House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Nov 1992

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disabled people. However, that is not the clinching argument against the Government's view of the way forward.

If education and persuasion alone can achieve equal opportunities for disabled people, why is the Government's own record as an employer so poor? They are a huge employer and, if education and persuasion are better than statutory requirements, why have they not yet either educated or persuaded themselves to employ more disabled people? How persuasive is the advocate who has still to persuade himself of the worth of his own advocacy?

I want to set out briefly some of the most recent information available about the Government's approach as an employer to the quota of 3 per cent. In a parliamentary reply on 14 July 1992, the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, said in column 659 of Hansard that in June 1989 the number of registered disabled staff in his Department was 156--1.2 per cent.--and that in June 1990 the number was 153--again 1.2 per cent.

Also on 14 July, the Home Secretary told the House :

"In 1989, 143 members of staff in the Home Office were registered disabled, representing 0.3 per cent. of all staff."--[ Official Report, 14 July 1992 ; Vol. 211, c. 540-41.]

The percentage in June 1991 was approximately the same. On 15 July, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville), reported :

"In June 1989 there were 30 registered disabled people employed in the Department which represented 0.7 per cent. of the total work force. In 1990, the comparable figures were 29 and 0.6 per cent."--[ Official Report, 15 July 1992 ; Vol. 211, c. 748-49.]

With such figures to explain, Ministers are being told not only by disabled people, but by employers, that it is not what they say that impresses those they lecture about education and persuasion, but what they do.

Lady Olga Maitland : Could you possibly explain--

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I remind the hon. Lady not to use the word "you" in that way.

Lady Olga Maitland : Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly explain that, when disabled people are employed in any sector, it is expensive to meet their needs? It is all very well to say that not enough disabled people are employed, but the reality is that not all disabled people are suitable for certain types of work. It is necessary to provide facilities to help them to work. For example, they may need computers tailored to their needs. It is expensive, and it is a great problem.

Mr. Morris : I speak with some experience of administering help for disabled people. The hon. Lady is right to say that we must never simplify the problems. For example, there are often difficulties of physical access for disabled people to places of employment. Under the last Labour Government, capital grants were made available for the first time, in recognition of that difficulty, among other special measures. However, the inescapable fact is that the abilities of disabled people are massively under-used. For their part, the Government say that 3 per cent. of the work force are registrable, but nothing like 3 per cent. of the work force are registered disabled people. That is why disabled people feel that the way in which they are treated is a major scandal. They passionately want to work and, as I said, to demonstrate that they have abilities as well as disabilities.

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Official statistics also show that, even when disabled people are in work, they are more likely to be lower paid and, despite their qualifications, in lower-skilled occupations than the general population.

Mr. Hawkins : The right hon. Member's work for the disabled and in championing their opportunities for work is widely respected on both sides of the House and throughout the country. Does he accept that great strides have been made in recent years, especially by voluntary organisations--I know that he is connected with many of them? While he is on the subject, I pay tribute to Blackpool and Fylde Access for the Disabled, in which, as the right hon. Gentleman may know, the work is organised by Clarissa Clarke, who is well known throughout the country.

The work of voluntary organisations, which have made the same case that the right hon. Gentleman has been advancing, is enormously important, and I hope that he will join me to pay tribute to their work.

Mr. Morris : I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. I most warmly endorse what he said about the superb work that is done in the voluntary sector. Many years ago in the House, it was argued that, as state provision expanded, the voluntary sector would wither away. That was total nonsense. As state provision increased, so did voluntary effort. If we are to make disabled people fully a part of society, instead of being apart from society, there is enormous work to be done in both the statutory and voluntary sectors. The voluntary organisation to which the hon. Member referred is one of high reputation in the north-west. I am delighted to know of his connection with its work.

To resume, I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree that, when disabled people are in work, they are more likely to be in lower-paid and--despite their qualifications--in lower-skilled occupations compared with the general population. The rights of disabled people in and seeking employment are further undermined by an education and training system that frequently operates in an openly segregationist and discriminatory way. As I have shown in many representations to Ministers on behalf of the Rathbone Society, in whose admirable work my good and hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) also takes a close interest, most training and enterprise councils fail to meet the concerns of disabled people in their areas. A report about that, soon to be published by the Spastics Society, will further document the failure of TECs in their dealings with disabled people.

