Commons Sitting of 10 January 1995

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  EMPLOYMENT

    Unemployment
    Mr. Cox: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the official numbers of (a) men and (b) women who were unemployed in the Greater London area as of 1 January 1995.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Phillip Oppenheim): The latest available figures show that, in November 1994, seasonally adjusted claimant unemployment in London stood at 307,800 for men and 106,800 for women. In each case, this represents a reduction of about 10 per cent. on a year ago.
    Mr. Cox: Whatever the Minister may say, is he aware that Greater London has one of the highest unemployment rates of any region in the United Kingdom and that vast numbers of people are seeking the few jobs that exist? Exactly what are Government policies for Greater London to create meaningful employment, in view of the countless thousands of jobs that have been lost year by year since 1979?
    Mr. Oppenheim: What the hon. Gentleman does not say is that many jobs in London were also lost in the
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    1970s. I think we all accept that unemployment in London is too high, as it is elsewhere in most parts of the developed western world. The only way to cure that is to improve the competitiveness and productivity of our economy, as we are doing, to produce more high-quality, better-paid jobs for our people.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my hon. Friend think that unemployment in Greater London would increase or be reduced if we adopted the social chapter, a national minimum wage or even clause IV, which seems to have some residual popularity in the Labour party?
    Mr. Oppenheim: Almost every survey from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund shows that a minimum wage has an adverse effect on job creation. If the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) is serious about that policy, I challenge her to tell the House at what level she would set a minimum wage and what she would do about the problem of differentials.
    Mr. Chidgey: Will the Minister confirm that surveys have shown that more than 80 per cent. of participants in workstart pilot schemes in London and elsewhere are likely to be offered permanent jobs? Does he agree that that is clear and concrete evidence of the need urgently to establish a working benefits transfer programme across the nation to get the long-term unemployed back into work?
    Mr. Oppenheim: One of the good features of what is happening in London is that the number of very long-term unemployed people has fallen by about one half since 1987. There are a number of reasons for that, but one of the main ones is the effect of the very well-targeted Government schemes to help the very long-term unemployed, who have particular problems, to get back into work.
    Mr. Waller: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what proportion of young people possess qualifications at the conclusion of youth training.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. James Paice): Seventy-two per cent. of young people completing youth training gain a qualification or credit towards one.
    Mr. Waller: I thank my hon. Friend for that encouraging information. There is great variety in the level of qualifications that young people may obtain. Is my hon. Friend able to give more detailed data about the quality and level of qualifications that young people participating in youth training schemes can obtain?
    Mr. Paice: I can assure my hon. Friend that there is substantial evidence that the level of qualifications being achieved through youth training is increasing year by year. A greater proportion are achieving national vocational qualifications, NVQs, at levels 2, 3 and 4. In addition, I assure my hon. Friend that when modern apprenticeships are fully up and running, they will lead to another substantial jump in the levels achieved.
    Mr. Gerrard: I am sure that we would all welcome an increase in the number of people obtaining qualifications. However, in his answer the Minister did not quote the figures. One of the stated aims of youth training is to enable young people to obtain NVQs at level 2 or above. How many are attaining level 2 and how many are getting above that level?
    Mr. Paice: I do not have the precise figure, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman something much more significant: more than 50 per cent. of all those leaving youth training, at any time after starting it, obtain jobs. That is the major importance of youth training. Of those who complete the training, 67 per cent. obtain jobs. That is a clear indication that youth training works for the vast majority of young people, as shown by surveys of them.

    Jobseeker's Allowance
    Mr. Hawkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how he expects the jobseeker's allowance will improve the support that the Government provide for unemployed people.
    The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Michael Portillo): The jobseeker's agreement will reflect the responsibilities of the Employment Service and of the person seeking work so as to focus efforts and incentives on getting back to work.
    Mr. Hawkins: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Will he confirm that the question of limiting contributory benefits to six months is extremely important, and that the public want to know how both parties stand on it? Will he also confirm that, when the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) was asked about it three times on this morning's "Today" programme, she declined to say what her policy was?
    Mr. Portillo: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I thought it an extraordinary performance. The Opposition have based their criticism of the Jobseekers Bill on the
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    substitution of a six-month contributory period for a 12-month period, but if that is indeed the basis of their attack, surely they should be in a position to say that they would reverse the position if their party were in power. Three times the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) refused the opportunity to say that that was the case; three times I thought I heard a cock crow. It was just like yesterday, when the Leader of the Opposition was bleating about the privatisation of railways. He would not say that he would renationalise them.
    Mr. Frank Field: Can the Secretary of State tell us how many people who pay for their national insurance benefits will be pushed on to means-tested benefits as a result of the Bill?
    Mr. Portillo: The hon. Gentleman knows that we must use our resources as best we can to focus benefit on those who need it most. He is one of the people who have made that point most consistently over the years. We need to focus the money that we have on helping those who are in most need, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support us this afternoon.
    Mr. Matthew Banks: In view of the answer that he has just given, will my right hon. Friend make it absolutely clear that as he seeks to simplify an individually tailored job search, he and his Department will not lose sight of the vital principle of continuing to provide the most where the need is greatest?
    Mr. Portillo: That should be an important principle and, indeed, I believe that hon. Members in all parties now agree on it. In future, we need to be able to provide a welfare state that we can afford and be proud of. That means that we must take care that the amount by which welfare state spending rises does not outstrip the economy's ability to pay. We shall have to make important choices, and direct benefits towards those who need them most. That is why it is so disappointing that the Commission on Social Justice, having agreed with the general proposition, has come up with proposals to raise public spending by £7 billion. That is no way forward for the welfare state, or for the Labour party.

    Training
    Mr. Kevin Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how much his Department is spending on training for work in 1994–95; and what the level of planned spending is in 1995–96 in today's prices.
    Mr. Portillo: The figures are £693 million this year, and £560 million next year in 1994–95 prices.
    Mr. Hughes: How does the Secretary of State justify cutting the training for work budget, when he knows very well that there is a skill shortage and business people are crying out for skilled workers? What does he say to the people in my area—more than 1,000—who will lose out because of his cuts?
    Mr. Portillo: I do not believe that people in the hon. Gentleman's area will lose out. I am making better use of public money, and the number of people who will obtain jobs from training for work will increase. It is estimated that 100,000 will obtain jobs this year, 104,000 next year and 116,000 the year after. I am providing a new range of opportunities for the long-term

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    unemployed. Training is not the only thing: jobs matter more to the long-term unemployed than training for the sake of training. Moreover, the hon. Gentleman should not forget that the amount of Government spending on training will always be dwarfed—and rightly so—by the £20 billion that industry spends on it.
    Mr. Barron: Does the Secretary of State recognise that, because of cuts in the training budget, training and enterprise councils and training providers do not know where they stand and that, consequently, employers cannot plan for the future? Is it not clear that our successful companies and successful competitive countries have built their economic efficiency by having minimum standards in training? Why do not the Government accept that the market alone cannot build economic efficiency and that they must take action to ensure that minimum standards are in place throughout the British economy? Why do we have a new study today saying that we are in a position of having to train people for the sake of it? Why do not the Government train people for jobs and train the economy to utilise those people?
    Mr. Portillo: It is rather silly to say that people do not know where they stand, when I have just given the figures and when I gave the figures at the time of the Budget. People know exactly where they stand. Before the Budget, they already knew that we had announced a £325 million programme to improve the competitiveness of this country under the competitiveness White Paper. At that time, one of the things that we introduced was the modern apprenticeship scheme, precisely to ensure that people could acquire the skills, under the training of an employer, that employers needed.
    The whole focus of the Government's policy is to ensure that employees' skills are the skills that business needs. The only people who can tell us what business needs are business people. That is why the main emphasis on training in the British economy will always be provided by industry and not by the Government. What the Government spend, however, must be spent well, and we will have more jobs for less money. The hon. Gentleman should be happy about that.

    Part-time Workers
    Ms Eagle: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what plans he has to grant rights to part-time workers in line with those enjoyed by full-time workers; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Miss Ann Widdecombe): My right hon. Friend announced on 20 December 1994 that, having carefully considered the position following the House of Lords judgment, the Government have decided to remove all hours of work thresholds from employment protection legislation. Appropriate regulations will shortly be laid before Parliament under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972.
    Ms Eagle: Will the Minister now admit that that welcome change is long overdue and that it is only the first victory in Opposition Members' fight to guarantee minimum standards for people at work? Will she take this opportunity to congratulate the Equal Opportunities
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    Commission on bringing and winning this case and will she reassure the House that the Government have no intention of undermining or abolishing the commission for doing such a good job?
    Miss Widdecombe: There will be no victory whatever for part-time workers if, as a result of the ruling and of our implementation of it, part-time job opportunities decrease. That will be a loss for part-time workers. I hope that the hon. Lady will be as loud in her welcome for the measure if it proves to have that effect, because the electorate will then be able to understand exactly what they are in for if there is ever a Labour Government—which is unlikely.
    The Government have never had any plans to abolish the Equal Opportunities Commission. I gather that that is just another Labour party scare story and it goes to prove what I have long suspected: new Labour is simply a few superficial new statements and all the old immorality and scaring of the vulnerable.
    Mrs. Peacock: Is my hon. Friend aware that many mothers with school-age children greatly welcome part-time work? It enables them to work, to contribute to their household budget and to look after their children, which many of us think is a good idea. It also helps our manufacturing industry to produce more goods to sell as exports and in the home market.
    Miss Widdecombe: Indeed. It is precisely because Britain has a flexible labour market that it enjoys nearly one third of all part-time jobs in Europe. The vast majority of those jobs are of benefit to women. We know that 85 per cent. of people who work part time do not do so because they cannot find a full-time job. It is, therefore, our policies that have liberated women to enable them to combine work and family life and the Labour party's policies that would make it impossible for women to make that choice. Perhaps women will note that.
    Mr. McCartney: The Minister should be at the Dispatch Box apologising for another defeat in the United Kingdom courts. It is only the British Government who oppose decent minimum standards in the workplace. Employers and employees accept the need for those standards and it is only the Minister and her right hon. and hon. Friends who do not.
    Since the Government have accepted the House of Lords decision, will the Government be organising a national campaign among employers to distribute material and information packages to part-time workers to advise them of their rights in the workplace so that they can take advantage of the House of Lords ruling? What does the Minister say to the 3.7 million part-time women workers in this country who earn less than the Council of Europe decency threshold? Does she not believe that they are entitled to decent pay for a decent day's work?
    Miss Widdecombe: The hon. Gentleman suggests that I should apologise. The only apologies due are from the Labour party, for its total disregard for the creation of work opportunities, for its total disregard for the expansion of opportunities for women and for its total disregard for the effects of the flexibility of our labour market on the percentage of our work force. Will the Labour party congratulate us on the fact that

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    we have the third highest percentage of the work force in work? Will it congratulate us on having among the largest numbers of part-time opportunities and on the narrowing of the gap between the pay of women and men? Will the Labour party congratulate us on all that and apologise for its own stale, useless policies?
    Mr. Couchman: Has my hon. Friend's Department yet had time to research the number of opportunities for part-time work that may be lost as a result of this decision from Europe? Has she had time to consult the leaders of those sections of commerce and industry that have particularly high numbers of part-time workers, such as in shops and in the hotel and catering trade, in which I recently had an interest?
    Miss Widdecombe: My hon. Friend has raised an extremely important point. We are cognisant of the likely adverse effects of this judgment. That is why we have made it clear that we will monitor those effects carefully; if we believe that such adverse effects are clearly discernible and are upheld, we will consider again whether we have objective justification for our previous policy.
    Ms Quin: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what research his Department has commissioned about the consequences for British part-time workers of EU equality legislation.
    Miss Widdecombe: There is already a substantial body of international evidence that more regulated economies are less successful in creating job opportunities.
    Ms Quin: I, too, welcome the Government's climbdown on part-time workers. In light of the information that the Minister has just provided, will she tell me why Denmark and Holland both have a higher proportion of part-time workers than we have, yet they have higher levels of employment protection and accept the social chapter?
    Hon. Members: Answer that one.
    Miss Widdecombe: Yes, I will.
    Across Europe as a whole, there is a clear correlation between regulation and part-time job opportunities: the southern member states have high regulation and the least number of part-time jobs; Denmark and Britain, which have the most liberal regimes for part-time workers, have the highest. If the hon. Lady had done her homework, she would know that in Holland that is a result of the fact that the benefits system allows benefits to be claimed, particularly in respect of invalidity, when part-time work is undertaken. Regulation of the labour market right across Europe, as has been acknowledged by a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has an adverse impact on jobs, not a favourable one.
    Mr. Anthony Coombs: I very much regret the action that the Government have been forced to take and recognise what my hon. Friend the Minister has said in that regulation is the enemy of jobs, both part time and full time. Is my hon. Friend aware that a company in the manufacturing sector in my constituency which employs 150 people told me only this week that, as a result of the imposition of EC regulations, its costs
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    have increased by £33,000 a year, thus making it much more difficult to compete in export markets? Is my hon. Friend continuing to give evidence to the deregulation unit to ensure that that sort of nonsensical and unnecessary regulation does not happen?
    Miss Widdecombe: I can also give clear confirmation that, wherever possible, we shall resist any unnecessary imposition of social legislation coming from Europe. Indeed, it is precisely because we are doing so that unemployment is falling faster in Britain than in other EC countries. It is precisely because we are resisting that we have such a buoyant economy and, in light of the period that we have been through, British businesses and workers should now think very carefully before consigning their future to the all-embracing social chapter policies proposed by the Opposition.

    Modern Apprenticeship Scheme
    Mr. Colin Shepherd: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many young people per year are expected to gain an NVQ3 qualification through the new modern apprenticeship scheme.
    Mr. Paice: If employers respond as we expect, around 70,000 young people each year in England will gain a national vocational qualification level 3 or higher through modern apprenticeships and accelerated modern apprenticeships.
    Mr. Shepherd: Does my hon. Friend agree that modern apprenticeship schemes are just what many bright young people and, indeed, employers need today? Will he commend the training and enterprise councils that have made progress in that direction with such success and will he redouble his efforts to bring together employers and TECs in areas where progress has not been made so that the success can be consolidated?
    Mr. Paice: Yes, Madam Speaker. My hon. Friend speaks from a position of great advantage because HAWTEC, the TEC in his area, not only was one of the first to receive a three-year licence but is one of those closely involved in the development of a prototype modern apprenticeship in retail management. That is a great step forward and an example that should be followed by all TECs. We are doing everything we can to ensure that the prototypes will be increased by 42 extra sectors this autumn and that there will be plenty of opportunities for everyone who wishes to follow a modern apprenticeship in the future.
    Mr. Fraser: Does the Minister realise that south London has experienced not only the bankruptcy of skill centres but the insolvency of its training and enterprise council and cuts? What effect will that have on young people's training and what example are the Government setting to those young people in how they run their affairs?
    Mr. Paice: The decision to bring in the receivers to the South Thames TEC was regrettable, but necessary to protect taxpayers and trainees. The hon. Gentleman should be aware that we have already given a commitment that we shall do everything that we can to ensure that training programmes are not interrupted and that training providers are guaranteed funding for the

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    next three months for programmes that they have already contracted. We are discussing with local authorities and others how the provision of training in that area will continue after 1 April. The hon. Gentleman should not expect any diminution in the training effort in the South Thames area, in any other part of London or in the country as a whole.

