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13 Jun 2007 : Column 302WHcontinued
The most important aspect of a refusal to accept the status quo is throughput, which must be discussed. At the moment, and for the past 60 years, a job with Remploy has been a job for life. Mild attempts might have been made to try to persuade an employee to consider a job in the mainstream economy, but as of nowI checked with my local factory todaythe decision is left to the individual. In effect, that means that Remploy is seen as a destination. It is thought that once someone works there, no one is anxious for them to move on and that no ones purpose in life is to see employees move out of the factory and into mainstream life. The decision is left to employees. If they wish to stay, they stay.
Modern thinking, which I accept, is that Remploy should be a gateway, rather than a destination or a stopping point. There is a place in modern society for a gateway, whether that is a sheltered workshop or a skill centre, that allows employees to build their confidence and self-esteem so that they believe that they can make a go of taking their place in society. Some of the people have never worked before in their lives and have had the most traumatic experiences. Their self-esteem is low and their self-confidence is non-existent. Their confidence should be built up, and they should then move on.
Modern thinking is that there should be a gateway establishment, whether in factories or appropriate skill centresperhaps with a relationship with a further education collegeto which people could go with the knowledge that their job was not permanent. They should be assessed and a time scale should be negotiated for how long they will stay there to acquire the necessary skills to build up their confidence. However, the people in the building and DWP partners would be responsible for guaranteeing to find those people a job before they left the establishment and for supporting them during the first few months in their new jobs. That would be a relevant change.
The trade unions have made some interesting suggestions about money, and even the Government have said that money is a secondary consideration. Is it fair to keep people in a workshop and an artificial situation? Should not we build up their confidence and set them free with suitable support? Remploy factories should not be a destination at which people stay. However, if people have gone through a bad time and, for the first time in their life, they have mates and a wage packet, feel that they are contributing and have self-respect, they would have to be very brave to risk all that by going to find a job. They know what failure is because they have been through that. It is asking a lot to expect people to do that, unless the aim is set out.
We must face up to the fact that some people will never be able to move and take the necessary steps to address that. However, Remploy should be a temporary gateway for the majority of people. Disabled people could come in and be out in three months. Other people with complex problems might take a year, but everyone should know that the objective would be for those people to move into a position in which they have the same rights as the rest of us.
Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD):
The hon. Gentleman says that the factories should be a gateway. I do not think that anyone would argue with the point that enabling disabled people to move into the mainstream
workplace is desirable. However, does he not accept that in some parts of the country, the opportunities for people to work in what must start as relatively sheltered employment are few and far between because the local business environment consists predominantly of small businesses, micro-businesses and the self-employed? People should not be cast as having failed if they thus stay in the Remploy factory for many years, as they do in my constituency.
Mr. Mudie: No, I do not see that as failure. I said that the key aspect of being in such a factory, which I do not think that Remploy would like to accept, should be that it guarantees that it will find a person a job. I hate this business of failure and people failing. We fail, but they do not. Similar circumstances arise in Newcastle, Hartlepool and Dundee, so the situation is accepted. The situation is easier in Leeds, because there is full employment, but it is more difficult in the constituency of the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George). The difficulty depends on the local employment circumstances.
We must accept, as must Remploy and the trade unions, that if we say that the positions are permanent, we are being very weak. Saying that would be generous to the people in work, but what about the people in a desperate state in the community whose gateway to a better life is Remploy? If a person plonks themselves in a job, and by their own decision, rather than other circumstances, stays in it, they are blocking another persons opportunity. If we have a real partnership and we work to get people fit in their own minds and able to take on a job, we all succeed, and somebody else is given an opportunity.
The Minister might have some fun with what I have said, but I do not mind. However, the butchery that the Remploy board and the accountants have brought to the table does not solve anything. Yes, it solves financial problems in the DWP, but that is just putting right financial figures. It does not help the desperately vulnerable people in the community and the factories who need our help.
Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I shall be brief, because I do not have much of a voice today, and many other people are waiting to speak.
I have said all along that I endorse the long-term principle, but I am becoming more and more concerned about the current process. After the announcement in Parliament, I visited the factory in my constituency on the following Thursday on my way home, and I was truly alarmed by what I heard. For example, I was told that people could not understand the long words that were used by the counsellor whom they had all been promised. There were probably no specialist counsellors for people who have learning disabilities and may lose their jobs, but the situation worried me.
When I read fully the Remploy briefing, I saw that it said that there were 41 disabled people in the factory. I challenged that figure, and Remploy now accepts that there are 43. I do not think that private industry closes
factories without knowing how many people are in them. That applied to two people, which worries me greatly.
