House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Jun 1995

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I know that my hon. Friend the Minister envisages that, as a result of the changes that she has introduced, including the change from a 21-hour to a 16-hour rule, no fewer people will have the opportunity for study while they are unemployed than at present. We should, however, be trying to bring to many more people that kind of opportunity. It is getting easier for us to do so, if we want to, because of the development of modular courses and because of the new technologies, such as cable, that people are able to access to learn. We can now break out of some of the old rigidities in our approach and find new ways in which to make education and training a positive outcome, in the jargon, in terms of the Department's policies. It is now quite safe to ignore the whole question of hours of study and to ignore the distinction, which is becoming increasingly blurred, between full-time and part-time study. We need the jobseeker's agreement to take sensible account of the studies and the upgrading of skills on which unemployed people embark and we need, of course, the colleges, the further and higher education institutions, to be flexible in helping people to continue to study once they are back in work.

The hon. Member for Makerfield spoke about the "permitted period" when considering career prospects and skills. It seems to me that the existing 13-week permitted period, which the Government intend to carry forward in the new system, in which a jobseeker is allowed, without forfeit, to look for a job that matches his skills and experience, is too short. It seems to me prodigal and destructive that, after only 13 weeks, we should set aside the accumulated skills and experience that someone has built up over, perhaps, quite a long working life.

I now turn to some of the exemptions that occur under the proposed new clause and, in particular, under proposed subsection (2)(b). I welcome the Government's recognition that in certain circumstances, the physical or mental condition of a jobseeker ought to entitle that person to some exemption from the full rigours of the requirement to be available for work.

We need clarification and one of our problems is that we do not have the regulations under the Bill before us, so it is difficult to judge what the policy may mean in precise terms. We understand that the Government expect 190,000 people to appeal against a decision to refuse them incapacity benefit. It might take about 26 weeks for appeals to be heard, during which time they have an option to sign on, but being to some extent disabled they might find it difficult to fulfil the requirements to be available for and actively seeking work, or to claim income support, but only at 80 per cent.

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The Minister in another place, Lord Mackay, said that, rather than changing the rules, one must act with sensitivity in each case, which is an attractive idea but would be a break with precedent, judging by the history of what has occurred with invalidity benefit and people appealing against refusal. They have not always found officials in jobcentres as sensitive as my noble Friend would wish. If I can catch the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister for a moment, I would be grateful if she could tell us clearly in her reply whether an appeal against refusal of incapacity benefit would prejudice a claim for jobseeker's allowance.

New clause 6 also touches on the delicate question of behaviour and appearance. While I recognise the Government's valid concern that some people who claim

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the benefit and pretend to be looking for work will present themselves so offensively that no right-minded employer would take them on, we may be exaggerating the danger and giving Employment Service officials a licence for officiousness. So I have a third request of my hon. Friend the Minister.

Will she undertake that officials will not deprive any jobseeker of benefit because they find their behaviour objectionable on the grounds of religious practice or sexuality, or on grounds of appearance--for example, the length of their hair? May I have an assurance from my hon. Friend that in no circumstances will it be tolerable for officials to deprive people of benefit on such subjective and prejudiced grounds? I am sure that that is the Government's intention, but it would be helpful to have it on the record.

The Bill's provisions allow much scope for officiousness and for a martinetish or even bullying approach on the part of officials. The huge majority would not conduct themselves in such a way, but the requirements on attendance, for example, lend themselves to that danger.

The new clause also provides for penalties. The legislation already involves penalties on a much broader scale. People who are unemployed for a year will find that they lose between 20 per cent. and 70 per cent. of the benefit that they would have had under the old system. As has been said, people will lose contributory benefit after six months instead of 12 and will find themselves in the poverty trap that much earlier. There is some anxiety about the adult dependant's allowance disappearing from contributory benefit and about the lower rate of benefit for the under-25s being transferred from income support to contributory benefit.

Penalties already exist in a certain sense, but there will be penalties in another. They may be draconian and could be administered somewhat arbitrarily. If, for example, a single person under 25 is penalised and finds herself on only 60 per cent. of the jobseeker's allowance, it will amount to only £22.10 a week, which is awfully little to live on. If an official thinks that a single person--or a childless couple--is insufficiently energetic in the search for work, he may even refuse a hardship payment. Even someone who has contributed to national insurance might be without income on the mere doubt of an employment officer. That does not seem to be the highest state of the welfare state.