The right to work is dismissed as a slogan by disabled people who are denied basic civil rights which the non-disabled can take for granted. Their response to the Government's talk of "citizens charters" is to insist on becoming full and equal members of society. They want this House to provide a proper framework of legal rights to end discrimination against them. They point to the German levy system as a simple but very effective method of making employers meet their responsibilities. Employers in Germany have to meet a financial levy if less than 6 per cent. of their work force are disabled people. Large numbers of German employers meet the quota, but the levy produces an annual income of about £100 million, which is channelled directly to employment programmes for people with disabilities.

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Nor are Britain's disabled people alone in insisting on a proper framework of legal rights to end the unjustified discrimination that they now have to endure. In a highly distinguished speech in another place on 4 November, Lord Renton, formerly Sir David Renton and the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon, appealed to the Government to find time in this House for the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill, which all organisations of and for disabled people want to see speedily enacted. He said :

"It is extraordinary and not very creditable that there has been such opposition, or nonfeasance"

in the past. He went on to say that when the Bill returned to this House the Government should

"at least provide time for its discussion Better still", Ministers

"could take on the Bill themselves and make it a Government Bill."-- [ Official Report, House of Lords, 4 November 1992, c. 1526.] Much to their honour, other Conservative peers supported the Bill, just as many Conservative Members have also given it strong backing and continue to do so.

Civil rights legislation for disabled people is not just an idea whose time has come. It is an idea whose time came 10 years ago, when the committee which, as the then Minister, I appointed to look into restrictions against disabled people in 1979, reported in 1982 in favour of legislative action. Since then, legislation has been enacted in the United States, Australia and Canada, among other countries. We could have led the world, but instead we trail far behind.

It was left to President Bush, when signing the Americans With Disabilities Act 1990, to say from the White House lawn : "I want to appeal today to our friends in the business community. You have in your hands the key to the success of this Act, for you can unlock a splendid resource of untapped human potential that, when free, will enrich us all. Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down."

I referred earlier to the Spastics Society's poster about two job applicants, one disabled and the other able-bodied. Another of its posters is even more eloquent in its message to parliamentarians in all parts of this House. The poster shows two infants and the caption says :

"One has cerebral palsy, the other has full human rights." The picture of the two infants symbolises the rank injustices that millions of our disabled fellow citizens have to live with day in and day out. I ask not only the Government but the House not to forget them in this debate.

10.47 am

Mr. David Willetts (Havant) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell) on raising this issue today and on his contribution to the debate on the problem known as, "Why work?" Whatever his frustrations in getting his message on workfare across, several measures that have been introduced to try to deal with the "Why work?" problem in the past decade can be traced back to the battles that my hon. Friend has fought. I shall mention three. First, the benefits system now, more than ever before, ensures that, whatever their family circumstances, people can be better off in work than out of it. Family credit, which was introduced five years ago, is aligned with the

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structure of family premiums for income support, and ensures that one will always be better off in work, however low paid the job. The only remaining wrinkle in what would otherwise be a complete benefit system, ensuring that people are always better off in work, is the provision for mortgage payments. There has been a welcome extention of home ownership, but, unfortunately, we are at the bottom of a recession. People have told me at my surgery in Havant that they will be worse off taking a job because, although they will receive family credit and housing benefit, while they are on income support their mortgage is paid. With that one exception, which is admittedly increasingly important, the benefits system ensures that people are better off in work.

Secondly, the Government have tightened up on what used to be called the "available for work" provision. In the past one was entitled to receive unemployment benefit if one was genuinely available for work, but that requirement has now been changed to one of "actively seeking work". I am sure that all my hon. Friends welcome that crucial improvement in the benefit system.

The third change was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security during his uprating statement last week. Those people who are not actively seeking work will no longer be penalised with a 40 per cent. reduction in their benefit ; they will now be in danger of losing all of their benefit. That is another welcome measure designed to deal with the absurd and anti-social behaviour of new age travellers and other groups.

Mr. Michael Trend (Windsor and Maidenhead) : Does my hon. Friend share my welcome for the new training for work programme, which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment following the autumn statement?

Mr. Willetts : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has added a fourth item to my list. That list adds up to a series of significant initiatives aimed at encouraging people into work to ensure that we do not reward people who remain unemployed for a long time.

