HC Deb 18 November 1986 vol 105 cc422-4
4. Mr. Prescott

asked the Paymaster General by what amount he expects the unemployment figures to fall as a result of the new availability for work test.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke

The purpose of the new procedure for testing availability for work is to determine entitlement to benefit in line with long-standing law and following the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee. It is not possible to forecast what the results of the new procedure will be, but it involves no change in the conditions governing eligibility for benefit.

Mr. Prescott

Did not the pilot study on those schemes show that 20 times more people were being referred for suspension of benefit than happened before those interviews? Can the Minister confirm press reports about the Devon pilot scheme, to the effect that the adjudicator reviewing those suspensions reversed more than 70 per cent. of them? It confirms our view that the Department's obsessive zeal intimidates people into leaving the unemployment register. What steps will the Paymaster General take to improve the situation, so that unemployed people, who have been found innocent of the charges laid against them, are not intimidated and made to feel like scroungers?

Mr. Clarke

In the pilot areas between 3 and 4 per cent. of claimants did not pursue, or withdrew, their claims when they were asked to complete a questionnaire. Between 2 and 3 per cent. who continued with their claims were disallowed by the adjudicating authorities. However, the hon. Gentleman has touched on an extremely important safeguard: the final decision is taken by an independent adjudication officer, and there is a court of appeal. The only people who will lose their benefit as a result of that process are those who were never entitled to it according to the law and the rules laid down by the House.

Mr. Ralph Howell

Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that we shall never solve this problem until we offer work at work centres, as was designed by Beveridge in his original proposals? Will he give serious consideration to the introduction of a universal workfare scheme?

Mr. Clarke

As I have said, we are offering work, training and so on to nine out of 10 of the long-term unemployed who come in and are interviewed. In addition, we are providing 250,000 places under the community programme. We are making great progress, and it is helping to produce the present reduction in the level of unemployment. I am not satisfied that we need to go on from that to some compulsory workfare scheme, although I continue to listen with interest to my hon. Friend's arguments.

Mr. Hugh Brown

The Minister referred earlier to the relationship between staff morale and the implementation of policy. Does he think that the introduction of the new availability test has helped staff morale? Can he say how many offices have suffered some sort of disruption because of its introduction?

Mr. Clarke

The pilot schemes were introduced with no trouble with staff or anyone else. We received no complaints from any of the hon. Members whom we told about the pilot schemes. We received no complaints from individuals until one of the trade unions involved, or a branch of it, in concert with the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), tried to allege that with the introduction of the schemes we were suddenly pressurising the unemployed. I assume that when this nonsense has died down the morale of our officers will be restored and that they will carry on implementing Parliament's wish that we pay the benefit to all those who are justly entitled and stop paying it to those who are not available for work.

Sir William Clark

As the question suggests that a reduction in unemployment is wanted, will my right hon. and learned Friend say whether, if a 1 per cent. levy on turnover were placed on employers, that would increase unemployment, or decrease it?

Mr. Clarke

It is astonishing that an Opposition Front Bench spokesman can casually throw out at a by-election meeting a proposal that would mean a huge increase in employment costs. All the increases in employer's costs that the Opposition keep advocating will cost jobs, as will the minimum wage and a number of their other propositions. I understand that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersely) is engaged in conversations with his hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). Perhaps we shall know whether £6 billion or some such sum would be imposed on British industry by the Opposition.