I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will think carefully about the application of penalties to people in the 50-plus and certainly the 55-plus age group. At the moment, that age group is expected to be active in the search for work, but for all too many people in the group the jobs are not there and it would be cruel to require such people to go on that dismal merry-go-round.

I am less optimistic than I might be about how the system will work in practice because of the annual performance agreement with the Employment Service and the target set for officials to challenge a certain proportion of claims to benefit.

As my hon. Friend the Minister knows well, I dislike the substance of the Bill. The little that it will do to promote employment or to save money does not redeem it. It sets aside the national insurance contract-- [Interruption.] It is nice of the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for

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Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates), to sit beside me and keep me company, but I have a little more to say and must detain the House for a few more minutes. I hope that he will not mind too much. I appreciate the fact that other hon. Members want to speak and I know that that is his concern.

It is even more astonishing that contributory benefits should be reduced in a year when contributions have risen. The Government have altered the terms of that contract and have introduced an agreement of a different kind in the Bill--the jobseeker's agreement. I have never heard, however, of an agreement or a contract that falls to be arbitrated by one of the parties to it and under which one party may impose penalties. In such circumstances, to talk of a jobseeker's agreement is an abuse of language in an abuse of power.

If the substance of the Bill is objectionable, so too is the manner of the enactment. We are indebted to the admirable House of Lords Select Committee --the Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee--and to members of that unreformed and unelected House for amendments Nos. 36 and 39, which deal with the regulation-making powers. Members of the House of Lords have proved more vigilant in the defence of the liberties of the people than the people's elected House of Commons, and it is by no means the first time.

The power of the Select Committee's arguments in its reports was such that the Government bowed to their Lordships' insistence that clause 6 be re- committed. I appreciate and welcome the fact that the Government agreed to rewrite it, to fill out the definitions and to make regulations under it subject to the affirmative procedure. That is as well, because clause 6 still provides large powers to make regulations to control the practical implications of the requirements to be available for work and actively to seek it.

As the Minister in another place, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, acknowledged, the Bill is a skeleton Bill. Paragraph 16 of the memorandum from the Departments of Employment and Social Security to the House of Lords Select Committee stated:

"The Bill has 87 subsections and 17 paragraphs of Schedule 1 which contain powers to create delegated legislation."

The Bill would effectively give the Government carte blanche to determine policy as they will.

Is it right for Parliament to delegate law-making powers so extensively? Under most sections of the Bill, regulations will still be approved under the negative resolution procedure, even after these amendments. In effect, that means on the nod. Whatever the Government want will be approved by Parliament automatically, unless it is one of the few pieces of secondary legislation that is prayed against. This is not trivial legislation, nor should our responsibility in the House be taken lightly. Clause 6, which deals with the requirement to be available for work and seek work actively, is but one important section of the Bill. Clause 4 creates the power to set the amount of the jobseeker's allowance. The Select Committee suggested that the decision on that should be by affirmative resolution, but the amendment was not made. The Government's memorandum argues that that is in accordance with precedent under social security legislation, but that does not seem to be a convincing case for the negative resolution procedure. The affirmative resolution procedure takes more of our time and it runs against the spirit of the times to allow that. The Jopling reforms--more timetabling of debates

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and fewer late sittings--are seductive and are supposed to present us as a more modern and businesslike assembly, but our job is to scrutinise the Executive's policies and hold them to account. The regulation-making powers under clause 16 might also have been amended here so that they would be under the affirmative procedure. This clause creates the most draconian powers for adjudication officers to impose benefit sanctions on those whom they regard as recalcitrant, who may have broken benefit rules or left employment voluntarily. The penalties can be extremely severe: officials have the power to impose disqualification from the jobseeker's allowance for up to 26 weeks. The very language of the memorandum, describing such action as "misdeeds", should alert us to the need to keep control of the use of such powers. The memorandum acknowledges that the use of regulations to prescribe periods of sanction is an innovation, which is all the more reason for Parliament to act cautiously in conferring such powers.

What we have, however, is a proposal not only that the Government should have an untrammelled power to promulgate regulations, but that those regulations should give huge discretion to employment and adjudication officers. If such powers are to be granted by Parliament at all, they should be granted only by affirmative resolution and be renewable rather than indefinite.