Mr. Tony Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman has referred to those who are denied benefit because they are deemed not to be actively seeking work. Does he understand that in many areas there is no work for people to seek actively? The idea of penalising people because they cannot find work is morally dubious.

The hon. Gentleman also spoke about rewarding people for long-term unemployment. Surely he appreciates that, even under this munificent Conservative Government, under whom income support and other benefit rates are poor, the reward for not working is poverty.

Mr. Willetts : The test of actively seeking work does not depend on the availability of numerous jobs in an immediate area. If someone sends off many job applications and, when offered, accepts a place on a training scheme, even if they live in an area which, sadly, is suffering from a high rate of unemployment, any sensible adjudication officer will accept that that person is seeking work and will not penalise him.

The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) also referred to the current rates of benefit. One of the reasons that the benefit for low-income working families--family

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credit--was improved was precisely so that the Government could create a gap between income received in work and that received out of work. They have not done that by reducing the available benefits to those out of work, but by boosting the incomes of those who are in low-paid jobs. I stress the importance of improving the assistance available for people in such low-paid jobs, which creates an incentive for them to work. It is not true that benefits for the long-term unemployed have been cut in real terms.

I must express some doubts, perhaps the fashionable term is scepticism, about the new proposals on workfare from my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North, which go beyond the specific initiatives launched by the Government in the past few years. I am afraid that my doubts are wide ranging. The first relates to a matter of principle. As my hon. Friend made clear, his scheme essentially means that the state acts as the employer of last resort. In effect, a large part of the labour market would be nationalised, which represents a significant extension of the Government's role in that market. As a believer in free markets, I could not support such an extension.

I know that we are always told that if there are idle hands on the one side and unmet needs on the other, surely it is right for the state to step in to bring the two together.

Mr. Ralph Howell : I am sorry that my hon. Friend does not agree with the idea of the state being the employer of last resort, but I am grateful to him for his pleasant references to what I have tried to achieve in the past.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend has not taken on board the fact that the state is the provider of last resort and, therefore, it is the waster of last resort because it insists on providing billions of pounds while getting nothing in return. I know that my hon. Friend is a free marketeer, who really believes in the free economy, so surely he sees the good sense of getting some value for the £8 billion that we spend. Why should we not get something done in return to improve society? People could work to clean up our cities and our countryside ; they could plant more trees to help the environment. It seems to me that my hon. Friend insists on being the waster of last resort.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I must point out that interventions seem to be getting a trace longer each time and that they are now too long.

Mr. Willetts : I was, of course, shocked to be described as a waster of last resort by my hon. Friend. I have not previously attempted to adopt such a role and I am not pleased to have it attributed to me today.

The problem is rather more complicated than my hon. Friend imagines. Of course, in the short term, my hon. Friend may be tempted by the idea of putting someone to work straightaway on planting trees, because that is better than having him unemployed. However, let us imagine that a software programmer is made redundant when his firm folds. If he lost that job on a Friday and, on the Monday, he is set planting trees, that would not be an efficient use of his time or his skills.

My hon. Friend should recall that one of the ideas of Beveridge--the early Beveridge of great insight, who advocated and introduced labour exchanges-- was that it was inefficient if an unemployed person accepted the first job that he could find. It might be better for that person to spend several weeks, indeed up to several months, on labour search to find the job that matches his skills.

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Mr. Terry Dicks (Hayes and Harlington) : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Willetts : I will, but I hope that my hon. Friend will bear in mind the stricture that we received from Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Dicks : My hon. Friend has highlighted the difference between his view and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell). The workfare programme would offer a temporary post to someone while he was seeking a permanent job. My hon. Friend is confusing the two types of employment.

Mr. Willetts : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, which I shall address later.

I have attempted to set out the reasons for my concern about the ambitious workfare scheme that my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North has advocated. My first objection is one of principle. Of course it is frustrating when one sees idle hands when there is unmet need, but it is not the job of the state to make those idle hands meet those unmet needs ; it is the job of a properly operating labour market. It is not an enormous command economy directing people into jobs that politicians decide are useful. That is not how a free economy works.