    Statutory Minimum Wage
    Mr. Madden: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what independent research he has commissioned into the impact within the EC on employment from a statutory minimum wage.
    Mr. Oppenheim: There is substantial evidence from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and other sources that minimum wages have destroyed jobs in Europe.
    Mr. Madden: As the Secretary of State likes to pose as a Tory thinker who never misses an opportunity to attack the statutory minimum wage and its impact on employment, is it not extraordinary that lie is so reluctant to commission an independent study so that we can test that argument objectively? Could it be that he is anxious to ensure that facts do not spoil his pseudo-intellectual political rant?
    Mr. Oppenheim: I could point the hon. Gentleman to any number of independent studies, ranging from that of the International Monetary Fund to the European Commission's White Paper on competitiveness, which point to the minimum wage as a destroyer of jobs in Europe. However, we do not have to look to independent surveys; we have only to look at the facts. Youth unemployment in France is twice that of the United Kingdom and in Spain youth unemployment is three times our level. Is that what the hon. Gentleman wants for Britain?
    Mr. Ottaway: It is not so much the existence of the minimum wage that destroys jobs, but the level at which it is set. Is not the problem with the Opposition's proposals that they always bounce round a figure that is far too high?
    Mr. Oppenheim: My hon. Friend is right. I find it absolutely astonishing that the Opposition spokeswoman can come to the House proposing a policy of a minimum wage without telling the House the level at which it would be introduced and what the Opposition would do about differentials. Until she is able to do that, the minimum wage policy will be nothing more than a cynical ploy designed to trick the less well-off into believing that there is some easy, pat way to raise living standards with no cost to the economy. There is not.
    Ms Harman: Why has the Secretary of State for Employment ducked out of answering the question asked today by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) about the minimum wage? Is it because he was overruled by the Cabinet when it decided to keep the agricultural wages board? Does not that reluctant decision by the Government vindicate what Labour has said all
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    along about the minimum wage—that it protects good employers from being undercut by the bad, that it ensures fairness at work and that it does not cost jobs?
    Mr. Oppenheim: The only person who is ducking questions is the hon. Lady. She had a perfect opportunity just now to tell the House the level at which she would introduce the minimum wage and what she would do about the differentials. The House should not take my word for the problems that the minimum wage would cause. It should take the words of Lord Healey. who said recently:
    "don't kid yourselves. The minimum wage is something on which unions will build differentials … therefore, the minimum wage becomes a floor on which to build a new tower."
    Lord Healey said that two months ago. He can see sense; why cannot the hon. Lady?
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: Will my hon. Friend try some independent research by agreeing with the unions to halve the rate of pay for 16-year-olds in a Government Department—perhaps his own—to see whether, as the pay is halved from £90, the number of 16-year-olds employed doubles, or increases even further?
    Mr. Oppenheim: I am not sure that that is necessarily a course that we would like to follow. I say to my hon. Friend and to Opposition Members that, of course, all of us, on both sides of the House, would like people, especially at the low end, to be better paid. The question is how to achieve that. We say that we should invest in education, invest in skills and make people more productive so that we can afford to pay them more in a sustainable way. The Opposition say that we should pay them more regardless of productivity. That would result in low pay being replaced by no pay.

    Long-term Unemployment
    Mr. Charles Kennedy: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will outline his proposals to assist long-term unemployed people.
    Mr. Portillo: We are pursuing a number of programmes that make it more worth while for people who have been unemployed for a long time to take a job without fear of being worse off and we are providing employers with financial incentives to give such people jobs.
    Mr. Kennedy: Is the Secretary of State aware that in an area such as Easter Ross in the Scottish highlands, an area of concern to me and to my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), where there is not much market access to a diversity of jobs because of the concentration of dependence on oil and oil-related industries, long-term unemployment is now very deep rooted? Many people there are finding it impossible to be competitive in the labour market or to enjoy access to the labour market. How can the Secretary of State believe that in that increasingly hopeless situation for many people, the jobseeker's allowance will be of any benefit?
    Mr. Portillo: The position is not, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, increasingly hopeless. Even in his own constituency, unemployment has come down by 10 per cent. since December 1992. That underlines the point that jobs will be created in a sustained period of recovery;

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    that involves the Government pursuing policies of low inflation, controlling their spending and controlling their borrowing.
    I have been concentrating on helping people over what I call the job hump—helping them to see that when they go into a job after a long period of being unemployed, they will be better off. That is why, for example, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Budget that people's housing benefit payments will be sustained for four weeks when they take a job and that is why we made it more attractive to employers to take on people who are long-term unemployed by giving them a one-year holiday on their national insurance contributions if they take on people who have been out of a job for two years or more.
    Mr. Forman: Has my right hon. Friend assessed the difference between the proportion of long-term unemployed at the end of the recent recession, from which we have now emerged, and the proportion of long-term unemployed at the end of the recession in the early 1980s? Can any lessons be drawn from those two experiences?
    Mr. Portillo: Figures obviously change from time to time and I am slightly cautious about drawing too much of a lesson from the figures to which my hon. Friend refers. I draw a lesson from the fact that long-term unemployment in this country is about 35 per cent. of the total and that the average for Europe is about 42 per cent. of the total. I therefore believe that, as in the other things that we have been discussing today, greater labour-market flexibility and active measures taken by the Employment Service directed at the long-term unemployed not only help to bring down unemployment generally, but ensure that long-term unemployment is a lesser proportion of the total unemployment in this country than elsewhere.

    Full-time Workers
    Mr. Hain: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what was the change in the number of full-time workers in employment from February 1993 to the present.
    Mr. Oppenheim: The number of full-time workers in Great Britain rose by 29,000 between the winter 1992 and summer 1994 labour force surveys.
    Mr. Hain: Can the Minister confirm that according to the labour force survey and other statistics provided by his Department, the fall in full-time unemployment—admirable of course—between March 1993 and September 1994 of 200,000 was matched by a rise in full-time employment of just 30,000? In other words, 170,000 full-time workers have disappeared from the dole queues into the twilight world of, at best, full-time work, or casual or part-time work; or just as likely on to income support and sickness benefit? Why does not he admit that the Government's employment policy is a total fraud?
    Mr. Oppenheim: I have to say that I am with the Trades Union Congress on this. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are two different measures of unemployment and employment. One is the claimant count, the other is the International Labour Organisation international standard labour force survey, which the
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    TUC said recently was "wholly reliable". If there were some great fiddling of the figures, one would think that the labour force survey total would differ significantly from the claimant count total. But the figures are almost exactly the same, which blows a huge hole in the Opposition's argument that the claimant figures are a fiddle.

    Equal Opportunities Commission
    Mrs. Mahon: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the future of the Equal Opportunities Commission.
    Miss Widdecombe: As I said earlier when the question was somewhat pre-empted, the Government have no plans to seek changes to the legislation which defines the Equal Opportunities Commission's responsibilities and duties.
    Mrs. Mahon: Will the Minister congratulate the Equal Opportunities Commission on its support of part-time workers and of minimum standards? Will he comment on the leaked memo which implies that the Equal Opportunities Commission is a rent-a-quote organisation and that it could be merged with other equality agencies? Does not she realise that if that downgrading were to happen, the Minister and the Government would be seen as being malicious and spiteful towards an independent organisation which supports Labour's minimum wage and Labour's fight for decent standards for all workers?
    Miss Widdecombe: Having made it very clear that those changes are not going to take place, I do not think that it is a question of whether the Government are malicious and spiteful, but that there is rather a lot of malice and spite in deliberately trying to muddy waters which have been made quite clear—there are no such changes. If the hon. Lady relied on statements, questions and good homework, instead of merely on leaked, stolen documents, she might do rather better.
    Mr. John Townend: Will my hon. Friend consider that if we really are the Government of deregulation, it is about time that we abolished the Equal Opportunities Commission? It has done any work which was necessary; it is now a waste of taxpayers' money.
    Miss Widdecombe: I can only refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave earlier. We have no plans to change the terms on which the EOC carries out its statutory responsibilities. Despite some of the actions of the EOC and some of its rulings, it is still a fact that the United Kingdom is the only European Union country which has a lower unemployment rate for women than for men.
    That is a solid achievement and is worth all the rhetoric in the world about minimum wages and good standards. The real standard that matters is opportunity. We are the Government of opportunity for women; the Labour party is not. All that the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) could talk about on the subject of the Equal Opportunities Commission was simply a load of speculation. That means that the Labour party does not have any policies for women either.

    Unemployment
    Mr. David Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many of those currently unemployed have been out of work longer than one year.
    Miss Widdecombe: The latest available figures show that in October 1994 there were 956,475 claimants who had been unemployed for over a year. That represents a fall of 11 per cent. compared with 12 months ago.
    Mr. Evans: I thank my hon. Friend for her reply. Does she agree that a good many of the long-term unemployed never intend to work again, ever? They are, in my words, layabouts—[Interruption.] Well, they work in the black economy and they draw benefit. People want to know when we are going to put a stop to that. I want to know when those long-term unemployed layabouts are going to have to do a job, day in, day out, in the community before they receive any taxpayers' money at all.
    Miss Widdecombe: The long-term unemployed who are genuinely seeking work are being helped, and will continue to be helped, by a wide range of Government initiatives including those expansions of initiatives that were announced in the Budget. For those unemployed, whether long term or short term, who are not actively seeking work, there are proposals, which will shortly be before the House, for the jobseeker's allowance which I hope will go some way towards satisfying my hon. Friend's worries.
    Mr. O'Hara: May I give the Minister a further opportunity to answer a straight question? How, on the measures that she has accepted, can she explain the difference between a drop of 200,000 in unemployed claimants and a rise of 30,000 in those employed?
    Miss Widdecombe: If only Opposition Members would learn that unemployment does not work on stock for stock; there are flows as well. If only the hon. Gentleman would learn how unemployment works, he might be able to answer his own question. One never knows.

    Training
    Mr. Connarty: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how much his Department is spending on training for work in 1994–95; and what the level of planned spending is in 1995–96 in today's prices.
    Mr. Paice: The figures for England were given earlier to the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) by my right hon. Friend.
    Mr. Connarty: Is the Minister willing to admit that the cut which was published in his own plans of 24.5 per cent. in training for work is only part of the overall cut, between now and the end of the published plans, of 12 per cent. or £245 million in education and training in the Department of Employment's budget? Is the Minister aware of the contradiction revealed in the latest skills survey—"Skill Needs in Britain—1994"—which shows that 11 per cent. of vacancies in Britain are difficult to fill and that that figure has risen from 5 per cent. in 1992 and
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    6 per cent. in 1993? The contradiction is that the Government are not serving the country's employers or the country's training needs.
    Mr. Paice: This Government believe in value for money. Whatever the problem, the Opposition want to throw more money at it. The Government's policy on training is quite clear: we are looking for better, higher outputs for less money. We will be saving the taxpayer £450 million and we will be getting more people back to work. That is in the best interests of the unemployed and of the taxpayer. That is what the Government believe is right and that obviously contradicts what the Opposition think.

    Unemployment
    Mr. Thurnham: To ask the Secretary of State for Employment by how much unemployment in the north-west changed during the period 1979 to 1984; and by how much it changed during the period 1974 to 1979.
    Mr. Oppenheim: Between 1974 and 1979, claimant unemployment in the north-west increased at a rate of 1,175 per month, nearly double the increase over the period under this Government from 1979 to 1994.
    Mr. Thurnham: Does my hon. Friend agree that the north-west can look forward to a future of falling unemployment under this Government's policies and that we should not cease to challenge socialist policies which saw unemployment in the north-west more than double in the four years from 1974 to 1979?
    Mr. Oppenheim: It is very good news that unemployment is now falling in the north-west. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Just as unemployment doubled under Labour in the 1970s, it would go up again if Labour was to impose its ludicrous minimum wage in respect of which the Opposition spokeswoman cannot even come to the House to tell us at what rate it would be introduced and what she would do about differentials.
    The minimum wage is a con on the less well-off to try to trick them into thinking that there is an easy, pat, quick-fix solution to low pay. There is not. The minimum wage would replace low pay with no pay.
    Mr. Flynn: Has the Minister noticed that Britain's second highest-paid civil servant, the head of the Central Statistical Office, said about the Government's employment and unemployment figures that nobody—nobody—in the country believes them? Why is that?
    Mr. Oppenheim: If the hon. Gentleman had read Mr. McLennan's remarks in full, he would have read that the gentleman in question said that he had full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the claimant count figures. The Trades Union Congress recently said exactly the same thing. I agree, though, that we would like more attention paid to the labour force survey. That is why we have increased its frequency from annually to quarterly. It is interesting that the labour force survey unemployment total is almost exactly the same as the claimant count total, which shows that there can be no fiddle in the claimant count total.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Ms Corston: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Ms Corston: Does the Prime Minister agree that it is totally unacceptable for the Government or for any individual Minister to hide behind Britain's laudable ban of the veal crate system while turning a blind eye to the annual export of hundreds of thousands of calves, knowing full well that they will spend their short lives in wooden boxes in the dark?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has done more than most people in this country to try to change the laws right across Europe to deal with veal. Both he and I would like to see less trade in live animals and more in carcase form. But, as the hon. Lady will know, there is a long tradition of Agriculture Ministers having farming interests, which they rightly stand back from when they are Agriculture Ministers. What the hon. Lady did not mention was that my right hon. Friend's farm is managed on a day-to-day basis by a farm management company headed by a Labour Front-Bench spokesman in the House of Lords.
    Mr. David Evans: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Evans: Is my right hon. Friend aware that Conservative Members want to wish him and his family a very happy and prosperous new year? Is it the Conservative party that wants to put VAT on school fees, split up the United Kingdom with devolution plans, or nationalise utilities under clause IV, or is it the lot opposite, led by Bambi, with his 60 quid-a-week haircut, who sends his son to a grant-maintained school when his party want to abolish them? Is there anything more dishonourable than that? I do not think so. [Interruption.]
    The Prime Minister: I can tell, Madam Speaker, that this is going to be an uncontroversial Session of Parliament. My hon. Friend leads us in that direction. Clearly, the policy-making activities of the principal opposition party are running into some difficulties at the moment. I do not think that many people are quite sure who these days is forming Labour policy on education, health, energy and other subjects. The closer one examines Labour policy, the more it falls apart. My hon. Friend should not object to that; he should lie back and enjoy it.
    Mr. Blair: Does the Prime Minister agree that any attempt by the rail regulator under privatisation to cut through-ticketing, with the result that people may have
    16
    to travel 50 miles to get a train ticket, would be utterly unacceptable, and will he, if necessary, intervene to stop such an attempt?
    The Prime Minister: As the Secretary of State for Transport said the other day, and as I am happy to reaffirm, we have repeatedly made clear our commitment to maintaining through-ticketing. Through-ticketing should continue to be available from a wide range of outlets, to meet passengers' needs. The regulator, like other regulators, is by law independent, but the Secretary of State has powers to give him guidance under the Railways Act 1993. The regulator is bound to take account of such guidance, but at this stage, prior to the issue of a consultation document, the question of guidance is entirely premature.
    Mr. Blair: If the Prime Minister has no power to prevent the regulator from introducing such an arrangement—what he has described is merely guidance—will he undertake that if the regulator makes such proposals he will direct the franchising director not to offer a franchise to any of the 25 companies unless it offers a complete through-ticket service?
    The Prime Minister: As I have told the right hon. Gentleman, I am at least as committed to through-ticketing as he is. He is trying yet again to have it both ways. The Labour party complains routinely that the Government should have more powers over the regulator, but if we had such direct powers it would complain about Government interference, as it did during the rail strike.
    Mr. Blair: I shall tell the Government what we complain of—the railway system being sold off instead of being used as a proper public service. If the Prime Minister cannot guarantee through-ticketing, and if he is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a privatisation that people do not want, when the public rightly fear that it will be used to produce the same pay excesses as exist in other privatised utilities, why does he not accept, as this country does, that our party's campaign to halt the privatisation is right, and that the railways should be retained as a proper integrated public service?
    The Prime Minister: If privatisation is as bad as the right hon. Gentleman says, why will he not commit himself to renationalisation of British Rail? After 50 years of nationalisation, is he really satisfied with the present rail service? Can he name any time at which the service was satisfactory? If not, why does he oppose changes that will make it satisfactory? The Labour party has opposed every privatisation. Let me remind the right hon. Gentleman what Labour said about other privatisations. It said that British Airways would be
    "the pantomime horse of capitalism if it is anything at all".
    British Airways is the most efficient airline in the world. I have a stack of similar quotations for the right hon. Gentleman, about every privatisation. Privatisation works; we are privatising rail and there will be a better service.
    Mr. Dover: What hope can the Prime Minister give to the oppressed people of Chechnya, in view of the determination of President Dudayev and of the Chechnen people?
    The Prime Minister: I do not think that anyone doubts that a tragedy has been taking place in Chechnya in recent