Ms Eagle: I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman's speech and agree with almost all of it. Does he agree that local members of the Employment Service want nothing to do with those arbitrary powers? I have the impression that they, too, feel uncomfortable with them and realise that the Bill places them in a difficult position. They want to help people in a positive way to get back to work rather than to police them, which is what those clauses suggest they should do.

Mr. Howarth: I am sure that the hon. Lady is right. Decent officials will approach those powers with diffidence and wish to use their powers as constructively and benignly as they can. But I fear that, if officials are invested with ill-defined and arbitrary powers, including powers to impose severe sanctions, some may slide, almost subconsciously, into using those powers to excess. As a law-making body, it is our responsibility adequately to define the powers which servants of the state are entitled to use.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment recently spoke forcefully of

"the need for the British people to take the decisions which affect their daily lives in the Parliament which they elect". He was referring, of course, to our claims of parliamentary sovereignty against the predatory institutions of the European Union. In the same speech he suggested that the Conservative party had a unique capacity to respond to that need. If a Conservative Government introduce legislation on this model and we, as Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, are so effete as to hand over law -making powers wholesale to the Executive, we abuse the institution that we profess to cherish.

There has been a vast increase in secondary legislation, particularly in the past 10 years. In the 15 years from 1970-85, an average of 2,000 statutory instruments were made each year. Since 1985, the number has risen steadily from 2,080 in that year to 3,334 in 1994.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman must be hard

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of hearing this afternoon. We are not here to review the number of statutory instruments that have been made. I assure him that I know better than anybody how many there have been. We are dealing with amendment No. 6 and I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would return to it.

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Mr. Howarth: Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I understand that you speak with feeling.

Mr. Ian McCartney: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek clarification. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) is speaking to one of our amendments, which deals precisely with regulation and how the House should deal with it. Amendments Nos. 36(a) and 39(a) are grouped on the Order Paper with new clause 6. I hope that that is helpful.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for telling me what the amendments are about. I hope that he will do me the courtesy of recognising that I read the amendments before coming to the Chamber. I repeat my complaint: we are not here to review the total number of statutory instruments in this Parliament. I hope that that line of argument will be desisted from.

Mr. Howarth: Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am about to move on. My hon. Friend the Whip will be pleased to know that I am about to draw my observations to a close. Amendments Nos. 36 and 39 are in this group and deal specifically with secondary legislation and the use of the affirmative or negative resolution procedure.

All secondary legislation is unamendable, and the vast majority is not even considered by the House. No wonder my right hon. Friends are against constitutional change, when our present constitution and the directions in which political energies run enable them to legislate whatever they will. We have seen a rolling back not of the frontiers of the state but of parliamentary accountability. Against that background, I tabled the Human Rights Bill, which was passed in another place. It would provide some protection for those who may be threatened by this Bill, particularly through article 4(2). However, that debate is for another day.

The Bill creates large and potentially dangerous new powers for the state, bearing particularly on those who are most defenceless: the unemployed. It behoves us as Members of Parliament to champion those who most need champions. We do it in our surgeries and we should do it here.

I find both the substance and the manner of this legislation profoundly unacceptable. Today's proceedings do not provide another opportunity to vote against the principles of the Bill but, while we secure limited improvements in the Lords amendments--we should thank the other place for them--we should reflect deeply on the progressive abdication by the House of Commons of our constitutional role of holding the Executive to account.

Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney): Last time I followed the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth), I had to admit that it was a pleasure and a privilege. It is getting a bit boring because this is the second time I have followed him and again I have to say that I agree with much of what he

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said. He is a lone voice--I wish that he were a chorus--on the Conservative Back Benches in trying to persuade Ministers to reconsider their legislation.

Interestingly, in the Minister's interventions, both in the hon. Gentleman's speech and in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), her defence was that the Bill did nothing new but was simply enforcing existing practices and regulations. That defence was made by the noble Lord Mackay in another place and subsequently led to this new clause. Of the original clause 6, he said:

"Our intention was merely to provide for a more direct route through regulations rather than through the indirect route of treating or deeming people available or not available which legislation has until now employed."--[ Official Report, House of Lords , 11 May 1995; Vol. 564, c. 200.]

The concern of my constituents and of many Opposition Members is that that direct route will lead to a loss of benefit, and that the purpose of the Bill is to deprive more people of their benefits. The direct route means a more rigorous application of the principles enshrined in previous legislation and regulations, the application of which has bedevilled the House, not only in this day and age, but in previous ages.