My second objection is a practical one of cost. It is difficult to see how any such scheme would be less expensive than our current system. I do not believe that there would be any savings on the administration burden of the benefit system. It is already clear from the debate that people who received £100 a week contribution for work that they might do under the workfare scheme would still remain entitled to income support and housing benefit to top up their family income. All the intricacies of the current benefit system would still be with us.

My next anxiety, which ties in with the point made about short-term versus long-term, arises from the unhappy experience that we have had with what is, in effect, a version of workfare for 16 to 18-year-olds. I supported that measure in principle because it seemed to make sense and, after all, it matched a proposal in the Beveridge report of 1942. But in practice it has not been possible for the training agency and TECs to deliver training schemes rapidly and effectively--

Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for me to request that the Secretary of State for Transport be instructed to come to the House this morning to answer questions about the 5,000 redundancies announced by British Rail and the extremely serious difficulties that rail investment faces as a consequence of the autumn statement? It is appalling that such a state of affairs should exist in an industry for which there is ministerial responsibility, yet a responsible Minister is not present to answer for it.

As British Rail has directly linked its announcement of 5,000 redundancies with the inadequacy of last week's settlement, it is essential that the Secretary of State comes to the House before those shocking redundancies have time to take effect.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Whether Ministers come to the House is not a matter for the Chair, but I can inform hon. Members that Madam Speaker has not received any application from the Government for a statement to be made on that or any other matter.

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Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) : Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate, of course, that it is not a matter for you directly to get involved in the movement of Ministers. The difficulty is that the 5,000 job losses have safety implications for many people using British Rail, and the redundancies are being implemented very quickly. The House should receive a statement from the responsible Minister because the Government's plan to privatise British Rail is the cause of the 5 ,000 job losses.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. I can only repeat what I said, which is that it is not a matter for the Chair. Representatives of the Government are present, and I can say no more than that.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Further to the point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will know that in recent years, attempts have been made to get Ministers to come to the House to explain various matters. Sometimes the Chair has been able to convey a message to the Government to the effect that while a Minister might not be available immediately, arrangements should be made for a statement to be made before the end of the day's sitting. You rightly point out, Madam Deputy Speaker, that representatives of the Government are on the Front Bench. Unfortunately, there is not among them a Minister who is directly involved in the issue. Would it be possible for you to convey to Madam Speaker the fact that we are raising these points of order in which we are urging that a Minister should make a statement, so that a Minister is here before 2.30 pm to make a statement before the Adjournment debate comes on?

The weekend lies before us. It is not as though we can press for a Minister to appear for questioning tomorrow, although that might not be a bad idea. I urge on you to take that step, Madam Deputy Speaker, because in the present climate of mass unemployment, with a Government who are causing more wreckage than Hitler caused in the 1939-45 war, at some point, Madam Speaker, Front Benchers or Back Benchers, must say, "Enough is enough". Accordingly, I appeal to you to inform Madam Speaker that we would like her to convey to the Ministers concerned our demand that one of them should be here before 2.30.

Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) : Further to the point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understood you to say that Madam Speaker had received no intimation from the Secretary of State for Transport that he intended to make a statement today about the job losses. Has Madam Speaker received a message about a statement being made next week by the Secretary of State for Scotland concerning the announced 3,500 job losses by the Royal Bank of Scotland?

Are you aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that scale of job losses in Scotland is equal to job losses caused by, for example, the closure of a large shipyard or a steel mill? It is a matter of the gravest importance to us in Scotland. I am wondering whether Madam Speaker has been told that we may expect a statement on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Madam Deputy Speaker : I understand that the answer is no.

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Mr. Hugh Bayley (York) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I, through you, ask for a message to be sent to Ministers to let them know how seriously the announced job losses are taken in my constituency, which could be absolutely devastated by job cuts of that magnitude? Yesterday when I told Roger Freeman-- [Interruption.] --who was in York, that there could be hundreds of job losses--

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. In his concern, the hon. Member has forgotten the custom that we do not refer to a Member of the House by name.

Mr. Bayley : I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I am concerned because while the Government yesterday morning described rail job losses on that scale as bunkum, the announcement of those redundancies was made in the evening. It is surprising that a Minister has not explained why such a change occurred in the course of just six hours.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said, there should be time today to get a message to the relevant Minister so that he may have an opportunity to answer to the House for the appalling job losses that have been announced and the consequences for the travelling public.

Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) : I rise, rather extraordinarily, on a genuine point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, to seek your guidance. Under the rules of the House, a Standing Order No. 20 motion cannot be moved on a Friday. So we are in a predicament in that my hon. Friends and I would like to have had the opportunity, had this been a normal day, to raise not just the fact of the loss, or possible loss, of 5,000 jobs on the railways, but another report to the effect that Ministers have been thrown into panic by the requirement that people working in the public sector who move into privatised jobs will carry with them the rights, privileges and conditions that they had while in the public sector. That suggests that the two situations are interrelated and that an attempt is being made to get rid of 5,000 workers--

Madam Deputy Speaker : Order. The right hon. Gentleman is now beginning to debate merits, whereas I can deal only with points of order.

Mr. Williams : I come directly to my point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, having given you some background on the two aspects, which appear to be interrelated. We are in the predicament that we cannot raise a Standing Order No. 20 motion until Monday. May I ask you at least to facilitate our attempts to get a statement from the Minister by saying that, should a Minister not come forward at some stage today with a statement, on Monday you, or the then occupant of the Chair, would be inclined to give sympathetic consideration to a Standing Order No. 20 motion moved from the Opposition Benches?

Madam Deputy Speaker : I cannot anticipate what Madam Speaker's views might be on Monday.

Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it be possible for the Secretary of State for Transport to come to the House now and speak in this debate and, in the process of doing that, explain the bunkum of his policies that have led to the redundancies?

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Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : On a slightly different point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is clearly important that we should debate transport at the earliest possible date. The person to facilitate that is not the Secretary of State for Transport but the Leader of the House, who almost certainly is now in his office in the Palace of Westminster.

In my constituency we are now going ahead with the Leeds-Bradford electrification scheme, and the announced job losses might throw that whole venture into jeopardy. Accordingly, you may have been informed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Leader of the House would be prepared to announce changes in the business for next week so that we may incorporate a debate on the catastrophe that is facing British Rail. Mr. Trend rose --

Madam Deputy Speaker : Is the hon. Member raising a point of order?

Mr. Trend : Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, it refers to points of order made earlier about the events of last night. As a new Member, I have been sitting here brooding on the matter since those points were raised and I seek your further guidance. Was it a matter of parliamentary privilege, in the sense that one hon. Member wished to present a petition and another wished to move the Adjournment debate, and both were prevented from doing so through no fault of their own? Is it right, under parliamentary procedure, that they should have been prevented from proceeding as they wished?

Madam Deputy Speaker : I understand that Madam Speaker dealt with that matter last night and I have nothing to add to what she said on that occasion.

Mr. Keith Hill (Streatham) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We should be grateful if you would convey our urgent request to Madam Speaker for a statement by the Minister on the railway redundancies on three grounds. First, those redundancies--5,000 over a period of four months--are on a scale comparable, although by no means similar, to the coal fields redundancies on which statements were rightly made to the House. Secondly, British Rail has directly ascribed the redundancies to the tight settlement in the Chancellor's autumn statement. There is therefore a direct ministerial responsibility for those redundancies. Thirdly, as we have already heard, the crisis now facing British Rail has safety implications. It has been the traditional and historic right of the House to ask Ministers to explain the detail of British Rail policy on signalling and other matters. On all those grounds, there is an urgent and pressing case for a statement by the Minister.

Madam Deputy Speaker : Mr. Dicks.

Mr. Dicks : Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it not be possible, even at this late stage, for the Opposition, who have their own supply day on Monday to change the nature of their business to discuss that point? I do not sit in the Whips' Office but if there are behind-the-scenes discussions, I should not be surprised if my hon. Friends said that they would be prepared to listen. It is no good the Opposition ranting and raving about safety today when they have their own supply day on Monday.

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Madam Deputy Speaker : I have now heard quite sufficient to offer a comment to the House. Of course, I shall see that Madam Speaker is acquainted with the strength of feelings that has been evinced in the various points of order. Although she cannot command Ministers, I have no doubt that Ministers sitting on the Front Bench will make it their business to convey those feelings to those concerned. We must now continue our debate.