    17
    weeks. Chechnya is indisputably part of the Russian Federation, and the long-standing revolt that has taken place there under local leadership has posed serious problems. I share my hon. Friend's implicit concern about the way in which the problem has been handled in recent weeks and about the bombardment that has led to so many civilian casualties. As with other allies, we have expressed our concerns directly to the Russian Government. Most recently, the Foreign Secretary saw the Russian ambassador this morning.
    Mr. Beith: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Beith: Under this Government, can any Cabinet Minister claim that he is responsible only for the policy of his Department and not for its operational failings, however many there are and however many have been preceded by warnings from those in a position to know that things are going wrong? Is not good government about running things properly? What will happen to Ministers who have proved not to have done that?
    The Prime Minister: The Secretary of State concerned is responsible for the policy of a Department, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary made clear in the illustration to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred. Operational matters fall into a different category, as has been the case for many years. The right hon. Gentleman is clearly referring to recent gaol escapes, and he will know that during the past 20 or 30 years there have been a large number of incidents under Governments of both major parties, and also a Government involving the Liberal party. Such incidents have occurred without making necessary the resignation of the appropriate Secretary of State.
    Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Townsend: Recalling that neither my right hon. Friend nor myself voted for the Second Reading of the War Crimes Act 1991, and noting that the funding for the special war crimes unit at New Scotland Yard is to be wound up at the end of March, will my right hon. Friend consider drawing stumps on the whole grisly business? It must be perfectly obvious that not a single person will ever be successfully prosecuted under that expensive Act.
    The Prime Minister: It was recognised from the outset that the police investigations into serious crimes which were committed a long time ago would be difficult. I understand that the police investigations will be completed by the end of March this year. The decision therefore on whether or not to prosecute will be made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, who will be advised by the Director of Public Prosecutions. I prefer to await that advice before saying more.
    Mr. Janner: Does the Prime Minister agree that, in the matter of war crimes, we are talking about personal involvement in mass murder? As the House has repeatedly
    18
    approved the principle in the War Crimes Act, will he confirm that if—but only if—there is sufficient evidence against individuals of complicity in that murder, they will be prosecuted no matter how long they have managed to evade justice?
    The Prime Minister: I think that that was implicit in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) a moment ago, when I made clear that a decision on whether or not to prosecute will not be a political decision. The decision will be made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General upon the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
    Mr. Colin Shepherd: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Shepherd: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a full range of educational opportunity is of the utmost importance to the citizens of this country? Is not it clear from the utterances of the past few days that the old, nasty Labour party is waiting to leap out, given half a chance?
    The Prime Minister: I am not altogether sure that it has not already leapt out during the past few days. We have seen the quickest U-turn in history about a tax on school fees, the education spokesman unfortunately not being told what the education policies really are; and Opposition spokesmen in open disagreement about a graduate tax and a range of other totally and utterly vindictive education policies. Those policies will show everyone where the Labour party stands on equality of choice, opportunity and freedom.
    Mr. William O'Brien: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 10 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. O'Brien: Is the Prime Minister aware of the concern that has been expressed by many fire service authorities about reductions in their expenditure, which may bring about a danger to property and to life? May I warn him of the situation in West Yorkshire? There has been a £3.2 million cut in expenditure, which could mean a reduction of 116 firefighters in West Yorkshire. Will the Prime Minister take action to ensure that we have continuity of service which will help in the protection of property and life in West Yorkshire in particular, and across the country in general?
    The Prime Minister: Of course the fire service is immensely important. Of course we will make a judgment that we believe will ensure that it can be adequately available to all people who are likely to need it. I am not immediately familiar with the particular circumstances of West Yorkshire. It would be surprising were I to be so. I shall certainly ask my right hon. Friend to look particularly at that in the light of what the hon. Gentleman says.
    Mr. Kynoch: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the proposal for a Scottish Parliament put forward by the Labour party must inevitably lead to higher taxes and

    19
    costs for businesses, particularly in Scotland? Does he further agree that if that is so, it will inevitably be the first stage on the slippery slope towards the break-up of the United Kingdom—something which the Labour party seems to be intent on achieving?
    The Prime Minister: I fully understand the many people in Scotland and, indeed, in Wales, who believe that a tax-raising assembly may be of assistance to them. I passionately believe, in their interests, that that is a mistaken judgment. I do not believe that the degree of investment that has gone into Scotland and Wales would
    20
    continue if those investing there had the unique advantage of being more highly taxed than people in other parts of the United Kingdom. I see a great danger of businesses uprooting themselves and moving away from Scotland.
    I have seen no answers yet to the West Lothian question, which the Leader of the Opposition apparently failed to understand when he was asked about it at a press conference yesterday. I have no doubt that the sort of devolution proposed by the Labour party would do immense damage, first to the people of Scotland, secondly to the people of Wales—although they would apparently have a lesser form of devolution—and above all to everyone throughout the United Kingdom.

Fisheries Council
3.30 pm
Mr. David Harris(by private notice) asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to make a statement on the outcome of the European Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels on 22 December.
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. William Waldegrave): I represented the United Kingdom at the Fisheries Council on 19, 20 and, after a break, 22 December, assisted by my hon. Friend the Minister of State in my Department, my hon. and noble Friends the Under-Secretaries of State for Scotland and my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The main issue before the Council was a package of proposals designed to implement the integration of Spanish and Portuguese fishing into the common fisheries policy. The House will recall that discussions took place against the background that, under the terms of Spanish and Portuguese accession, which was supported by all parties in the House at the time, no special restrictions could apply to Spanish fishing in the so-called Irish box after 1995.
After lengthy discussions, the Council agreed that from 1 January 1996 Spanish vessels would continue to be totally excluded from the Irish sea and the Bristol channel. In addition, Spanish vessel numbers in that part of the box west of Scotland would be severely limited and, overall, the number of Spanish vessels fishing within the box could not exceed 40 at any one time. The Irish box thus continues as a special control area. The agreement does not have any effect on the existing exclusion of Spanish vessels from the North sea nor, indeed, on the principle of so-called relative stability for national quotas. Nothing in the deal that was agreed causes British fishermen to lose quota nor Spanish fishermen in total to gain any.
The Council rejected, at our insistence, the Commission's proposed over-bureaucratic effort control proposals, which had been widely criticised in the House. It was also agreed that member states would play the major role in defining how their fleets' effort should be controlled in the relevant sea areas, though with safeguards to prevent abuse. Given the position against which I had to negotiate, those agreements represented significant achievements. Nevertheless, since the Council felt unable to accept the exclusion of Spanish vessels from the celtic sea also, I decided to abstain on the final proposal, which was, therefore, adopted by qualified majority. Fisheries departments will be consulting the industry closely about the arrangements for implementing the agreement.
The Council also reached agreement on 1995 total allowable catches and quotas. The 1994 TACs for the North sea stocks jointly managed with Norway were rolled forward for three months to allow time for discussions with Norway. For the remaining stocks, the Commission proposed wide-ranging cuts in TACs. In a number of cases, it was possible for the Council to agree slightly higher TACs than the Commission had proposed. Those increases raised the value of our fleet's 1995 quotas by about £14 million at today's prices, compared with the Commission's original proposals.
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I fully understand the anxieties being expressed in my hon. Friend's constituency and elsewhere. He and his constituents will know the background against which the negotiations took place. I shall not try to pretend to the House that the final agreement was ideal, but we achieved most of our realistic negotiating objectives. At the beginning of the negotiations we were faced with a package which, although it might have been imposed on us, could not have been defended in the House. We achieved an outcome which, although less good than I would have wanted, is far better than many people inside or outside the industry predicted.
Mr. Harris: Does my right hon. Friend really appreciate the depth of justifiable anger felt on behalf of fishermen, especially in the south-west and in my constituency, about the way in which other member states and the Commission apparently ganged up against the United Kingdom in that final vote? Having fought so hard and so well on behalf of those fishermen, why on earth did he abstain rather than vote against this wretched package? Can he now hold out any hope of a compensatory package to those fishermen, especially one that would increase the amount of decommissioning money, because they surely deserve better than the deal that they got at the end of those Brussels talks?
Mr. Waldegrave: I and my hon. Friend the Minister of State genuinely understand the frustration and, in some cases, the anger of my hon. Friend's constituents. I think that my hon. Friend would confirm that, whatever is agreed, they are often driven by the fact that, although the agreements might be tolerable, they suspect and believe that Spanish fishermen do not keep to them, which is another matter.
I accept that this was a fine judgment. Faced with the fact that the other member states were giving us more things that we wanted right up to the end of the negotiations, especially on Scotland and Northern Ireland, which are also important in this matter, it was right to recognise the fact that we had come a very long way from the initial package. If I had voted against, it would have sent a signal that there was no point trying to provide reasonable benefits for the British in a negotiation of that kind because we would vote against it anyway. That was the reason why I did it. Having got the majority of what we wanted—although not all—it was right for me to take the position that I did.
Dr. Gavin Strang: Why has not the Minister admitted that the deal is a disaster for our fishing communities and represents a wholesale failure by the Government? Will he admit that he failed to meet the Government's negotiating aims, as set out by the Minister of State in October 1993, when he said that it was the Government's objective that
"Spanish and Portuguese fishing activities should be confined as closely as possible to their current pattern"
and that there should be no access to the Irish box? Will he confirm that the stocks in question are under immense pressure and that there should be less and not more fishing effort to conserve them? The fishing areas to which Spanish vessels will have new access stretch from the south-west of England right up to the north of Scotland and take in most of the Irish box. Will he acknowledge that those stocks are crucial to communities such as Newlyn and Falmouth in the south-west and to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland?