The Minister was right in one fundamental respect: there is nothing new in what is proposed. The concept of the terms "available for employment" and "actively seeking employment" is not new to our legislation. It has a long and rather inglorious legislative pedigree. It started in 1921. I read with fascination, in preparing for the debate, the arguments of the 1920s--from 1921 to 1930. Arguments were made during that time which were identical to those that have worried and created queasiness in the other place. That is why the Lords made the Government change new clause 6. They were worried about the way in which those words would be interpreted, applied and, more importantly, enforced by officials on the ground. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon argued that point very effectively.

I come from and represent a group of communities with long-standing, vivid and bitter memories of the early application of the active availability for employment and seeking work qualification for benefit. A generation of people in my constituency can remember being called before courts of referees, insurance officers and local employment committees to prove in detail the efforts that they had made to obtain work at a time when 65 per cent. of the people in those communities were out of work.

I say to the Minister, the reason why we treat the Bill with suspicion--I am not convinced by what she and other Ministers have said that the Bill and the clause are not designed to enforce much more rigorously the application of the actively seeking work regulations and so on--is that we already have a long history and memory of the experiences of a whole generation, and we are witnessing in 1995 an eery re-application of those arguments and principles to the extent that they were applied in 1925.

I have read through the earlier legislation, the debates and arguments and the application. The chairman of the court of referees for Rhymney in 1929 said, of the application of legislation very similar to that which is before us, that its task was to go into the

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"state of the applicant's mind".

I believe that much of the jobseeker's agreement and the questionnaires are designed to try to do exactly the same thing: they seek to discover the state of the applicant's mind and his attitude towards employment and work.

Curiously, in the 1920s and 1930s the legislation led first to mass-scale coaching by the trade union movement to help people get through those questionnaires. I wonder whether in the 1990s we shall have a curious repetition of behaviour and administrative practices that we believed had long gone.

Shall we have citizens advice bureaux and individual members of trade unions advising people how to fill in those questionnaires, how to cope with the new jobseeker's agreement and how to ensure that they are not caught out in the interrogations by the new officials in applying the new regulations, or applying the old regulations in a specific way? I have a horrible feeling that in some ways we are being dragged back to the 1920s and 1930s rather than carried into the next century in terms of legislation and regulations and their application.

I have a sneaking feeling that in part the aim of the Bill and of the provisions in the clause is similar to the aim of the legislation of the 1920s. The legislation of the 1920s was not--and I do not believe that the Bill is--designed to help people into employment, to take a positive view. I believe that behind it is a cost-cutting exercise, aimed at reducing the number of those able to claim benefit. It has been accompanied by a savage cut in unemployment benefit, anyway. They have gone hand in hand.

The House may be interested to know that, curiously, the original words devised in the legislation--making it necessary to prove that one was seeking employment--were really designed to make fewer women eligible for unemployment insurance benefit. After the first world war, as a result of working in munitions factories during that war, a large number of women were entitled to unemployment insurance benefit. Because the numbers were increasing, much of the legislation in the 1920s and 1930s was designed to take away from women the right to claim unemployment insurance benefit. Moreover, it succeeded and 250,000 women lost their rights as a result of that legislation. I wonder whether there will be an eery repetition in the 1990s, at the tail end of the century, in the application of the new regulations, in the new attitude and in the new conditions of availability for work or the active seeking of employment. I wonder how the legislation will be applied to women and their rights to unemployment benefit. I wonder whether, 70 years later, we shall witness, in a new style, the attitudes and approaches that the communities that I represent still vividly remember being experienced by the generation of most of the old-age pensioners in my constituency. We therefore have every right to suspect the weasly words and the pretence that the Bill and the new clause do nothing new.

I will tell you another thing that the Bill does, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We should not bring in that type of Bill at this moment, in a labour market which, in the communities that I represent, I have never known to be so disoriented and to have so many difficulties and problems.

The concept of "actively seeking employment" and the ruling out of the idea that one should seek employment suitable to one's skills or one's experience is meaningless

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in the context of the community in my constituency, which has lost all its mining jobs, which has experienced a severe shrinking of the number of jobs in manufacturing, and where training opportunities have been thrown into disarray. Not only has there been destruction of apprenticeship schemes of the kind and character that made post-war Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney a skilled community, but people do not know what skills they need now.