Mr. Willetts : Moreover, when one looks at the practical difficulties in implementing a workfare scheme it is clear that lessons can be learned from the experience of youth training schemes for 16 to 18-year- olds. I entirely supported that attempt and had no difficulties in principle in expecting that 16 to 18-year-olds should be in education, training or paid employment. However, in the past few years we have encountered serious practical difficulties in delivering a job guarantee. That is not surprising because, if a 17-year-old loses his or her job on a Friday evening, it is difficult for them to turn up on a Monday morning and suddenly be put straight onto a training scheme.

Training schemes operate on the basis of planning ahead. Employers who take on trainees want to know in advance who they will get and in what circumstances. They need to be confident that the trainee will stay for a year or two. Such long-term training is different from a social security system, which rightly tries to pick up short-term needs of people who suddenly find themselves without a weekly income.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North was a trifle casual when he said that if someone loses their job on Friday, on Monday they can immediately turn up and be put to planting trees. That is not how any employer can operate in the real world.

Mr. Ralph Howell : May I clarify that point? There is a great difference between fitting somebody into a training scheme and adding him to a work force--tree planting or whatever it might be. It is a pity that so many difficulties are being put in the way.

Mr. Willetts : I am sorry if my hon. Friend thinks that I am simply putting difficulties in his way. I am not trying to do so. I am trying to deal with practical issues, which would have to be dealt with before a scheme along those lines could become a viable proposition.

The American experience has already been described in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins). Many of us are wary of American experiences, as they can be misleading. Many states operate schemes which they call workfare because federal grants are available for such schemes. If they called their programmes "training schemes" or "assistance for single parents on aid for families with dependent children benefit", they would not receive federal support. So if the federal Government become keen on workfare, there is an enormous incentive on the state to dress up any old training scheme as workfare.

In practice, many of the schemes that now operate in America under the name workfare would, in this country, be classic operations carried out in the past by the Manpower Services Commission and now carried out by the Employment Service and training and enterprise councils. It is wrong to regard America as a country that has implemented workfare along the lines now advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North.

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Mr. Hawkins : My hon. Friend takes up a point that I made in an earlier intervention. Although I accept his point about federal grants, which is an inevitable concomitant of grants being made available in any country, I strongly urge him to bear in mind the fact that many distinguished congressmen in the United States have called for genuine workfare. Those include a good friend of mine, Republican Congressman Bill Emerson from Missouri, whom I have had the opportunity to visit. I endorse those in the United States who call for genuine workfare and I believe that the states to which I referred earlier have implemented successfully precisely the kind of genuine workfare that my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North believes in, and in which I also believe.

Mr. Willetts : I defer to my hon. Friend's wide experience of the American debate.

May I conclude with some constructive suggestions? I do not wish to leave any hint of a suspicion in the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North, that I am here to carp or be negative. One possible way forward is for TECs to review how they are currently dealing with their work for the unemployed. I am worried about how TECs are now operating.

Although it is imaginative to bring together public funding, people from the private sector and people with business experience who know about training and the business of creating jobs, many of them seem to be tempted by the prospect of elaborate and ambitious training schemes that will produce computer experts and people for the high-tech industries. They are tempted in particular to cream off from the unemployed those people who may already have considerable skills and who, with a modest amount of extra training, will be able to contribute most obviously to the local economy. I do not blame them for that. I can see the commercial incentives for a group of local employers to operate in that way.

The trouble is that if TECs operate like that they are mimicking what a commercial training agency would do--taking on the best risks, best prospects and the people with the greatest chance of commanding a job in the future.

Surely public sector training schemes and publicly financed training organisations should aim to help the most difficult cases--people who may have been let down by the educational system or who may have modest skills. They should not help only those people who will immediately go into high- paid jobs at the sharp end of local industry but people who, if they can establish a track record of turning up for work at 9 am, can be given the confidence to seek work actively. They may then be able to hold down a job- -admittedly a less well-paid job, but nevertheless a well-paid and useful job in the community.

My concern is that TECs are not paying attention to the hard cases. Instead, they are creaming off the exotica, the exciting cases. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to offer an assurance that TECs will not ignore their responsibilities for the long-term unemployed, especially those who, sadly, left the education system with modest qualifications.

I hope that we can establish even more clearly than in the past that if someone employed within the Employment service or in a benefit office doubts that someone who is signing on for benefit is actively seeking work, he or she should be able to offer such a person a place in a training scheme. Obviously, employment training is very relevant

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