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Cannot the Minister understand that it is no use him coming here—I address this remark to his hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), too—and saying that he was outvoted? The Government have had since 1985, when the Spanish terms of accession were agreed, to secure support in Europe for a just deal. He needed only to secure the support of two other member states, including a large one such as Germany or Italy, to block that deal. While the Government may have accepted the agreement, the Labour party has not. Alongside the fishing communities, we shall campaign against it.
Mr. Waldegrave: I remind the hon. Gentleman of two matters. First, between 1974 and 1979, when he was responsible for these matters, and before the days of qualified majority voting, the Labour party achieved no change whatever in the common fisheries policy. We had to wait until my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Walker achieved improvements in 1982, so the hon. Gentleman should be a little careful. Secondly, he seems temporarily to have forgotten that he supported accession. The Labour spokesman at the time, the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), said:
"The Opposition do not welcome accession blindly, ignorantly or oblivious of the difficulties and anxieties."—[Official Report, 10 December 1985; Vol. 88, c. 883.]
They knew exactly what it meant and they supported it. The hon. Gentleman now conveniently forgets that fact in a burst of rhetoric.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that stocks are under pressure—certain stocks are—and we shall hear from Sir Crispin Tickell's panel next week on that matter. Incidentally, the panel argues strongly for the maintenance and improvement of a common fisheries policy to manage stocks properly. The original position that we faced would have been intolerable. In entering the negotiations, my hon. Friend and I set out the maximalist position. If the hon. Gentleman negotiates by setting out in public his bottom line first, that is presumably why he and his hon. Friends achieved no improvements whatever when they were negotiating.
Although less good than I would ideally have liked, the deal maintains an Irish box and discrimination against Spanish fishermen. It has not, therefore, been welcomed in Spanish fishing communities, who know that they got much less than they wanted.
Dame Peggy Fenner: My right hon. Friend will understand the concern always expressed about enforcing the rules. At the outcome of the Fisheries Council, what steps is he taking to ensure that Spanish fishermen play by the rules?
Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is on to the real issues, compared with the rhetoric that we heard from the Opposition Front Bench. The fact that a Commission inspectorate exists is another result of a British initiative under my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Walker. We obtained from the Commission the great improvement that the Spanish must now report back annually to the Council of Ministers to account for themselves. That will make a big difference. We must look at enforcement arrangements in Britain because another gain that we made was that coastal
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states have prime responsibility for enforcement off their shores. We shall therefore have the duty and right to do that, and we must ensure that we do it properly.
Mr. Paul Tyler: Is the Minister aware that his excuse to the House this afternoon for not voting against a deal which he admits is unsatisfactory will baffle fishermen in the south-west, who feel betrayed, because it has given the wrong message that the British Government do not take that issue seriously? Having said that the deal discriminates against a group of fishermen around the western and south-western coasts, does he accept that it is now time to introduce a package for a modernisation and decommissioning scheme so that we invest in that industry in order to compete against the Spanish? The Spanish Government have invested vast quantities of our money in just such a scheme in their industry.
Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is right about decommissioning. We have a considerable package and, once we are near the end of the expenditure which we presently have in hand, we shall review it to see whether it is adequate. We shall return to that matter in due course because we have obligations to meet by the end of 1996. I have already told my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) why, although it may have been a pleasing and cheap gesture to vote against, it would not have been in the best interests of fishermen in this country if, having won considerable concessions, we still decided to play to the gallery at home without acknowledging that we had won benefits. That is not a good way of negotiating for the future and would have been shortsighted and irresponsible.
Mr. Raymond S. Robertson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, despite speculation and scaremongering to the contrary, he has reinforced the position that Spanish fishing vessels will not be allowed into the vital fisheries of the North sea? Does he agree that that is yet another example of the fact that Scotland's interests are best served by being a full and equal partner in the United Kingdom?
Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is entirely right. It is hugely important to the British—perhaps in particular to the Scottish, but also to the English fishing industry and that in Northern Ireland—for the North sea ban on the Spaniards to continue, and it will. We now have them excluded from the Irish sea, the North sea and the Bristol channel. There is a continuance of the Irish box. That is why so many commentators in the Spanish fishing areas, who are doubtless under the same sort of pressures as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives, are saying—and I quote from one—that this was
"state terrorism against the Basque fishermen by the Spanish",
who had conceded so much to the British.
Mr. Calum Macdonald: Will the Minister confirm that Scottish fishermen's organisations have already seen notices stating that they might incur further effort limitation as a result of the package? Does not he understand the anger of hard-pressed Scottish fishermen who will have to further limit their fishing simply to allow for Spanish access? Will he at least say that there will not be any effort limitation within the 12-mile limit because the Spanish will not be given access within that limit and that, therefore, it would not make sense to have effort limitation there?
Mr. Waldegrave: I can confirm that, on the 12-mile limit, another improvement on the original CFP which was won by the Government, there is no change. There is no extra effort limitation if there is no increase in effort. That seemed to be a reasonable position for us to take, and it is a huge improvement over the original proposals, which would have tangled everybody in bureaucracy all the time irrespective of whether there was an increase in effort. The arrangements that we made whereby fishing in the Scottish part, the northern part, of the Irish box is limited to the proportion of quota that can be caught there by Spanish fishermen is a great improvement for Scotland. It is another of the benefits that we obtained in the last hour or two of the negotiations and which influenced my final decision.
Sir Peter Emery: Will my right hon. Friend go further than the answer that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Medway (Dame P. Fenner) about the method of control? Will he make it clear that the Navy will look further at the ways in which control can be carried forward? Will he ensure that there are negotiations with local fishermen to determine methods by which that control can be carried out? Fishermen are mainly concerned that there will be cheating by the other side.
Mr. Waldegrave: I agree with my hon. Friend that that is one of their principal concerns. In taking forward the mechanisms of what has to be carried through, it is absolutely essential that we consult the industry closely. If necessary, we shall also look at the effort that we expend via the Royal Navy on enforcement because that is a vital part of the package.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: I congratulate the Minister on his ability, with his fine All Souls brain, to put the Spanish case so much better than they could when he returned from the Council. Will he will now turn that same intellectual subtlety to the problem of how Spanish vessels can be added to the already over-large fleets which are pressing on the shrinking stock in that area without some subsequent reduction in British effort?
Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is the only Opposition Member who has the right to say what he has been saying because he was the only Opposition Member to argue against accession, on fisheries grounds, at the time. The other Member who raised the issue at the time is now the distinguished diarist of The Times, Mr. Matthew Parris.
No increase in fishing effort is involved: there is no increase whatever in quotas. Under accession, the Spanish had the right to complete access to all the waters without discrimination. They have not got that, and it caused the Spanish newspaper El Mundo to state that
"it is a long way from the full participation in the CFP sought by the Spanish Government. In the end, a Solomon's solution has been reached, which might be acceptable if González had not 'sold' the idea of Spain's access to all the Community fisheries as something which would not be foresworn."
He has foresworn it.
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The agreement was a compromise which was not wholly satisfactory to us. I should have liked more, but against the background, which the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) knows well, it was a pretty good deal.
Mr. John Biffen: Is it not clear that the House is now beginning fully to understand the difficulties that arise when European Union decisions are resolved by majority voting? Does my right hon. Friend agree that at the intergovernmental conference in 1996 there must be a clear statement of British policy that the present scope of majority voting will not be extended?
Mr. Waldegrave: There is a paradox here, is there not? We were keen on majority voting to establish the single market, which is a huge benefit to Britain. Incidentally, it also benefits British fishing. My right hon. Friend knows much better than I do that huge amounts of the fish landed at Newlyn go to Spain. Some £100 million worth goes there at much higher prices than would be available to our fishermen if our market was enclosed.
There are two sides to the question. The single market works in favour of our fishermen, in terms of the prices that they obtain and access to markets to sell their fish. I am not saying that the common fisheries policy has not meant costs for them, but Community membership has overall benefits for them.
Mr. Nick Ainger: Does the Minister accept that fishermen in south-west England and Wales will greet with disbelief his claim that there will be no long-term impact on quota? If 40 Spanish vessels per day are allowed into parts of the Irish box, there will clearly be a significant decrease in stocks.
Will the Minister recognise that one of the reasons why our European partners did not support Britain was our total failure in the past to meet the requirements of our multi-annual guidance programme by cutting our own fishing effort? Will he recognise that one way in which to deal with the long-term problem is to institute an increased decommissioning programme in south-west England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. We have not yet reached the end of the decommissioning period, and we shall review it to ensure that we make the necessary progress. We have already committed considerable sums.
If we had not limited the number of ships with access to the Irish box to 40, the full 220 ships in the Spanish fleet—or whatever the figure is—could have been there. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that we have made considerable gains. If we had adopted a policy of simply standing back, vetoing everything and not taking part in negotiations, our fishermen might have faced the position that I have described.
If we had started from a completely different point—if the voting system had been completely different, and if our history since 1972 had been completely different—I would doubtless have been able to come back with something else. I believe, however, that—confronted with the existing position—I secured two thirds or more of what was a rationally possible objective for any negotiation: much more than was secured by any of the

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colleagues of the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Ainger) between 1974 and 1979, when no changes whatever were made in the common fisheries policy.
Mr. Keith Mans: My right hon. Friend will be well aware of the relief felt in Fleetwood at the continued exclusion of Spanish vessels from the Irish sea. Does he agree, however, that the important point is that quotas have not changed? He managed to achieve an increase in our enforcement around our coasts. That holds out the best prospect of keeping fishing effort within the stocks available round those coasts, rather than providing some vessels with specific access to particular seas.
Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is the point that I do not think the hon. Member for Pembroke took on board. Quotas—overall controls on the amount of fish caught—are a crucial aspect, as is making those quotas stick.
Once a common fisheries policy was established, it was at least theoretically inevitable that there would be free movement of fishing boats throughout the waters. Although we have limited that in relation to Spain, what matters is that proper quotas, properly policed, exist to protect fish stocks. We shall have to do better in future, and provide a better and better policed common fisheries policy.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Does the Minister accept that it is disingenuous to pretend that we shall be able to police the arrangements better than the Commission has policed them in the past? The Minister was not prepared to make a clear commitment in the House today in terms of money and resources for precisely that job. His shameful capitulation will wipe out many fishing groups—not only individual fishermen, but individual companies in the south-west—and they will be unable to accept what he has said. If they do not accept the arrangements, anarchy will follow. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to take responsibility.
Mr. Waldegrave: I hope that, in her search for soundbites and rhetoric, the hon. Lady will consider this. The Labour Government did not have to face qualified majority voting, and they got zilch: they got absolutely nothing. I think that it is irresponsible to talk as the hon. Lady did.
Apart from the rhetoric, however, the hon. Lady is on to a real point: policing is crucial. We are now talking about what will happen at the beginning of 1996, and we shall consider the resources that we have and the need for enforcement over the next 12 months.
Mr. David Porter: Does not my right hon. Friend recognise that everything that he has said in his statement reinforces the view that the common fisheries policy has failed and that, instead of worrying about the position we started from, we should ditch it as soon as possible and start to regain the sovereignty of the seas?
Mr. Waldegrave: In all these issues, one of the least satisfactory things is to raise expectations that cannot be met. None of the main parties in the House—not the Labour party, of which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) is a member, nor the Liberal party—is committed to the destruction of the common fisheries
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policy, involving, I guess, withdrawal from the European Community, although the separate party below the Gangway may be committed to that. That is not a plausible thing to offer to people. What it is plausible to offer to people is a better CFP that is better policed. If we did not have the CFP, we would have to invent co-operation with our neighbours to protect fish stocks because fish stocks do not stop at lines drawn on maps. One must protect them co-operatively and one must have co-operative policing arrangements, which are beginning to be developed under the aegis of the European Commission and under the national enforcement arrangements of the riparian states—countries that have coastal waters.
Mr. Michael Connarty: I do not know whether the Minister has read the report of the debate in the European Standing Committee where concerns were expressed about the location and the number of fisheries protection vessels. Will he introduce to the House specific proposals, because we have vague talk at the moment, on how this country will take responsibility and beef up its fisheries protection vessels? Although they do a good job, there are not enough of them. Will he consult the fisheries organisations which, as we did in Committee, expressed concerns about the location of those vessels? They do not think that they cover the fisheries properly.
Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Member is on to the real point. We shall of course consult the industry organisations and we have been consulting them throughout. Many of their leaders were present in Brussels during the long negotiation period, and very boring it must be have been for them, too. We shall consider whether the effort expended by our admirable fisheries protection vessels is adequate. We have 12 months to do that and we shall discuss the matter both with the industry and with the Royal Navy.
Mr. John Whittingdale: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his success in keeping Spanish fishing boats out of the North sea is warmly welcomed by fishermen in Essex and on the east coast? Does he accept that the criticism levied by the Spanish press at their own Ministers is perhaps a better tribute to his negotiating stance than some of the comments made by Labour Members?
Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is right. One of the Spanish fishing leaders said of his Government:
"If they were going to give up like this there was no need to go to Brussels to negotiate. I thought they were going to be firm this time, that they were going to defend our fishing industry to the hilt as the President of the Government Felipe González promised, even to the extent of vetoing the enlargement of the EU. That is not what happened."
Galician fishermen spoke in exactly the same terms. They considered the outcome to be unacceptable and the discrimination against the Spanish fleet in relation to the Irish box to be intolerable. What my hon. Friend says is therefore right. Some of the perception of this matter depends on from which side of the water one looks at it.
Mr. Tony Banks: On behalf of the fishermen of Newham—[interruption.] Did the Secretary of State hear the item on the "Today" programme this morning about illegal fishing by European Union boats off the west African coast? What steps is he taking to end that practice? When does he think

29
that the fishermen of Europe will understand that, if they overfish, they will kill off not only fish stocks but their jobs as well?
Mr. Waldegrave: I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman says. At one time, I compared this matter with arguments in the wild west of America about who was going to shoot the last buffalo. There will not be any fish unless there is proper conservation of stocks. I heard the item to which the hon. Member referred and I shall discuss with my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for fisheries whether the British can make some specific contribution to the issue.
Sir James Kilfedder: There is no doubt that fishermen are demoralised and angry. Will the Government therefore introduce generous decommissioning proposals?
Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is right that we must have an adequate decommissioning programme. We have money in the budget for that. The grants are being taken up and we shall consider the matter before the end of the period because we have to meet obligations by the end of 1996. We shall reconsider the programme to see whether it needs any additions.
Mr. Gary Streeter: May I add my voice to those who are calling for much tougher monitoring of the activities of the Spanish fleet generally? May I encourage my right hon. Friend to ignore completely the comments from the Liberal Democrats, whose policy is that every decision in Europe should be made by qualified majority voting? We would have decisions such as this imposed on us week after week.
Mr. Waldegrave: It is a little rum to be criticised by Liberal Democrat spokesmen when one is outvoted on something because we know that they want to abolish the veto in the places where it remains. That seems very eccentric and my hon. Friend is on to a strong point. He is also on to a strong point, as others have been, in relation to the policing of all this and the problem of history, which is something that has had to be faced by not only our fishermen, but I think that there will be reports from Canadian and Norwegian fishing waters about the
30
behaviour of some of the Spanish trawlers. That is the real problem to add to the agreement and that is why we must look at enforcement properly.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Why should the Minister expect anybody to believe that the Government can police the seas when they cannot police the prisons?
Mr. Waldegrave: I am tempted to say that the matter of fisheries protection is in the hands of the Royal Navy.
Mr. John Townend: Does my right hon. Friend accept that there was considerable relief in Bridlington that he managed to negotiate to keep the Spaniards out of the North sea? We are grateful for that. Does he also accept that the present policy has failed because we have had quotas year after year and, if the policy had succeeded, fish stocks would have been recovering? Could there be a reason other than overfishing for the declining stocks in the North sea? Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is likely that there is a connection between the enormous increase in the seal population and the reduction in the stocks of cod? Is my right hon. Friend prepared to consider starting culling and putting the interests of the fishermen before those of the animal rights brigade?
Mr. Waldegrave: We have to stand on the scientific advice in these matters or we are lost. The main issues in the North sea have been overfishing—there is no question about that—and the need to keep a careful eye on the sea's pollution status, which I believe is now improving but which has probably contributed to the damage in the past. At the end of the day, we cannot get away from the fact that, as in the catastrophic situation that occurred off Newfoundland, overfishing has usually been the cause of a collapse of the fish stocks.

Prison Service
4.2 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about three recent events—the escape of three prisoners from Her Majesty's Prison Parkhurst, the disturbances at Her Majesty's Prison Everthorpe and the death of Frederick West at Her Majesty's Prison Birmingham. I propose to deal with each of those separate events in chronological order.
As the House will know, Frederick West was found hanging in his cell by prison officers at Winson Green prison in Birmingham at about 1 o'clock on the afternoon of 1 January. He was pronounced dead by the medical officer at 1.40 pm. He had been at the prison since 13 May. Throughout that time, the extent of his supervision was based on advice from two qualified psychiatrists and prison officers. He had on two occasions—13–14 May and 1–4 August—been under special observation in view of the assessed risk that he might do himself harm. Apart from those periods, he was subject to the observation appropriate to an inmate of his security category. He was seen daily by a doctor, including on the day of his death, when his behaviour did not give any cause for concern.
The inquest into Frederick West's death opened on 6 January, and it will be for the coroner to determine the cause of death. An internal Prison Service inquiry has been conducted. Its findings will be made available to the coroner.
I refer now to the disturbances at Everthorpe prison on Humberside. On the evening of 2 January, 68 prisoners on C wing refused to return to their cells after association and staff were forced to withdraw from the wing. Some prisoners broke through into the adjoining D wing. A barricade was erected to prevent staff from entering from the main prison corridor and some damage was done.
Other prisoners at the establishment played no part in the disturbances and by early morning half the prisoners on C wing had returned to their cells. Control and restraint teams were deployed shortly after 2.30 that morning to regain control, which was achieved just before 3.30 am with no injuries to staff or prisoners. Sixty-seven prisoners were transferred out of the prison during the morning of 3 January.
The prison was run as normally as possible during the day of 3 January. At about 7.30 that evening a member of staff was assaulted on B wing and prisoners on A wing indicated that they would refuse to return to their cells after evening association. For their safety, staff withdrew from A and B wings, which were then secured to prevent any possible breakout. At 1 am, control and restraint teams were deployed to regain control. B wing was secured a quarter of an hour later and A wing just over an hour later.
The member of staff who had been injured in the initial disturbance was taken to an outside hospital. He has now been discharged. There were no other staff injuries, but a number of prisoners sustained minor injuries. One hundred and twenty-four additional prisoners were transferred to other prisons, leaving 68 prisoners at Everthorpe.
The internal inquiry report has not yet been completed, but it has emerged that, while there was no single cause of the disturbances, the governor's determined efforts to
32
curb the misuse of drugs in the establishment were an important factor. Tackling the drug problem in our prisons is a difficult task, but it is something that we must do. We cannot allow prisoners to deflect us from that task. Governors will always have my full support in carrying out that vital job. When the report is available, I shall place a summary of the findings and the conclusions in the Library of the House, together with a report of the action that is being taken in response.
Two of the wings at Everthorpe are already back in use and the remaining two will be ready for occupation next Monday. The cost of repairs is estimated at £130,000.
I am sure that the House will join me in condemning the behaviour of those prisoners involved in the disturbances and in congratulating Prison Service staff on the professional way in which they brought both disturbances to a speedy conclusion. The injuries sustained by one officer are a timely reminder of the difficulties and dangers faced by prison staff as they do their jobs. I am also very grateful to the police and other emergency services for their key role in bringing those disturbances to an end.
I deal now with the most serious event—the escape from Parkhurst prison on 3 January of two category A prisoners, Rose and Williams, and one category B prisoner, Rodger. At about 6 pm on 3 January, a group of 31 prisoners—including the three who subsequently escaped—were taken to the gym. At 7 pm the group were returned to their wings. Just after 8 pm a dog patrol discovered a hole in an inner security fence and a makeshift ladder leaning against the perimeter wall beyond. The alarm was raised and emergency procedures put into operation.
Richard Tilt, the Director of Security of the Prison Service, has been carrying out an urgent inquiry and last night I received his preliminary conclusions. They indicate that the three prisoners made good their escape using a copied key to open a door and gate. They then made their way to the welding workshop, using the key to open another gate en route and two more gates in the workshop. Once they were in the workshop, a ladder was assembled and tools and other escape equipment gathered.
As the House will know, all three prisoners were recaptured on Sunday 8 January and hon. Members will wish to join me in praising the success of the police operation. In their searches, the police were greatly assisted by the public and the House will, I know, wish to pay tribute to the islanders who displayed their characteristic fortitude throughout a very difficult period.
Mr. Tilt's inquiry highlights very serious deficiencies in procedural and physical security at Parkhurst. There were serious failures at local level by both management and some individual officers in carrying out basic security procedures in accordance with the Prison Service's own written instructions. Certain specific lapses on the night in question contributed significantly both to the failure to prevent the escape and to the length of time that elapsed before its discovery. That that could happen so soon after the publication of the Woodcock report into Whitemoor and so soon after the director general gave a clear and repeated message to governors and staff that security procedures must be followed is a cause for dismay.
Mr. Tilt also draws attention to the effect on security at Parkhurst of the extensive building works that have been under way since 1990. He considers that the decision made in 1990 to continue to hold category A prisoners at