There is a genuine question as to what kind of skills and training required to meet the needs of a local or a national economy at the end of the century. Yet apparently those are the tests that will be applied to decide whether a person will continue to be entitled to a jobseeker's allowance and whether he is meeting his requirements under his jobseeker's agreement. We do not want to be dragged back and we certainly do not want the enforced application of rules and regulations of that kind in a fluid and difficult labour market of the kind and character represented by Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney. As the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon argued very effectively, to those people may well be added hundreds, if not thousands, even in my local community, of people in their mid-fifties losing their invalidity benefit, not qualifying for the new incapacity benefit and being driven back into the labour market. I would like the Minister to say when she replies whether, as I assume will be the case, a person in that category, having found that he or she does not qualify under the new incapacity benefit and loses their existing invalidity benefit, in order to gain any form of benefit at all from the age of 54 up to the age of 58 will have to write out a new jobseeker's agreement. Will he or she be expected to sign on some dotted line as to what efforts he or she--often having been out of the labour market for two to three years--has made to find work so as to be able to collect some form of benefit?

We have a right to question Ministers whether it is right to introduce that specific measure, at this moment, against the background of the labour market and against the background of the demotivated younger generation that, I am sorry to say, exists in my region. The parents of those young people were made redundant when they believed that they had secure jobs, and they feel angry and disaffected about work, jobs, employment and training. Sadly, youngsters entering the labour market in Merthyr and Rhymney feel the same.

Great changes have occurred in our community. I took the trouble to check the local vacancies at the Merthyr jobcentre. There are about 457 vacancies. The mixture of jobs available is interesting. It is certainly very different from what once would have been available in a community such as mine. I suppose that those vacancies reveal the new diverse economy that Ministers are so happy to describe. Just over a quarter of the vacancies are for jobs in factories, engineering or fitting--the sort of well-known occupations in which the middle-aged generation in my community have experience and skills. The rest of the vacancies are for interesting jobs such as chefs, or in office work, service work and, of course, as security guards--a growing employment sector. I have already told hon. Members about the vacancy for a security job which paid £1.80 an hour and where applicants were told they had to "bring your own dog". If one did not have a suitable dog, would that be a justifiable reason for not accepting such employment?

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Such are the stupidities and the bizarre situations that the Bill and new clause throw up. We therefore have every reason to question whether the mechanistic approach taken by the Bill, and prescribed in some detail in the new clause--it will be prescribed in much more detail in the jobseeker's questionnaire--is the right way to provide jobs and opportunities for our people, who have, in many cases, been out of work for so long. I doubt that. I doubt the motives behind the Bill and I do not think that it offers a positive view about employment. I believe that it is born out of the nasty, mean-minded spirit which has characterised so much of the Government's legislation. For that reason, I shall certainly vote against the Lords amendment.

Ms Liz Lynne (Rochdale): It is frustrating to have to confine myself to one group of amendments, but I will do my best. The Bill is not very different from the one which left this House: even though people in the other place tried to change it, the results are minor and I do not believe that they are enough. The Bill should be scrapped, but we cannot debate that proposition now.

The Bill attacks the unemployed and its implementation is likely to be extremely costly. The Government have not provided a proper breakdown of the figures, but have merely offered a blanket figure of the costs involved. I should like to know how much it will cost to implement the jobseeker's agreement and I should be grateful if the Minister would give that answer when she replies to the debate. The group of amendments relate to how the expressions "availability for employment" and "actively seeking employment", are defined. In the original Bill those expressions were to be given

"such meaning as may be prescribed."

I know that there should be a balance between flexibility and parliamentary control, but some issues concern the disentitlement of groups of people to social security benefit. Those issues are far too important to be consigned merely by regulation.

I know that it was pressure from the Lords Delegated Powers Scrutiny Committee that persuaded the Government to change their mind on some issues and to alter clause 6 in particular. Everyone is aware of the need for flexibility in legislation. We know that it should be possible for it to adapt and that its implementation should not be subject to rigid stipulation. It is clear that the Government have departed from that precedent with clause 6. As a result, the Government's intentions have been exposed. We now know what they mean by "actively seeking employment" and "availability for employment". I do not like what they mean, but at least that meaning is now out in the open.

I should like to know how the Bill will work in practice. Many hon. Members have already said that people will be forced to take jobs for which they are not suitably qualified. Will someone who has been a labourer for a long time be forced to take a job in an office and vice versa? I am afraid that that will happen, because nothing is said about someone having the right qualifications and expertise for a job.

