this Bill, like that of previous Bills, I am at variance with the Government in as much as they seem to have an abiding belief that in some way there is magic in a market and that a hidden hand will, in some way or another, incentivise and provide wonderful solutions that the public services are apparently too dull or inept to dream up, devise and monitor for themselves. I do not accept that view. My experience is that, through Jobcentre Plus, the constituency now has those resources and that a lot of success is being achieved. There is good value in the public servants who are delivering these processes. My area has some very good private and voluntary sector providers with whom they work. There is enormous experience among these people in doing exactly what I mentioned: devising their own new architecture of how they can collaborate to deal with the problems. Now I face a Bill that seems to suggest that it does not really matter who the provider is, as long as it is not the public sector. I do not agree with that view, because it does matter who the provider is and there is a value in the public sector being involved in doing the providing. Do not automatically freeze out the Department for Work and Pensions with these contracting arrangements, because you will rue the day. One of the things that we have lost in the economy is a lot of strategic capacity, and part of the reason for that is that we have slavishly got rid of processes out of the public sector in the past. I would give you a general warning about how you go about things in the future. The world has turned—