33
the prison without additional security measures was mistaken. But he also concludes that none of the causes of the escape can be directly attributed to the rebuilding programme. In his view, although the capacity of local management to ensure that correct security systems and procedures were in place and being implemented effectively was reduced, the very existence of the rebuilding programme should have emphasised the need for strict adherence to basic security procedures.
The following remedial action has already been taken or is now being taken to improve security. It includes better monitoring of the movement of prisoners, especially the high-risk category A prisoners, and better supervision of their activities, adequate training of staff in the emergency control room, the presence of a governor at all times until prisoners are locked up at the end of the day, an increased dog team, improved lighting and cameras, the replacement of all compromised locks and additional alarm systems—[Interruption.]
Madam Speaker: Order. The House must come to order. These are important matters and the House must listen to the statement by the Secretary of State. If not, I shall find it difficult to call hon. Members who are barracking from sedentary positions.
Mr. Howard: I have outlined the immediate action that has been taken at Parkhurst. As the House knows, Sir John Learmont is already reviewing physical security and security procedures throughout the Prison Service in England and Wales, and Sir John, accompanied by Sir John Woodcock, who reported on events at Whitemoor and who is acting as his assessor, will visit Parkhurst this week. I have asked them to carry out an independent assessment of events at Parkhurst. They will have available to them the report made by Mr. Tilt, which they will be able to take into account. In view of the detailed information about security at Parkhurst in Mr. Tilt's report, it would not be appropriate for me to publish it. However, the examination of it by Sir John Learmont will ensure that it is independently reviewed. Sir John Learmont and Sir John Woodcock will not be bound by it and the scope of their inquiry will not be limited in any way. It will be open to them to bring forward proposals for early action without waiting for their formal report to me. The findings of their report will be published.
A separate disciplinary investigation into events at Parkhurst will commence as soon as the relevant police inquiries are complete. Two other actions are being taken. The present governor is today being removed from his duties at Parkhurst. Pending the outcome of a disciplinary investigation and any subsequent proceedings, he will not run any other prison in the Prison Service. When he has completed any assistance that he needs to give to the various inquiries now in hand, he will take up non-operational duties elsewhere. Six members of staff, including one of governor grade, will also be temporarily transferred to duties at other prisons. Both those actions are without prejudice to the outcome of the disciplinary investigation.
I refer now to my personal responsibilities as Home Secretary. I have made it repeatedly clear that I am personally accountable to this House for the Prison Service. I also have full responsibility for all policy decisions relating to the service. In his report, Mr. Tilt has not indicated any policy decision of mine that can be held
34
to have caused in any way the breakout from Parkhurst. It will, of course, be open to Sir John Learmont to look at the issue afresh.
However, that is not the end of my responsibilities. It is also my clear duty to respond promptly to warnings about prison security. I can tell the House that I did, indeed, receive one warning about security at Parkhurst. Judge Stephen Tumim wrote to the director general on Friday 7 October to express his concern about the following aspects of security at Parkhurst: searching of cells, the metal detector portal, the operation of the X-ray machine in the gatelodge, supervision of visits and staff reluctance to confront visitors. I am placing a copy of Judge Tumim's letter in the Library of the House. Immediately on receiving that letter, I spoke to the Director General of the Prison Service and asked for a full report. I was subsequently assured by the director general on the basis of advice from the governor that all Judge Tumim's recommendations had been implemented.
It has also been suggested that I was warned of the need to install geophones. I received no such warning. At the time of the escape, geophones were in fact being installed around the perimeter fence at Parkhurst and will be in operation by April at the latest, when the relevant building work will be complete. The decision to install them was taken in April 1994. The prison service decided not to install geophones in the prison earlier because, as Ministers made clear at the time, the building work would have severely limited their effectiveness. It was the impact of those building works, which will enhance security, which dictated the timing of the installation.
Recent events are bound to have affected public confidence in the Prison Service and it will not be easy to repair the damage that they have done to its reputation. That damage can be repaired only by finding out exactly what went wrong in each of those events and taking all the action that is necessary to put things right. The inquiries that have been established and the general review of security under Sir John Learmont will identify what went wrong. I am determined to take the action that is needed to put things right and I am accountable to this House for that action.
Prisons are a vital part of any system of criminal justice. Prisoners have a right to be treated decently and we must do what we can to try to rehabilitate them. But all prisoners are in prison because a court has put them there to be punished for crimes that they have committed. That is why I want austere conditions in prisons. That is why I want privileges to be earned, not handed down as rights. That is why I want prisoners who have misbehaved to be properly disciplined for what they have done. The first duty of the Prison Service is to keep prisoners in custody. That must underline all its work. We must all learn the lessons that can be learned from those events and do everything possible to prevent them happening again.
Mr. Jack Straw: Does not the Secretary of State understand that he has just made a statement to the House that wholly fails to meet public anxieties about the lamentable sequence of events that have beset the Prison Service in the three short weeks since he last had to make a statement to the House on the state of that service? During that period, Frederick West has been found dead in Winson Green prison, there have been riots on two successive nights at Everthorpe prison and three highly dangerous prisoners have escaped from Parkhurst.

35
The seriousness of the escape from Parkhurst cannot be overstated. The public were put at enormous risk and it was with great relief that we all learnt that the men had been recaptured without injury to the public. I pay my own tribute to the police, to the prison officers and to the public on the Isle of Wight who were involved in the five days' search and above all, to the bravery of the special constable and the dog handler who arrested Williams.
I also wish to put on record our unqualified condemnation of the behaviour of the inmates who rioted at Everthorpe gaol and our tribute to the courage and tenacity of the prison staff and the police who had to deal with those two riots.
All that has come on top of the escape from Whitemoor prison last year and the catalogue of failure in the management of the Prison Service which was unearthed by the Woodcock inquiry. Does not the Home Secretary accept that he stands accused today of gross incompetence in the execution of his responsibilities, for the Prison Service, to the public and to the House?
First, does the Home Secretary accept that he personally and repeatedly failed properly to act on warnings that had been made about security problems in Parkhurst and Whitemoor by the—[Interruption.] no, no—by the board of visitors and the chief inspector of prisons? While the Home Secretary acknowledged today that the chief inspector of prisons, Judge Tumim, warned him in a note sent in early October of grave security problems at Parkhurst, does not he accept that, had proper action been taken on those warnings then, as Judge Tumim made plain on "The World at One" yesterday, the escapes could not have taken place?
Can the Home Secretary deny that his Department was warned for years by the board of visitors and the governor that Parkhurst required an electronic alarm system in its perimeter walls and fences which, I understand, all other high-security gaols have and that, had that system already been installed, it is highly probable that the escape would have been noticed immediately and not after a delay of two hours?
Secondly, is not it the case, as I shall demonstrate to the House, that the Secretary of State has compounded his failure to act on those warnings by a pattern of evasion and misinformation? Does he now acknowledge that he was wrong to claim, as he did in the Daily Mail last Thursday, that all Judge Tumim's recommendations on searching have been fully implemented? I note that in his statement today, all the Secretary of State said was that he had told the director general to ensure that the warnings were implemented and followed through and that he had been assured that they had. However, last Thursday the Secretary of State made categorical statements to the Daily Mail that those warnings had been acted on.
With regard to Whitemoor, does the Secretary of State now accept that what he told the House on 19 December about the contents of the 1992 and 1993 reports of the board of visitors at Whitemoor prison was demonstrably inaccurate and wrong? With regard to the 1992 report, the Secretary of State will recall that when I challenged him on whether he had followed up the warnings in the report about security, he said:
"The 1992 report made no reference to security whatsoever."
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I have a copy of the 1992 report with me. Security is mentioned twice on page 2 alone. Even more significantly, page 32 of the report contains specific recommendations, addressed to the Secretary of State, about the need for him to ensure that the searching of all visitors to the prison was tightened. The report states:
"In our opinion, all visitors to prisons should be searched as a routine."
As a failure to search visitors properly was one of the major security lapses identified in the Woodcock report after the IRA prisoners had escaped, how on earth could the Secretary of State claim in the House on 19 December that the board of visitors report contained
"no reference to security whatsoever."—[Official Report, 19 December 1994; Vol. 251, c. 1403.]
when demonstrably it contained a series of recommendations about security?
As for the 1993 report, the Secretary of State again implied in his earlier response to me that the security concerns in the 1993 report were only about the amount of possessions in cells and that those concerns had been dealt with by an addendum from the board of visitors submitted to him a few months later.
I have a copy of the addendum and the 1993 report here. The report contains a catalogue of complaints about security, not just about possessions in cells. It includes a charge that prison staff were being sent out of the prison on shopping trips not just to purchase
"Cromer crabs, fresh salmon and budgie seeds"
but, most alarmingly of all, to purchase "special hobby tools". We all know to what use the hobby tools were put in the hobby room by the IRA prisoners. The addendum, which I have seen, was just two pages long, and it did not deal with the majority of those security complaints, as Mrs. Paddy Seligman, then chairman of the board of visitors who wrote those reports, has made crystal clear in a letter that she wrote to the Secretary of State a week ago.
Does not the Secretary of State recognise that, whatever his intentions may have been when he made those statements on 19 December, many right hon. and hon. Members will have been wholly misled by what he said about the contents of those reports, and that he now owes the House an apology and an explanation of his lack of candour?
Thirdly, does the Secretary of State deny that he has continued to refuse to accept proper responsibility for this saga of ineptitude? Everyone except the right hon. and learned Gentleman is responsible for what has occurred. This Home Secretary is the "Not me, guy" Home Secretary.
Fourthly, since the breakdown in security at Parkhurst, as Judge Tumim made clear, is at least as grave as that at Whitemoor, on any scale, why has the Secretary of State continued to refuse to establish a wholly separate and fully independent inquiry into Parkhurst, as he did within 24 hours at Whitemoor? Does not he recognise that it was wholly inappropriate to put the director of security, Mr. Richard Tilt, in charge of the investigation, as any thorough examination by Mr. Tilt would have to involve the conduct of his immediate superior, Mr. Derek Lewis, the Director General of the Prison Service, and of the Secretary of State himself? In asking Mr. Tilt to conduct the investigation, he was effectively making the Prison Service judge and jury in its own cause.

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Will the Home Secretary acknowledge also that the Learmont inquiry, which he announced on 19 December and which we supported, was a general one into the physical security of prisons throughout the country and that it cannot be a separate, free-standing inquiry? Indeed, I note that the Secretary of State was very careful not to suggest that the Learmont inquiry into general physical security would be an independent inquiry into events and into his responsibility at Parkhurst. Instead, he has very carefully not used the words "an independent, separate inquiry", but an "independent assessment of events"—a very different kettle of fish.
Moreover, confidence in that independent assessment of events cannot but be undermined by the precipitate decision of the Secretary of State to seek out and, in effect, discipline the prison governor and six staff before a proper independent investigation has taken place. Does not the Secretary of State's refusal to set up a fully independent inquiry show that he has much to hide, and speak volumes about his own culpability?
Fifthly, does the Secretary of State accept that policy decisions made by Ministers have a direct bearing on the crisis of confidence that Judge Tumim, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, now says is overwhelming the Prison Service? Why does not he recognise that his policy of privatisation and of the market testing of the Prison Service is wholly wrong in principle and has sapped the morale of the service? As the general secretary of the Prison Governors Association said at the weekend,
"month to month changes in government policy"
are adding enormously to the burden and stress of all those involved in running the service.
Does not the Secretary of State now recognise that the so-called clear distinction that he has made between policy and operations in the Prison Service has no foundation whatever in reality and that, by maintaining that fiction, he continues only to evade his own responsibility? Did not the Director General of the Prison Service let the cat out of the bag at the Prison Service conference last year? He said that
"if it's difficult it's classified as operational."
Is not another example of the use that the Home Secretary has made of that operational device the fact that he sought to rely on the verdict of his subordinate, Mr. Richard Tilt, to escape any responsibility for the events and circumstances surrounding the Parkhurst escape?
Will the Home Secretary now accept that he must take three steps to restore confidence in the prison system? First, he must abandon market testing and privatisation of the service—that is what the former Conservative Prime Minister called for at the weekend. Secondly, he should sit down with governors and prison officers to agree a programme for restoring morale and good order in the Prison Service. Thirdly, he must face his responsibilities for the good management of the service as well as for its policy, and make himself properly answerable to the House.
Does not the whole of the Home Secretary's statement serve only to underline what everyone in the country now knows—that the conduct of his office is characterised by consistent evasion of responsibility, exceeded only by his readiness to scapegoat others? His failure properly to direct and manage the Prison Service and to keep dangerous criminals under lock and key represents a
38
failure in one of the most basic duties of any Government—to protect the safety and security of the public.
Mr. Howard: Of course, I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the seriousness of the events; no one takes such matters more seriously than I do. I am also grateful to him for his tributes to the work of the police and of the Prison Service.
I shall deal with each of the hon. Gentleman's criticisms in the order in which he made them. I do not accept for one moment the allegation, in which there is no substance, that I have failed to act on security warnings. I have set out and clearly explained the action that I took when I received the warning from Judge Tumim. Furthermore, the Tilt report does not conclude that the matters identified by Judge Tumim, important though they are, were in any way related to the escape from Parkhurst. I have also explained clearly the action taken on the installation of geophones. While building work, itself related to security, is going on, it does not make sense to install geophones because they cannot work effectively in those circumstances.
It is a measure of the desperation of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) that he has sought to reopen matters related to Whitemoor. I do not accept for one moment the construction that he put on the answers that I gave on that subject. Moreover, it was open to all those concerned with the board of visitors and its reports to put their concerns to Sir John Woodcock in the context of his inquiry into what happened at Whitemoor. Presumably the matters in question were put to him.
No one has suggested that Sir John's report pulled any punches, and if he had thought that there was any significance in what appeared in the reports by the board of visitors, he would have referred to them in that context in his report, but there is no such reference.
Of course, I intend to ask Sir John Woodcock and Sir John Learmont to inquire fully into what happened at Parkhurst, and theirs will be a fully independent inquiry. Nothing will be ruled out of their purview, and they will not be constrained in any way. They are clearly entitled to consider to what extent, if any, questions of policy contributed to what happened at Parkhurst, and they are free to come to any conclusion that they think appropriate and desirable. I have stated that I intend to publish the findings, and there is no question of any kind of cover-up.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman sought to blame what has happened on market testing. To suggest that market testing can in some way explain, condone or excuse the failure to count prisoners out of the gym and into the wing, to ensure that cameras are properly pointed or to make sure that the duty governor is on duty at the relevant time, is to demean our proceedings. The hon. Gentleman ought to be ashamed of that suggestion, and withdraw it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Speaker: Order. I want a brisk exchange of questions and answers. A lot of hon. Members want to get in, and we have other business to conduct today.
Mr. Barry Field: May I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for keeping me informed of events as they unfolded on the Isle of Wight within hours of the breakout occurring? Will he confirm to the House and reassure the people of the Isle of Wight that when he