The changes contain some positive aspects. I am glad that the regulations governing a person's availability for employment and their active seeking of it will only be

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introduced subject to affirmative resolution. I am glad that the Government have finally relented on that matter. At least that gives the House the opportunity to challenge any changes to the regulations that the Government of the day might want to introduce.

I welcome that opportunity for proper scrutiny. That is one of the few things that I can welcome, however, because the jobseeker's agreement will cause a lot of pain and frustration to a lot of people. A number of people now in receipt of unemployment benefit will not be entitled to receive the jobseeker's allowance. I greatly fear for those people.

I hope that the Government will change their mind about the Bill, but I do not believe that is likely. At least they have moved slightly on the terms of clause 6, but they have not gone far enough.

Mr. Graham: The Bill represents one of the most pathetic plans that the Government have ever come up with. When one considers how the level of unemployment has gone up in the 16 years that they have been in power, their proposals are mind-boggling. Given that length of time, one would think that the Government would have come up with something to get folk back to work.

In my constituency I have seen an enormous growth in part-time work and short-term contracts--in some cases jobs with no contracts. The Government's proposals are therefore absolutely mind-boggling. I have no hesitation in supporting the Labour amendments to the clause, because they are sensible. If the Government had any common sense, they would follow their Prime Minister and resign from leadership of the country. I hope that a real change comes with the general election.

I have listened to many, many debates in the House; some I have enjoyed, some I did not like. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth). I was delighted to hear something from the Conservative Benches that showed a bit of compassion and feeling for the unemployed and for their rights to get back into the job market.

I genuinely agree with his sentiments about training. It is nonsense to make training compulsory. I remember a story I heard when I was an apprentice about service men who were captured during the war in Italy and Germany. They made sure that their work was gerry-built so that it would collapse. That story shows that people could not force other folk to build stuff which was meant to defeat them.

The Minister should think about what I am saying: one cannot force folk to take training. Those people will do what I did when I was schoolboy, when I sat in class and went asleep. I used to leave at 4 o'clock, glad to go home to get my tea. Is that what we asking the unemployed to face? Those folk should get the training they need, which will benefit the country. That training should not mean a lecturer speaking to a crowd of folk who do not want to be there. There is no doubt that the unemployed want training and education in order to enter the job market. They will do anything to get into it. A young man came to see me recently. He had been ill and was on invalidity benefit. He told me how people from social security were now trying to drive him into work. He said that, if he was fit,

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he would be working, but he said that he had been told he should be working first as a checker, or as an express driver on a motor cycle.

That is unbelievable. The folk working in social security do not know about the world they live in. Such are the folk who will try to implement the Government's policies in our constituencies--they live in cloud cuckoo land. They do not realise that certain jobs are not on offer in my constituency.

Mr. Jim Cunningham: Does my hon. Friend agree that, under the jobseeker's agreement, skilled engineers made redundant from some major factories might be forced into taking jobs as shelf stackers or taxi drivers?

Mr. Graham: I agree with my hon. Friend. I could go on and on, but there is no doubt that in my constituency there are thousands of folk working in jobs they are not happy with. However, they are working desperately for the funds they need to give them a life.

The Government have had 16 years, and those 16 years have been abysmal for millions of people. Young folk have seen other nations such as Germany, France and Italy all doing better. They see that our kids are at the bottom of the pit in respect of education, training and opportunities. However, the Government still want the jobseeker's allowance and the jobseeker's agreement.

Listen to what they are telling folk who have been unemployed for years and, indeed, some folk who have not been unemployed for that long. It is rubbish. They say that people must write to, telephone, and visit employers every week, contact the jobcentre so many times a week, ask family, friends and people for whom they have worked before, look at the newspapers and trade papers. Claimants are expected to name the papers and specify how often they will look at them. They must register with employment agencies and contact them every week. The Minister and the people who compiled that list must live on the moon; they certainly do not live in this world. Friends of mine who are looking for work do nearly every one of those things, but it takes money--money that the Government are not prepared to put into the hands of the unemployed--to telephone, contact folk, buy newspapers, or write letters. Have the Government made that plain to folk? Have they made such money available? Never in a million years. It is all a Treasury-driven exercise to save money. It is not to help the unemployed.

I have a challenge for the Minister. Tomorrow morning, she and I can sit down in my office with a telephone and the yellow telephone book and telephone employers. She can be a wee lassie of 18 or 19 and I will be a guy of 51. I challenge her to see how many firms will talk to us. Come on Minister--try it. We will sit down and write letters to all these folk. For fun, we will telephone my friends. The Minister may not realise that half my friends are unemployed anyway because of her Government's failure. People are expected to contact the jobcentre every week, but the jobcentres are sick and tired of telling folk that they cannot get them jobs.

