House of Commons
Wednesday 26 June 1996
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Right to Work
[Relevant document: The Second Report from the Employment Committee of Session 1995-96 on The Right to Work/Workfare (House of Commons Paper No. 82), and the Second Special Report from the Education and Employment Committee containing the Government's Reply thereto (House of Commons Paper No. 585.]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Wood.]
9.35 am
Mr. Greville Janner (Leicester, West): I greatly welcome the opportunity to put before the House the recommendations of the Employment Select Committee concerning workfare. I do so with some trepidation because we have, as it were, risen from the grave. The Government having consigned us for ever to oblivion, we have emerged again to entertain the House a little. Still, this is a subject of great importance to the country, to the House and to every hon. Member in the House.
I pay special tribute to all the members of the Select Committee on Employment for the work that they did on this report; and I thank the hon. Member for Crosby (Sir M. Thornton) in particular for all that he has done to enable this debate to take place, and for so kindly allowing me to open it. I am the departed Chairman of the old Committee; he is the newly installed Chairman of the new and reincarnated Committee, which incorporates the old one.
The problem of unemployment is one of vast consequence. It is the greatest single cause of economic misery in this country. It is a disaster for millions of people and for their families, and the Employment Committee was united in seeking ways to deal with it.
At this point I pay tribute also to a man whom I would wish to call my hon. Friend, because he is both honourable and my friend: the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Sir R. Howell). Thinking about tonight's football match, I wonder whether he would be more comfortable on the right wing, where he has been used to spending his time, or on the left wing, to which some of us feel he has moved. For he is the progenitor of ideas that are far from orthodox on the right. I note that he shakes his woolly, farmer's head--to no avail. He is a man of integrity and of ideas, and this one is his baby. Once I have outlined what the debate is about, I shall leave it to him to advance the united views of the Committee.
We start from the premise that the need for jobs is huge. We start from the Government figure of just over 2 million unemployed people--nearly double the number when they came to office. It is, however, an unreal figure because it excludes 10 categories of people. They include
those who have left the register because they have simply given up and no longer feel that there is any hope of jobs for them. Another category is of people who work just one hour or more part time and who, like millions of others, leave the register when they get part-time jobs. People desperate for work will take part-time jobs because there are no full-time jobs. I would be astonished if there were fewer than between 3.5 million and 4 million people who want full-time jobs today but cannot find them.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Mr. Eric Forth):
I thought the hon. and learned Gentleman might get on to this nonsense early in his speech--he is in typical form. If he approves of the International Labour Organisation--I do not but I suspect that he does--and if he agrees with the labour force survey method of counting the unemployed, which is the ILO-approved method--
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead):
You do not.
Mr. Forth:
I do not, but I suspect that the hon. and learned Gentleman does. If he approves of either or both, how does he explain their figure of about 2.2 million or 2.3 million for unemployment in this country?
Mr. Janner:
The Government have no idea how many millions of people are unemployed, nor how much it costs--and they do not care, as they have said in their response to the Committee's report. The Government do not know how many people with part-time work want full-time work--they have never tried to find out and they do not want to know. They do not know how many full-time students would be at work if they could get a job--and they do not want to know. They have no idea how many people in a family wish to work but cannot find a job. What is more, the Minister and Government members laugh about it--that is a disgraceful attitude. The Government think that it is funny that people are unemployed.
The Committee produced a unanimous report--Conservative and Labour members agreed--which outlined ways to look at the problem. But what was the Government's reply? I shall tell hon. Members my definition of unemployment: it is a "recession" when someone else is out of work, it is "depression" when you are out of work and it is "recovery" for the country when the Government are out of work. That is when we will have hope.
The Committee--which was led by the hon. Member for North Norfolk--said that we need to know the cost of unemployment. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment--an expert in mathematics--started off by telling us that the cost was about £9,000 per head, but then she lowered the figure to about £3,000 per head because she decided to leave a few things out of the statistics.
What was the Government's reply? They said that it is not necessary to produce the figures and that that will not help. I know that that view is not held by the hon. Member for North Norfolk, nor by any other member of the Committee. When one wants to cost something out, to find out how to remedy a wrong, and to know what steps to take--whether in business, in commerce or in government--one must know the present cost. The approach of the so-called Government in this regard has been amazing.
What is the cost of unemployment? We know that it costs misery for millions of people. Unemployment is at the heart of the insecurities of our constituents and the constituents of the laughing Minister, who would not find this at all funny--they either do not have jobs or, if they do have jobs, they feel insecure about their future. Our constituents know--even if the Minister does not--that the number of jobs, the number of people at work, in this country has dropped by 5 per cent. since the Government came to office. That is another indication that the Government's fiddle on figures is the Stradivarius of political life.
We need to know the cost of unemployment--not just in misery, but in pounds and pence. We need to know the cost of people who are unemployed and receiving benefit, but who wish to work--that is not funny. We need to know the cost of people who wish to be at work and who would be paying tax if they were employed, but who are not--that is not funny. We need to know the cost of people who are unemployed and who would be paying national insurance if they were employed, but who are not--that is not funny. And, above all, we need to know the cost of the loss to the country of all the efforts of these people.
The Committee made some modest suggestions, such as extending existing schemes and looking not at compulsion--because Labour Members on the Committee would not have accepted that--but at ways in which the community could help people to work. We should pay people to be at work, not pay them not to be at work. This must make sense, provided that we can do it without destroying real jobs. All we asked was that the Government look at this. The puny, nasty, inadequate, insubstantial and impertinent document that the Government have seen fit to put before us is unworthy of the Government--even though they thought that the Committee would never be able to answer back. This is our chance to answer back.
Sir Ralph Howell (North Norfolk):
I thank my friend the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) for his kind remarks about me and for allowing the debate to take place. I became a member of the Committee approximately two years ago. Soon after I joined the Committee, it decided to study workfare and the right to work. I believe that the Committee did a good job in looking into the matter and trying to find a way to solve the problem of unemployment. Everyone agrees that unemployment is wasteful, soul destroying, degrading, unnecessary and unaffordable.
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