39
receives the full report, the safety of the people on the island will be paramount in his mind? Will he join me in congratulating Colin Jones, who spotted the prisoners on the run, and the chief constable and his men on the successful recapture? Does he consider that closed visits at prisons would obviate the necessity of searching visitors?
Will my right hon. and learned Friend look again at the fact that the British Medical Association refused to allow doctors to perform internal searches of prisoners, as they might prevent highly dangerous drugs from getting into prisons and compromising security? Does he agree that to call for his resignation every time a villain manages to perpetrate a crime against law and order is a villain's charter, and that it is those on the Opposition Front Bench who are the real enemies of law and order?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has taken a close interest in security matters in relation to prisons in his constituency on the Isle of Wight since he was elected to the House. I can certainly assure him that the safety of the islanders will be paramount in my mind when it comes to addressing the conclusions of the various reports. My hon. Friend is entirely right to draw attention to those who played a part in bringing those who escaped from Parkhurst back into custody.
I can tell my hon. Friend specifically that I have asked Sir John Learmont to look into the possibility of introducing closed visits as a matter of urgency. No stone will be left unturned in restoring security to our prisons.
Mr. A. J. Beith: When did the director general assure the Home Secretary that all Judge Tumim's recommendations relating to security at Parkhurst had been implemented, and was that true? Does the Home Secretary at least concede that the policy of delegating the operation of prisons to the director general has not worked? Does not he ask himself why he must stand at the Dispatch Box displaying dismay and producing more rhetoric? There has been a great deal of policy and many innovations, but there is no proper control of security at the prisons. Is not that something for which he must take responsibility?
Mr. Howard: The right hon. Gentleman has distinguished himself in the past few days by popping up on just about every television programme acting as the mouthpiece of John Bartell. When he has a bit more experience in those matters, the right hon. Gentleman will realise that parroting the allegations made by Mr. Bartell is not a responsible way of addressing the issues involved.
I shall deal with both the right hon. Gentleman's questions in turn. I was given the assurances from the director general to which I referred within days of receiving the information from Judge Tumim. I looked at the matter, and I asked for those assurances. I raised questions on the assurances, and I was given them on the basis of what the director general had been told by the governor. Mr. Tilt is at present addressing in detail the question of the extent to which all those matters had in fact been implemented.
With regard to operational policy, there has always been a division between policy matters and operational matters. That has existed not only since the introduction of agencies—it has been recognised for years, and indeed
40
for generations. I really do not see—the right hon. Gentleman ought to reflect on this—how, whatever structure or framework is in place, one can avoid a sensible distinction between policy and operational matters.
Mr. John Greenway: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that what happened at Everthorpe was provoked by a deliberate crackdown by the governor, under the instructions of my right hon. and learned Friend and his Department, on many abuses within the prison, which related not only to drugs but to prisoners barricading themselves into their cells and not being properly supervised? Would not it be a sad day if a Home Secretary of any party was forced to resign from office because prisoners rioted in the way that we saw at Everthorpe in response to a proper crackdown prompted by public concern about the conditions in our gaols?
Mr. Howard: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I note that the hon. Member for Blackburn also agrees. We do not yet know the full range of causes of events at Everthorpe, but it is reasonably clear that the crackdown on drugs was a prominent one. It is absolutely essential that that policy continues to be implemented. The misuse of drugs in our prisons is a disgrace. Effective action has to be taken to deal with it. Governors who take that action deserve not only my full support but the support of everyone in the House.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: As the Home Secretary says that he is accountable to the House of Commons only for policy matters and has carefully defined as not policy matters the lamentable series of events that he has described today, and as the arrogant and incompetent Mr. Derek Lewis, whom no fish and chip shop or whelk stall would accept behind its counter, has proclaimed on the radio the success of his regime, blamed everyone else in sight and found a scapegoat in the governor of Parkhurst, who is accountable to the House of Commons for the events that the Home Secretary has described? Where does the buck stop?
Mr. Howard: The right hon. Gentleman has rather uncharacteristically misunderstood the position. I am accountable to Parliament for the Prison Service. I am accountable to Parliament for all matters that are relevant to the Prison Service. I am responsible to Parliament for policy. The director general, according to the framework document, is responsible for operational matters. That is the distinction, but I am accountable to Parliament for the Prison Service generally. Since the director general became head of the agency, a great deal of progress has been made, not least in reducing the number of escapes, which has fallen by about a third during his period of office. That is an important matter to be taken into account. The Prison Service is clearly going through a difficult time. The director general is the best person to take it through that difficult time.
Dame Angela Rumbold: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that, as someone who has had responsibility for prisons in the past, I understand the difficulties and problems that arise from that responsibility? Along with a substantial number of people outside the House as well as people on the Benches here, I urge him to continue his policies in the most resolute way. It is absolutely essential for the security and safety of both the prisoners and the general public that we

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have a Home Secretary who believes that he must pursue the policies that he is pursuing as firmly as my right hon. and learned Friend has shown that he is determined to do.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, far from accepting the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) that we should stop pursuing the policy of privatisation in our prisons, particularly in prisons that hold convicted prisoners, we should accelerate that policy? It is one of the ways forward in ensuring that greater responsibility is accepted by all those who run the prisons and are accountable for them.
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her remarks. I believe that the policies that we are pursuing are in the interests of the country as a whole. I have no intention of being deflected from them. The private sector clearly has a role in operating our prisons. The indications so far are that it can bring new ideas and greater cost-effectiveness to bear in the provision of prison services. I shall continue to proceed in a measured and responsible way.
Mr. David Trimble: Judge Stephen Tumim's letter of December, which identified problems at Parkhurst, referred to one general problem—a staff reluctance to confront prisoners. Does the Home Secretary agree that such reluctance is particularly dangerous when it is manifested not by the prison officers on the wings, but by the management within prisons? Does he accept that the problem is not confined to Parkhurst but extends elsewhere? Will he consult the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), who has responsibility for prisons in Northern Ireland? A similar if not more dangerous position prevails in prisons in Northern Ireland and it should be dealt with. Does he agree that the police on the Isle of Wight were greatly assisted by their ability to publish photographs and names of wanted men without being accused of collusion?
Mr. Howard: I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says. He is right to identify a refusal to confront prisoners as a problem of enormous seriousness, whether it occurs in Great Britain or in Northern Ireland. It is certainly a problem that must be tackled. I am sure that I can learn lessons from what happens in Northern Ireland and perhaps the reverse can happen. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's last point.
Sir Anthony Grant: Will my right hon. and learned Friend disregard the personal abuse and party political claptrap of the Opposition? Is not it clear that the fault lay much lower down the line and that my right hon. and learned Friend has reacted vigorously and speedily to deal with that? The statement that he has made today has demonstrated that he is properly accountable to Parliament. Will the Learmont inquiry or possibly some other inquiry deal with the escape from Littlehey prison in my constituency, which is normally a very efficient and well-run prison, or will some other inquiry have to be set up? Does my right hon. and learned Friend think it rather odd that one of the prisoners who escaped was due for release in April? Does he agree that it is disturbing that one of the other prisoners who
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escaped was a psychopathic rapist sentenced to life imprisonment whom, curiously, the Parole Board released after only a limited time?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. There will be an internal inquiry into the escape from Littlehey, but if any lessons of general application to prison security can be learned from that escape, they will come within the remit of General Sir John Learmont's inquiry. I know that he will be interested in them. I agree with what my hon. Friend said about the oddity of someone whose release is almost imminent nevertheless escaping. These things happen in the Prison Service. I have a great deal of sympathy with the last point that my hon. Friend made about the circumstances in which parole was granted to one of the other prisoners who escaped.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is the Home Secretary saying that if the geophones had been fitted, they would have been rendered useless by the building works? Is that his argument?
Mr. Howard: I do not claim any personal expertise in such matters. I am advised that geophones cannot be installed when extensive building works are under way because they do not work effectively in those circumstances. [Interruption.] That is partly because they are constantly set off by the building works and partly—to deal with the night time point, which I understand—because the building works tend to damage the geophones regularly in a way that impairs their effectiveness. It was on the basis of—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman is really interested in the matter and looks into it in detail, he will find that the decision to go ahead with the installation of geophones was taken in the first financial year for which I had any responsibility. So, I have no reason to give the hon. Gentleman anything other than the reason why the Prison Service did not install geophones while the building work was being carried out, which was that it acted on advice that they would not be effective while the work was under way.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls: No fair-minded or reasonable person could think that the matters that my right hon. and learned Friend explained today are a reason for resignation. It is a fact, however, that the Director General of the Prison Service has presided over a regime so lax that, in recent months, he was prepared to sanction a convicted rapist taking part in the London marathon. In recent days, a prisoner has written to me from a prison in Devon—a convicted rapist, serving a six-year sentence—complaining about the fact that he has not had enough home visits. It is that degree of laxity that is upsetting the public. That laxity is ultimately the responsibility of the person in charge of operations, Derek Lewis. How much worse have matters got to get before, at the very least, he considers his position or has it considered for him?
Mr. Howard: I dealt with that question in my answer to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). I have taken action to deal with one of the matters that my hon. Friend mentioned—the extent to which home leave and temporary release were being granted excessively and without adequate regard to the

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need to protect the public. New guidance has been issued to deal with that matter and it is having a significant effect.
Mr. Doug Hoyle: In view of the concern about security at Parkhurst, will the Secretary of State tell the House what correspondence about geophones has taken place since 1988, between the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) and Home Office Ministers? Does he accept that he and the other Ministers are responsible for the fact that they were not installed prior to April 1994?
Mr. Howard: For the reason that I have already given, I do not accept that. It is perfectly true that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) corresponded with my predecessors about that very matter. He drew to their attention the advantages that geophones offer. That matter was consistently considered and the conclusion to which I referred was reached—that, in view of the building works that were taking place, it would not have been sensible to install geophones. The key moment when building works will be complete will be April 1995 and it is expected that geophones will then be operational, their installation having been completed by that date.
Mr. Michael Alison: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that most improvements in operational performance, for example, in health or hospital care, or rail and air travel, have followed regrettable breakdowns in operational service? With regard to the public interest, the key issue is the positive response that is made to remedial measures following breakdowns. Will my right hon. and learned Friend therefore accept congratulations, at least from Conservative Members, on the completely assiduous and open way in which he has kept the House informed about all the operational breakdowns and the concentrated and energetic way in which he is making certain that long-term remedies and improvements are put in hand?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. There is much truth in what he said, and the Prison Service ought to look upon this train of extremely unhappy events as an opportunity for it to reform and improve itself, to ensure that they are not repeated.
Mr. David Winnick: Does the Home Secretary recall that, just before the Christmas recess, he used as his excuse the fact that previous Home Secretaries had experienced prison breakouts, so those were not a reason for his resignation? Does not he realise that none of the reputations of those Home Secretaries was anywhere near as tarnished as his, and that there will be no confidence in wide-ranging matters of law and order as long as he is so desperate to cling to office?
Mr. Howard: The people will view the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act and its importance in helping the police, helping them bring criminals to justice, helping to convict people who are guilty of crimes and giving courts the powers to pass appropriate sentences, in rather a different light from the way in which the hon. Gentleman views it.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does my right hon. and learned Friend recall that I wrote to him on
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2 January, after the second riot at Everthorpe, to suggest that he should oblige prisoners who have rioted and done damage to remain in their cells until they have repaired them? I see no reason why the taxpayer should do that for them. I was therefore pleased to receive an assurance that prison labour has been used to restore much of the damage. Does he accept, however, that I shall be very angry indeed— [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, I should be jolly cross if any of the 67 or the 124 prisoners who are to be transferred were sent to gaols such as mine in Lancaster, which is very well run and has a good governor and wardens and prisoners who co-operate, as that would be wholly unfair.
Mr. Howard: The last thing that I would want to do is to make my hon. Friend cross or angry. I assure her that any prisoner who can be found to be responsible for taking part in the disturbances at Everthorpe will be subjected to disciplinary action and possibly to prosecution. I hope that that meets the essential concern that lay behind her intervention.
Mr. Barry Sheerman: The Secretary of State says that he is responsible only for policy. After the Strangeways riots four and a half years ago, the Woolf inquiry report made recommendations that most hon. Members on both sides of the House thought would transform the Prison Service. The Government and the then Home Secretary made a strong commitment to implementing Woolf. Since the right hon. and learned Gentleman became Home Secretary, the Woolf recommendations have been assiduously buried. That is policy, that is his responsibility and that is why we have the present crisis and why he should resign.
Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman is talking nonsense. If one studies some of the key objectives of the Woolf report, one finds that Lord Woolf attached great importance to reducing overcrowding. At the beginning of 1988, more than 5,000 prisoners were held three to a cell built for one, but now none is. In his report, Lord Woolf attached great importance to increasing the amount of purposeful activity in which prisoners engaged outside their cells. Such activity has increased by 12 per cent. during the past year. I do not think that Lord Woolf wanted his objectives to be achieved at the expense of prison security and the protection of the public and it is my job to ensure that the latter receive the priority that they deserve.
Mr. Edward Garnier: Does my right hon. and learned Friend have any evidence that the Prison Officers Association has been urging or instructing its members at Parkhurst not to co-operate with the police inquiry, or any other inquiry, into the escapes? If he has such evidence, what does he intend to do with it?
Mr. Howard: I have evidence that members of the Prison Officers Association were instructed not to co-operate with the police inquiry and that they did not do so. I am passing that evidence to Sir John Learmont and to the disciplinary investigation.
Mr. Tom Cox: Is not it a fact that the Home Secretary has made repeated comments about boards of visitors at Whitemoor and Parkhurst? Their annual reports were an expression of deep concern about security and many other aspects of the day-to-day running of prisons. What credibility does he give to the annual reports