I asked how long people had been working at the factory: one of the 43 had been there for more than 40 years, and 10 had been there for 20 to 35 years. I am seriously worried about whether there are suitable places that my constituents can be moved to in our local area. Is a move desirable if somebody has been in that situation for 20 to 35 years? The briefing notes that I was sent suggested that the alternative would be an office in Southampton. That is not suitable for people in Poole. If anybody present has ever tried to travel around Dorset, they will know why it is not suitableespecially for disabled people. I have challenged that suggestion, and I have now received an answer.
Since July 2006, I have had a vision that on a very big site in Poole, one could develop a centre of excellence for training people with disabilities, which would serve the whole of Dorset. One could run down the manufacturing side gradually, but locate it there as part of the training process. I have been asking and asking for that, but the latest reply that I have received says that there will be a meeting with the local council at the end of June. I am worried that time is running out and nothing is being done.
There is probably an individual solution for every factory. I have a good idea for my local factory, but I am losing confidence in Remploys ability to deliver it. My plea today is for us to work together with that local factory, because it could be a wonderful facility for future generations in promoting creativity and working with local employers, which is what the issue is all about. My worry is that we will be talking about jobs pushing trolleys in supermarkets, because there are not that many jobs around, but a long-term approach to the issue, with a specialist training centre, would lead to plus-plusses. I am sure that the issue of increasing productivity could have been tackled over the past year, instead of letting things drift along.
I have a real commitment to that local factory and to maintaining as many jobs there as possible, which we could do positively. I do not want a huge housing site. We have very expensive housing in Poole.
Mr. Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend) (Lab): It is a pleasure to participate and make a short contribution to this short and timely debate under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton.
I have been a Member of this place for 25 years now, and occasionally one feels that there is a danger of being drawn into the establishment and into a complacent world of public administration. However, I have only to attend a debate and listen to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) to be reminded why I joined the Labour party in the first place. It is absolutely typical of my hon. Friend that he takes up the cause of those who need his help most, and that he makes a powerful case for them.
The debate is not against Remploy, the Government or the Minister. We are in a consultation period, consulting on some very difficult issues. One week ago I
had the pleasure and the honour of attending the conference of the GMB union, of which I am a member. Many Remploy workers are GMB members, too, and they had a delegation and elected delegates at the unions annual conference. It is difficult to convey to such a parliamentary debate the sense of despair, anger and even betrayal that the work force felt. Very hard words were spoken at the conference, and I was struck by two points: first, the Remploy work forces passion, commitment and strength of feeling; and secondly, the enormous amount of sympathy that they drew from the other trade unionists, from all walks of life, who were attending the conference. One could not miss the strength of feeling.
There is discrimination in the labour market. It is illegal, of course, but it still exists. One has only to look at the figures for how many able-bodied citizens are employed as a ratio of their total numbers, and then at the same figures for people who have a disability, to see that it is much harder for disabled people to make it in the mainstream labour market. I was a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions for two years, and I saw the papers on Remploy, although I did not have direct ministerial responsibility for it, so I know that there is a real problem, and the Minister has my sympathies. It will not do just to hope that the problem will go away; it is absolutely right to face up to it. However, we must do so in the spirit in which my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East set out his ideas.
There are two main elements to this issuea view that I formed some time ago. The first is the continuing debate about the case for sheltered workshops vis-Ã -vis the case for supported employment with a mainstream employer. Alongside that, however, is the debate about costs, and it is a fact that supported employment in a workshop is substantially more expensive than supporting an employee in mainstream employment. My hon. Friend said that the cost is £20,000 as opposed to £3,000, and my figures suggest that it is £20,000 as opposed to £5,000, but the ratiothe Minister may correct me if I am wrongis roughly four to one.
There is a third issue, which relates to Remploy as a business. Some pretty hard things have been said about Remploys managementnot universally, but at some local sites. There are also concerns, not only from the trade union side, but among people who have looked at the organisation independently, about the central costs of the organisation as a whole.
My view is that there is a case for both sheltered provision and supported mainstream work; they can exist alongside each other, and we should not let the debate about costs undermine the case for workshop-based employment. The view to which I came, and to which I still hold, is that even if the costs are greater, we just have to accept that we will have to pay them. There are also other things that we can do, and this debate gives us an opportunity to put forward what I hope the Minister will see as constructive ideas.