Let us be honest: the Government will never do anything for the unemployed. They have been driving wages down and at the end of the day it is the taxpayers who will have to pay to keep folk living. I know a woman who works for £2 an hour in a sweet factory. Is that right? The Minister can smile all she likes--she probably enjoys

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the sweeties--but that woman does not need sweets: she needs money to buy groceries, pay the rent and provide some of the comforts that we in the House have no problem in getting.

My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) spoke earlier about a man with a dog. They tell me that all the security guards are trying to borrow the dog to keep themselves in their jobs. However, I know that people work for £2, £1.50 or £1.69 per hour. They are also forced to work hours that God never gave man the energy for. They work 12, 14, and 16 hours a day, every day. If they do not do it, they are fired. If they go back to the dole, they are told, "Ah, no. You had a job but you chucked it because you couldn't do it. On your bike." They will get no money from the dole. I say in all sincerity that I pray for a general election.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: In all sincerity, perhaps the hon. Gentleman could come back to the amendment.

Mr. Graham: I am most grateful for your direction, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In all sincerity, I believe that I have been speaking about the amendment all along. I have spoken about the unnecessary compulsory training. We need training that folk want to do and that will give them the energy and enthusiasm to get back into the job market. I agree with the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon. We also want folk to have decent pay that will allow them to go the shops. We all enjoy walking down to the shops buying things and ensuring that we have a good quality of life. That is what life is about. Unfortunately, the Government have denied that to millions of people by their crazy economic policy.

I have kept very well to the amendment but I will finish on this note. The other day when we heard in my constituency about the changes taking place to the leadership of the Tory party, I thought that it was interesting. The question of who will be the leader of the Tory party and Prime Minister concerns our folk in the constituencies. Folk will wonder who is going to lead the Tory party. At the end of the day, that person will lead the country as Prime Minister until the next general election.

A woman on the plane today asked me why the Government cannot have a general election to settle the issue and ensure that the unemployed have their rights--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

6.15 pm

Ms Rachel Squire (Dunfermline, West): As always, it is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham). There have been many first-class speeches on both sides of the House. I realise that the time available to speak on these amendments is limited.

I, too, want to touch on how clause 6 is about giving the unemployed a blunt ultimatum to accept any job, however low paid, or come off benefit and become destitute. The amendments, clause 6 and the Bill as a whole will mean that people will not only have to prove, according to whatever conditions the Government decide on, that they are actively seeking employment but that they have to sign an agreement. If they do not comply with whatever the Minister and the Government determine, they will be removed from benefit.

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The occasional comments of Ministers during the debate have been to the effect that people have no need to worry if they are genuinely seeking work. The reality is that the jobs are not there for people to find; people cannot find a decent income and life style for themselves and their families. The Government have been constantly determined to fiddle the way the unemployment figures are calculated so as to be able to claim there has been a reduction in unemployment because of their policies. The method of calculation has changed 27 times since 1979.

Another point, Mr. Deputy Chairman, is that money is being used not to create genuine jobs for people to find but to subsidise the ever lower wages being paid by many employers out there in the marketplace. It is reckoned by the Inland Revenue that in 1994, taxpayers topped up low wages with £2.4 billion of benefits. I am sure that Opposition Members would rather see that money being used to provide decently paid jobs. The Government are taking us back to the days of the workhouse and workfare. We now have the biggest gap between the highest and lowest paid than at any time since 1886. I only wish that we could confine the Government and the Bill to a museum or, perhaps even more appropriately, a chamber of horrors. I was going to cite some examples of low pay in my constituency where people are already being offered £1.50 an hour and are expected to support a family on that. I clearly do not have the time for that, Mr. Deputy Chairman--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This afternoon, I am Mr. Deputy Speaker. On other occasions I am the Chairman, but never Mr. Deputy Chairman.

Ms Squire: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I have run out of time, so I conclude by quoting J. K. Galbraith's comment that the conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor but they never urge that character-building value on themselves. We have no doubt that that reflects the Government's attitude towards the unemployed. The only people on whom I wish privation are the Conservatives, with the exception of the hon. Member for Stratford- on-Avon (Mr. Howarth), who made an excellent speech.

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