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produced by those boards, in view of the countless hours that many of their members give during their day-to-day involvement in overseeing what is happening in prisons? Can they have any confidence that the right hon. and learned Gentleman ever considers the work that they put in and looks at their annual reports?
Mr. Howard: I take those reports and the work done by boards of visitors very seriously. I spoke to the chairman of the board of visitors at Parkhurst this morning to congratulate and thank him and his board on the work that they have been doing, which is enormously appreciated. We are all in their debt as they work long hours on an entirely voluntary basis and perform an extremely useful task.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend is comforted today by the support from the Conservative Benches for the tough measures that he has announced and taken, contrary to the ridiculous press stories that we have been reading over the past few weeks about falling support on Conservative Benches. Will he ask those conducting market testing to explain why, since 1979, the prison population has gone up by 15 per cent., yet the number of prison officers has risen by 70 per cent? Is not it right for taxpayers to ask whether they are getting a good deal?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. The figures that he cited are important when considering the allegations constantly made about the effect of the increase in the prison population on conditions in prisons. They are telling figures. Even since 1989, the prison population has increased by about 1,000, yet the number of prison officers has increased by about 4,000. Those important facts are relevant to this debate and my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to them.
Mr. John Battle: Does the Home Secretary know that, after a tragically high number of suicides in Armley prison in my constituency, his Department issued new and full guidelines to monitor potential suicides? Given that another prisoner committed suicide in Armley prison on new year's eve, will he explain what has happened to those guidelines? Were they temporary? Are they long forgotten? They seem to be proving ineffectual in the whole system.
Mr. Howard: The guidelines are certainly in place, but I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman on the case to which he has drawn attention. It is a matter of great regret that last year saw an increase in the number of suicides in prisons. The number of suicides is greatly to be regretted. On the whole, our record is significantly better than that of most other countries, but that gives no cause for comfort and we take the problem seriously.
Mr. Richard Alexander: We have heard much this afternoon about inquiries, but is not it time that we took Judge Tumim's advice and had a wide-ranging inquiry into how prisons are run? Are not drug dealing and bullying rife in virtually all prisons? While I accept my right hon. and learned Friend's concern to stamp them out, we need more than concern: we must take a fresh
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look at the problem. I do not ask my right hon. and learned Friend to take the words of Mr. Bartell as gospel, but, in taking that fresh look, will he take account of the views of prison officers who are operating prisons on the ground?
Mr. Howard: I take into account all relevant views and test them against the facts, which is the sensible way to approach matters. My hon. Friend is right to express concern about the misuse of drugs in prisons. One of the provisions of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which came into force yesterday, enables the random testing of drugs in prisons for the first time. I hope that a random testing programme will be implemented in prisons over the next few months.
A wide-ranging general inquiry is exactly what I asked Sir John Learmont to carry out in the aftermath of Whitemoor. It is principally into issues of prison security, but I have had a preliminary discussion with Sir John, who clearly takes the view that in order properly to address issues of prison security, he must look far and wide across the Prison Service at how it is organised, and I have not sought to discourage him in that approach.
Mr. Derek Enright: The Home Secretary admitted that last October Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons warned him of serious deficiencies in security at Parkhurst. Why, then, did he go on television and radio so regularly and deny that he had been given such warnings?
Mr. Howard: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely inaccurate and misinformed.
Mr. Enright: I saw you.
Mr. Howard: I have never denied that I received warnings from Judge Tumim. Indeed, I have always totally accepted that I received the warning from Judge Tumim. I have told the House today what action that I took on that warning. The hon. Gentleman can see for himself the terms in which the warning was issued because I have put Judge Tumim's letter in the Library. I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman's recollection is false.
Mr. Douglas French: In respect of my constituent, Mr. Fred West, does my right hon. and learned Friend feel that an internally generated inquiry and report are likely to conclude that surveillance arrangements were adequate? Do not the facts speak for themselves? Did not Mr. West's son warn some weeks earlier that his father might commit suicide? Will my right hon. and learned Friend therefore ensure that the prison officers directly responsible are held accountable for what must surely have been negligence?
Mr. Howard: The evidence that we have so far, based on the internal inquiry, does not justify my hon. Friend's conclusion. However, all those matters will be looked at afresh and fully at the inquest, which will, of course, be held in public. All my hon. Friend's understandable concerns about what happened can then be explored, investigated and thoroughly assessed in that forum, which is the appropriate one.
Madam Speaker: We shall now move on.

Orders of the Day

  Jobseekers Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Madam Speaker: Before I call the Secretary of State, hon. Members will observe that a money resolution is applicable to the Bill. They will recall that, under the Sessional Order passed on 19 December, the Question on the money resolution must be put forthwith immediately after Second Reading. In those circumstances, I am prepared to allow hon. Members to refer to the content of the money resolution if they so wish during the Second Reading debate.
  5.6 pm
  The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Michael Portillo): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Bill provides for the introduction of the jobseeker's allowance, providing a single allowance to replace unemployment benefit and income support for unemployed people. The legislation before the House will improve incentives to work, remove barriers that discourage people from leaving benefit, and focus the efforts of jobseekers on looking for work.
  We shall also focus the benefit on those who need it most. Those who have worked and made contributions will be entitled to benefit, regardless of their means, for six months. Two thirds of those who are unemployed leave benefit within six months. Those who are still unemployed after six months and those who do not qualify for contributory benefit or who have dependants will be eligible for the benefit on an income-related basis for as long as they need it without a time limit.
  The Labour party's main attack on the Bill has been that the contributory benefit should be available for 12 months. But on this morning's "Today" programme, the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) was asked three times to say that a Labour Government would extend it to 12 months. Three times she dodged and ducked the question. She criticises and carps but will not say that she would do any different, were she in Government. That is not principled opposition but mere. whining on the sidelines of politics.
  This Second Reading debate provides an opportunity for the House to consider both the Bill and its context. The context is that, since December 1992, unemployment in Britain has fallen markedly. It is down by 500,000 to less than 2.5 million. The fall has been sharper in Britain than in any other major European Union country.
  Mr. John Whittingdale: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he has no intention of introducing a new measure of employment, as suggested by Mr. Philip Bassett in The Times? Has he any idea where those stories have come from?
  Mr. Portillo: I am happy to confirm to my hon. Friend that I have no intention of introducing any new measure of employment as was proposed in The Times. My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. A fax has come into my possession which was sent by Mr. Philip Bassett to Mr.
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  Ed Milliband. It contains the draft of an article alleging that the Government were thinking of introducing a new measure of employment, and it was sent to Mr. Milliband to be cleared and vetted. Mr. Ed Milliband is the research assistant of the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman).
  It is perfectly clear that Mr. Philip Bassett of The Times is in the habit of taking stories suggested to him by the Opposition and submitting them to the Opposition for vetting before they are published in The Times. Not surprisingly, in his fax Mr. Philip Bassett says:
  "I'd be grateful if you could of course keep it under your hat."
  Mr. Frank Field: How did the Minister get the fax?
  Mr. Portillo: I got it because it was inadvertently sent by Mr. Philip Bassett not to the fax number of Mr. Ed Milliband, but to that of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim).
  Ms Harriet Harman: Before the Secretary of State goes any further down this disgraceful line of argument—[Interruption.] If Conservative Members are interested in the facts I will put them to the Employment Secretary and he can confirm them. He should apologise to Philip Bassett because there was no question of him sending that material for me to approve it, vet it or check it. I ask the Minister to accept my assurance on that. Mr. Bassett simply sent it to me because it was an exclusive and he asked me to comment on it for the following day's paper. The Secretary of State is clearly so desperate that he is clutching at straws. Why does not he address the real issue of the unemployment that he has created? He is a disgrace. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. It is time that the House settled down.
  Mr. Portillo: The hon. Lady doth protest too much. The fax states:
  "Ed—This is a copy of what I've written so far, though I may fiddle about with it later. But it will be something like this. It mostly looks at the position, rather than the politics."
  The Times does not fax copy in advance for me to comment on, but apparently it does so for the Labour party.
  It is time to return to the serious subject of unemployment because 2.5 million people without work is far too many. The Government never forget that unemployment is a waste. Worse than that, it is a cause of great unhappiness and difficulty. Therefore, reducing unemployment is a high priority for the Government.
  Ms Angela Eagle: The Secretary of State says that unemployment is a waste. In that case why does he think that it is sensible to penalise the unemployed by cutting their benefit? A quarter of a million people will be worse off as result of the cuts, but they are only the victims of the economic cycle. It is not their fault that they are out of work but the fault of economic forces and the Government's incompetence.
  Mr. Portillo: A large number of people will be better off because in future they will get the back-to-work bonus. People will benefit from the £10 allowance that will be available to couples before any benefit is deducted in

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  respect of their earnings. We are prepared to change the welfare system so as to update it. The hon. Lady's party is afraid to change anything or to admit to any policy.
  Mr. Richard Burden: Will the Minister comment on the Bill's provision which would mean that if a newly unemployed person took part-time work benefit would be deducted pound for pound if that person earned more than £5 a week? Will he contrast that with the case of Mr. Bryan Townsend, the chairman of Midlands Electricity? He gave up the job and got a pension of about £2,000 a week. He then went back to the job part time and he gets £165,000 a year for that on top of his pension. Does not the right hon. Gentleman see a contradiction in the way in which the Government whom he represents treat people who already have money compared with those who have nothing?
  Mr. Portillo: The Government will treat everybody equally. We are concerned to see that people make their way back into work, possibly by climbing the ladder of part-time work. That is why the Bill introduces a back-to-work bonus which will encourage people to build up a credit of the benefit that is deducted from them when they take part-time work. They will be able to have a lump sum of up to £1,000 when they leave benefit to go into full-time work. The hon. Gentleman should support that by voting for the Bill.
  Rev. Martin Smyth: We are concerned about the unemployed and welcome the fact that in the past two years unemployment has been decreasing. Four years ago the Select Committee on Social Services drew attention to the place of carers and the concept of care for them. As one who has been aware of their problems over the years, will the Minister take the opportunity, through the Bill, to examine the case of carers who have been penalised after having to leave work to look after their parents and others, because when a carer's parents die the carer is not entitled to unemployment benefit? Will the Minister look at the scheme to see how such people could be looked after?
  Mr. Portillo: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point for which there is much sympathy in the House. I do not want to attempt an off-the-cuff answer. In Committee hon. Members will want to look at that matter. In respect of sanctions, the position of carers will be different from that of other people. They will be in the protected group, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomes that assurance, although I know that it does not go as far as he would like me to go.
  Higher public spending is not the answer because we cannot spend our way out of unemployment. Higher taxes or borrowing and higher interest rates and inflation would result and those would destroy jobs. The Labour party has to learn that real demand in the economy cannot be increased by increasing public spending. However, it can be done as the Government are doing it—by providing the conditions for sustained recovery.
  Underlying the Bill is the recognition that in itself economic growth is not enough. The feature of European unemployment over recent decades is that it has risen from one recession to the next. Even in periods of recovery the totals have not fallen very far. We must sort out the structural problems that impede job creation or diminish the incentives for unemployed people to take work.
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  I want to secure through the Bill and other measures economic growth that brings more jobs and lower unemployment, not economic growth that improves life only for those who have work but does nothing for those who do not. We have to make it as easy as we can for one person to offer work to another. Recently that has meant resisting a number of proposals from Brussels which were fully supported by Walworth road. Those proposals would have made it more expensive to employ people and would have imposed on employers liabilities and obligations that would be bound to make them wary of taking on new people.
  Another part of what we have to do is to examine incentives. Most people without a job want more than anything else to be able to work. The Bill is designed with those people in mind and they have nothing to fear from it.
  Ms Harman: How does it help people and give them an incentive to get back to work if, when they lose their jobs, the Government cut the help with mortgage interest payments?
  Mr. Portillo: I had hoped that the hon. Lady was rising to say what policy she intended to reverse. My colleagues and I in the Government are addressing a problem on which there is meant to be agreement across the House. How do we find a benefit system that the country can afford—a system that is equitable?
  The hon. Lady speaks of relief for mortgage interest payers. She knows that such relief is not universal today, and that it is not applicable to people who receive unemployment benefit. It is available only to those in receipt of income support. In future, people can make their mortgages secure by taking out insurance which is available in the private sector. The hon. Lady, however, would rather struggle on with a state system which is inadequate, and which is misleading people into believing that their mortgages are protected rather than placing any reliance on the private sector.
  Why, when people are able to protect their mortgages with insurance, should the taxpayer of all people be responsible for insuring those mortgages? Has the hon. Lady no concept of individual responsibility—of the fact that, if someone can afford to take out a mortgage, that person should also consider how to protect the payments? The hon. Lady believes in the Commission on Social Justice and in the new welfare state; why will she not admit that, in one corner of the welfare state, there is an opportunity for individuals to take some responsibility? Why will she not admit that the taxpayer should not be the first port of call? The hon. Lady is, as ever, silent.
  Over the years leading up to the Bill, we have examined a range of policies to see how they affect motivation, and how they have helped or hindered people in their quest for independence and the ability to provide for themselves. We reformed income-related benefits and introduced family credit: our objective was to ensure that more people would be better off in work than receiving out-of-work benefits, and that those with families would be encouraged to take and keep jobs.
  We have recently introduced, or announced, further changes to ease the way back to work. It is now possible, on family credit, to spend up to £40 a week on child care without affecting entitlement to benefit. We have also looked hard at the help that we can give people to help them over the "job hump"—the difficulties that they face