The case for sheltered workshops rests on the fact not only that members of the work force develop a sense of solidarity and comradeship, but that there is a specific understanding of individual special needs. People also get a sense of security from going to a place where their needs are understood and a sense of self-worth from having a job that they can do and
workmates who are sympathetic. Although one would like to think that people with special needs would find that in mainstream society, I am not convinced that that will always be so, even with support. Of course, there are enlightened employers, who go out of their way to provide workplace placements for people with special needs and who ensure that management structures are in place to support their employment, but such employers are the exception, not the rule. It is easy to say, Ah, well, the labour market is tight nowadays, but well find you employment with a mainstream employer, but it is much harder to find such employment.
I therefore want to offer what I hope are some constructive suggestions to support the factory-based employment part of Remploys operation. A year ago todayon 13 June 2006the Prime Minister addressed the GMB conference. He said:
I can assure you that we will both listen to the trade union submission on this, we want to see Remploy profitable as well, and we will certainly see what we can do from the perspective of public procurement to give Remploy a sustainable future.
He is on to a good idea with that final suggestion. It will be difficult, at least for the factory side of Remploy, to be profitable as a sheltered workshop, because it is difficult to find things for a sheltered workshop to do that are profitable in the marketplace. We must face up to that. My answer is to subsidise such an arrangement and direct work to it. We must do that as part of public procurementthe Ministry of Defence is an obvious example and does, indeed, already do that to some extentand say that there is a social reason for doing so.
We, as politicians, should not feel ashamed in standing up before our fellow citizens and saying, We have made this decision. It does not conform to strict competition rules, but it is not a huge market distortion. It is an exception, but it is one for a special purpose. These people need our help and support. Who would begrudge disabled people that? I do not think that our fellow citizens would say, No, we want competition red in tooth and claw. Let the disabled take care of themselves. Our fellow citizens would not say that, and the Government should not say it either.
There is a case for using public procurement to support workshops, and I do not accept that competition rules or European Union rules prevent us from doing so. Other member states do such things; indeed, when I was a Minister, all the Ministers whom I met from other European countries thought that such things were acceptable. They would want to do them in their own countries, and I am certain that they would not object to our doing them in our country. One has to keep a sense of proportion, of course, but we would be all right as long as we did so.
One could look at the issue the other way around and ask whether a mainstream manufacturing processin the packaging or processing industry, for examplewas suitable to be carried out in a sheltered workshop. We could then ask the employer whether public assistance could be used to turn the factory into a place that provided sheltered and secure employment. That approach has not been taken so far, but I urge it on the Minister and I hope that she will be look at it.
There is also strong role for the trade unions in all this. At the GMB conference, I was struck by the fact
that those who were worried about their job security and about what would happen to them looked to their trade union to help and support them, and that support really matters to people with special needs. In the discussions that the Minister will be having, I would like a way to be found to ensure that that collective trade union support filters through to industry placements, as well as to the people retained in workshops.
I gently draw the Ministers attention to the ratio of money spent on placements to money offered for early retirement. I accept that some people will want to take early retirement, but that is not the answer. Younger people will be looking for workshop places, just as some older people will feel that their time to work has come to an end and that it is time to retire. However, I would not like us to just to buy such jobs out and say that mainstream employment, not workshop placements, is the answer for young people. People are not supported in mainstream employment; indeed, they end up falling out of it and becoming claimants again. As a result, the very problem with which workshops are supposed to deal is not dealt with, and people end up unemployed or on long-term sickness benefit. That is not the right way forward or a positive way forward.
That brings me back to my core point: the labour market is a hard place. Yes, it is tight, but those who are recruiting look for the person who they believe can do the best job for them. There is still a tendency, very unfairly, to discriminate against people with disabilities. As we try to offer constructive solutions in this debate to the problems that we acknowledge Remploy has, we should, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East so powerfully reminded us, keep at the forefront of our minds the fact that the labour market is not a fair place. The people whom we are talking about are disadvantaged and they deserve our help.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) for being late for the debate, as I had a difficult journey.
More than 25 years ago, I was the TUC representative on a committee called CORADthe Committee on Restrictions against Disabled People. It was the first committee that the Government established to look at discrimination against people with disabilities to see how we might move forward. Hon. Members may remember that we had a quota at that time, under which companies and Departments were required to employ a certain percentage of people with disabilities, but none of themeven Departmentsdid. The committee therefore looked again at the issue and said that we needed to get people with disabilities into work. To do that, we recommended that those responsible should support people with disabilities by identifying opportunities, providing training and supporting people in work, as well as resourcing employers to enable such things to happen. To assist in that, the committee recommended that disability discrimination legislation be introduced, and both those recommendations have now been implemented.
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