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  when they find a job after being out of work for a long time. We have introduced the jobfinder's grant, which puts cash in people's hands to help them with bus fares, clothing or the tools that they need for the new job.
  We have adjusted the benefit system to ease the transition into work. People who find a job after a long period of unemployment will receive the same amount of housing benefit for the first four weeks of work as they received when they were out of work. We are also tackling employer discrimination against the long-term unemployed. We have experimented with workstart—payments to employers who take on the long-term unemployed to encourage them to give those people a chance to prove themselves. The Bill extends that idea by waiving for one year the national insurance contributions that employers would have to pay on newly recruited employees who had been out of work for two years or more.
  Sir Ralph Howell: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Portillo: Yes, but I shall then need to make progress.
  Sir Ralph Howell: Given the success of workstart, under which the state saves at least £30 a week for every person who is employed, why has the system not been made universal?
  Mr. Portillo: Let me explain an important difference to my hon. Friend. With workstart, we are giving long-term unemployed people who would otherwise face discrimination a chance to prove themselves in the world of employment. I do not believe that spending public money creates more jobs; it cannot do so, because that money is raised from taxes that other people pay. I do believe, however, that we can help to provide opportunities for people who have been out of the labour market for some time—people whom employers would otherwise not be willing to consider. That is good for those people, and good for the performance of the labour market; but I do not draw the conclusion that we can endlessly spend money and make the state the employer of last resort. I shall explain that more fully later.
  Mr. Ronnie Campbell; Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Mr. Portillo: Yes, but this will be the last time.
  Mr. Campbell: Is it true that a bonus will be given to people who work in careers and dole offices as an incentive to remove claimants from the dole queues?
  Mr. Portillo: I am pleased to have the opportunity to say that that is not so, although it has been alleged that there will be a target for sanctions.
  The Bill introduces a further incentive to help people into jobs—the back-to-work bonus. Income-related benefits are paid to unemployed people to help them when they have insufficient income. Naturally, if they secure part-time work, the money that they earn reduces their need: that must be reflected in the payment of less benefit.
  Part-time work, however, is sought by some as an effective ladder leading back to full-time work, and is valuable in maintaining morale while that search goes on.
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  We should therefore encourage people on benefit to take part-time jobs if they are more readily available than full-time jobs. The back-to-work bonus will allow people to build up a credit equal to half what they lose in benefit, and to receive a lump sum of up to £1,000 when benefit is replaced by a full-time job.
  Having taken those and other steps to help people back into work, and to ensure that they can be confident of being better off when they are in work, we must now examine the conditions of entitlement to benefit. Let us be clear about the principles. Benefits are paid to help people to deal with contingencies that prevent them from providing for themselves—retirement, disability, sickness or involuntary unemployment.
  Since the original introduction of unemployment insurance, it has always been understood that benefit is payable only to people who want to work but cannot. It was presumed that such people would be seeking work, and would take it if it became available. Beveridge was concerned by the effect of the availability of a cash benefit on people's self-reliance, and it was explicit in his report that benefits for unemployed people should be paid only to those who were seeking work. That report stated:
  "The correlative of the State's undertaking to ensure adequate benefit for unavoidable interruption of earnings, however long, is enforcement of the citizen's obligation to seek and accept all reasonable opportunities of work, to co-operate in measures designed to save him from habituation to idleness, and to take all proper measures to be well."
  Mr. Frank Field: Will the Secretary of State also tell the House that, although Beveridge carefully laid down those safeguards for public money, he added that claimants who fulfilled the conditions would receive benefit until they obtained jobs?
  Mr. Portillo: Income-related benefit is available for as long as people need it.
  Mr. Field: The Secretary of State is wrong. Beveridge laid down that unemployed people would be able to draw national insurance benefit until they found jobs, provided that they fulfilled the conditions that the right hon. Gentleman has just read out.
  Mr. Portillo: I am not aware that that has ever been accepted. Certainly it has not been accepted in the living memory of any Opposition Member. National insurance benefits for unemployed people have been time-limited for as long as any Opposition Member can remember. I admit that the time limits have changed from time to time, but the benefits have not been in perpetuity during the lifetimes of Opposition Members.
  The principles that I have read out remain good and valid today. No one has a God-given right to decide to be idle and to live off others, and there is no novelty in saying that today. The taxpayer has every right to expect those seeking work to do so with vigour, and to demonstrate their desire to work by taking actions that are likely to improve their ability to find and hold down jobs—attending courses, undergoing training or actually working in programmes of activity financed by the Government.
  To describe that as "workfare" strikes me as loose talk. To me, "workfare" means that the state will be the employer of last resort, committing itself to provide work for any who are without it. That implies a bigger role for the state than I am willing to contemplate. I do not shy

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  away from saying that financial provision is there for those who need it because they cannot support themselves, but they must be able to demonstrate that by their willingness to work. That can include being required to take work that is offered to them on penalty of losing their benefit; if that spells workfare to some, so be it.
  I aim to see the world as it really is. Much of what we have already done sets out to tackle the practical disincentives to taking a job which real people face. That is realism. We must also be realistic, however, about the ways in which the system can be abused and no good is done to anyone by ignoring that problem.
  The Bill makes explicit much that has until now been implicit. It re-establishes clear principles, in particular the clear conditionality of benefit that was there at the creation of the welfare state. At the heart of the Bill is the proposed jobseeker's agreement, under which the jobseeker will make a commitment to pursue actions that will be most likely to lead to a job. The Employment Service will provide the opportunities that will be of benefit to the jobseeker.
  The jobseeker's allowance will provide a better service for unemployed people. There will be, as far as possible, a single set of rules and a single claim form. It will, generally, be delivered from one office—the local job centre.
  Mr. Donald Dewar rose—
  Mr. Portillo: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman because he is so distinguished, but I must make progress.
  Mr. Dewar: I positively melt, but I shall recover. My question to the right hon. Gentleman is short. He said that the jobseeker's agreement is the core of the Bill and obviously, therefore, it is an important change. Will he please explain to me precisely how the new powers in relation to agreements, duties and obligations of both the applicant and the Employment Service have changed the existing position?
  Mr. Portillo: The most important change is that the signature on a jobseeker's agreement will be necessary for the triggering of a claim. The claim will not be valid without there being a jobseeker's agreement. I think that I have answered the hon. Gentleman directly. That is an important change. No claim will exist until a jobseeker's agreement has been signed.
  The Employment Service has developed a range of active employment measures that experience has shown—
  Mr. Kevin Barron: Sign here.
  Mr. Portillo: People have been signing on for as long as any hon. Member can remember. They will sign a jobseeker's agreement. They will commit themselves to a programme of activity and the Employment Service is giving to them the range of opportunities that is available. I do not see how the hon. Gentleman can object to any of that.
  The Employment Service has developed a range of active employment measures which experience has shown can dramatically improve a person's chances of getting a job. Last month, the service helped 174,000 people—a new record—to get into jobs. It assesses people's needs at restart interviews—nearly 4 million each year. People may then be referred to job clubs, where nearly half are successful at finding work, or to the job interview
  54
  guarantee scheme, where again nearly half find a job. The job plan workshop scheme and new restart courses have enabled more than 90 per cent. of attendees completing the course to apply for a job, employment, training programme or other sort of help. Of course, there are also the training programmes provided through the training and enterprise councils, including programmes tailored for people with disabilities or other special needs.
  Many of those programmes have been tried first on a pilot basis to ensure that we maximise their effectiveness before they are used to help people on a national scale. We want to have the flexibility to try new ideas with pilot schemes. The Bill has, therefore, a carefully defined power to run local pilot schemes, but it rules out piloting any trial schemes that would involve reduced rates of benefit.
  With the very substantial improvement that the Employment Service has made in the help that it can offer, we are in a better position than ever to tailor effective assistance to each person's need. 'The Employment Service has a track record of service and of success in helping people into work.
  The vast majority of people will, therefore, accept the jobseeker's agreement as a fair and just agreement, but the Bill provides a back-up power. It enables the Employment Service to issue a direction to a person to undertake activity that reflects the person's needs and abilities. That will be necessary only if the jobseeker refuses to do reasonable things aimed at him becoming more employable and sanctions would follow only if the direction were ignored.
  Mr. Malcolm Chisholm: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Portillo: No. I must make progress.
  Of course, directions and sanctions must be reasonably applied. Jobseekers must not be subject to arbitrary demands and there must be safeguards. There will be. Decisions on sanctions will be subject to independent adjudication and to the same appeals structure as we have today.
  Some people who lose their benefit because of sanctions will be able to claim hardship payments. Vulnerable groups such as the ill, pregnant women, people with children or people with caring responsibilities will be protected. Healthy, childless people will have no access to hardship payments if they fail the basic conditions of entitlement and they will have no access to hardship payments for two weeks if they break rules once on benefit.
  The economy is generating jobs and we are making sure that unemployed people get the chance to take them. We are willing to make changes to our system of provision because the welfare state must be kept up to date. The Labour party claims to be concerned with reform and with the critical question of affordability. The welfare state costs every working person in this country £15 each working day. Yet the Commission on Social Justice proposes additional expenditure of £7 billion a year, which would require higher taxes and would destroy jobs. Conservative Members understand that the business of government requires decisions and requires choices. The hon. Member for Peckham complains about the Bill, but her refusal to commit her party to reverse it shows that Labour is not serious but vague, vacuous and dishonest.

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  The Government have three main aims in the Bill—to help people into jobs, to deliver a better service to people while they are unemployed and to achieve better value for the taxpayer. It is part of our policy to encourage jobs through economic policy and through labour market reforms. The Bill is about jobs, about supporting people while they look for work, about encouraging them to compete for jobs and about helping them into jobs. For all those reasons, I commend the Bill to the House.
  5.35 pm
  Ms Harriet Harman: The Bill demonstrates just how out of touch the Government have become with the concerns and interests of ordinary British families. Insecurity among the work force is increasingly recognised as a central economic and social problem. Even the deputy chairman of the Tory party, John Maples, admitted in his secret memorandum that people feel insecure at work. They feel constantly under threat of losing their jobs and believe that the Government are doing nothing to help them, yet the Government have not listened and will not learn.
  Despite the somewhat warmer words of the Secretary of State for Employment—I thought at one point that he was on the brink of a U-turn—we must focus on the Bill's provisions because, of course, the Bill will not help to reduce unemployment or to put people back to work. It will make people who are out of work, and even people who are in work, feel more insecure and more fearful.
  Mr. Gary Streeter: If the hon. Lady feels strongly that the Bill is wrong, why will not she commit herself to reversing it if the Labour party come to power?
  Ms Harman: Our particular concern is the deepening of the poverty trap and the cut in the period of non-means-tested unemployment benefit from 12 to six months. I shall not anticipate the contents of our election manifesto in some two and a half years. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we shall introduce a comprehensive range of measures that will deal with the problem of the poverty trap and will allow people to move from welfare to work and to undo the damage that has been done. The Bill does damage and deepens the poverty trap. If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the deepening poverty trap, like Labour Members, his response should be to vote with us against the Bill tonight.
  Unemployment is not, as the Government so often imply, a problem of a minority of lazy people refusing to work. It is a major problem. The Department of Employment's own figures show that nearly 11 million people—40 per cent. of the work force—have been out of work at some point in the past five years. Many of the remaining 60 per cent. who have been continuously in work live in households with people who have been unemployed. The families who have not been affected in some way by unemployment, which has swept through this country, are a rapidly diminishing minority. That is why the Government's attack on the unemployed in the Bill is of concern to people far beyond those currently on the dole.
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  For once, the Secretary of State for Employment has restrained himself from delivering his usual tirade about how excellently the economy is doing and how excellent the employment prospects of people are. Perhaps at last he recognises how abysmal the Government's record is.
  I remind the House of what the Secretary of State failed to report as the background to the Bill. Britain has lost 40 per cent. of its manufacturing employment over the past 15 years and we are the only one of the top seven industrialised nations that has seen no rise in employment since 1979. The United States has seen a rise of 21 per cent., Japan a rise of 18 per cent. and Germany a rise of 8 per cent. The Government's record on employment creation is 17th out of 21 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That is a record of which the Government should be ashamed.
  Unemployment is still almost 1 million higher than it has ever been under any post-war Labour Government. Unemployment among the unskilled is still rising while the Government are still cutting training for the unemployed. Long-term unemployment remains at almost 1 million—39 per cent. of all those unemployed. Our record on long-term unemployment is the second worst among the G7 countries. The number of very long-term unemployed—over two years—is still nearly 500,000; that is more than 100,000 higher than it was two years ago.
  That is the real background to today's debate, not the fairyland that is so often painted by Ministers. The truth is that the Government have failed on unemployment and, as a result, we have a work force who are fearful and insecure. It is against that background that the Government propose the jobseeker's allowance.
  The Secretary of State said that the heart of the Bill is the jobseeker's agreement. Of course it is not, and he does not believe that. The central measure in the Bill is to cut the entitlement to unemployment benefit from 12 to six months. That did not warrant much of a mention in the Secretary of State's speech, but it is clear that that measure will have the harshest and most dangerous impact.
  Ms Liz Lynne: Is the Labour party prepared to reverse that—yes or no?
  Ms Harman: The hon. Lady failed to listen to my previous response. I have said clearly that I will not anticipate measure by measure what will be in our manifesto in two and a half years, and the hon. Lady would not expect me to do so. I hope that she will vote with us tonight, because I can assure her that we will have a comprehensive welfare-to-work programme, and we will vote against the deepening of the poverty trap that will occur as a result of the Bill.
  Mr. Iain Duncan Smith rose—
  Ms Harman: I shall give way in due course.
  That cut in entitlement will make thousands of people much worse off. [Interruption.] I have answered the question twice. Hon. Members who are interrupting from a sedentary position about our manifesto promises should reflect on whether they have kept any of the promises contained in their manifesto. One thing that will be different in our manifesto is that we will keep our

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  promises. Perhaps Conservative Members will pipe down about manifestos for a few moments and reflect on their own betrayal.
  Ms Eagle: My hon. Friend has seen the Conservative party's manifesto from the last election. Is there any reference to halving the amount of contributory benefits for the victims of the recession? Is that in the manifesto on which the Conservative party won the election?
  Ms Harman: Of course the Government did not put in their manifesto that they would cut unemployment benefit or that they would increase national insurance contributions. In fact, quite the opposite: the Government promised that they would not cut benefits and help for the unemployed and that they would not increase national insurance contributions. The Bill does precisely those two things.
  Mr. Portillo: I am a reasonable man. I understand that the Opposition cannot be expected to tell us every jot of what will be in their manifesto. Manifestos are published close to elections. However, the hon. Lady is launching an attack on the Bill. She said that her central onslaught is on the reduction of the contributory principle from 12 to six months. She said that that is at the heart of the Bill. She said that it is iniquitous and that she hates it. Therefore, she must be able to say that she would reverse it, otherwise she does not have a leg to stand on. That is the fact—she does not have a leg to stand on.
  Ms Harman: It is interesting that the Secretary of State is spending less and less time trying to justify his proposals, because he obviously does not believe in them, and is spending more and more time asking us what we intend to do when we form a Government. He will find out what we intend to do. He will see our comprehensive welfare-to-work proposal in our manifesto. He will then be watching us from the Opposition Benches as we implement programmes that end the poverty traps that he has created.
  Make no mistake, this cut in entitlement will make much worse off the thousands of people facing the very real money worries that come with unemployment. The Government have admitted—and their own figures show—that at any one time 90,000 people will lose entitlement to benefit altogether because they are not entitled to means-tested jobseeker's allowance. That is not necessarily because those people are well off or can afford the cut in income; they may be disqualified from benefit because they have a partner in work on a low income or because they have savings or redundancy payments just above the £8,000 limit.
  Let us look at the example of an unemployed man with a wife who works more than the 24-hour threshold or who has just received a redundancy payment over the £8,000 limit. Under the old system, during the first 12 months of unemployment, based on national insurance contributions, he would have received £2,300. Now, despite the increase in national insurance contributions, that figure will be cut to under £1,200—a cut of £1,100. That is a serious and shameful cut.
  The pernicious nature of the Bill is not confined to the proposal to means-test after six months instead of 12.
  The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): Those are precisely the circumstances in which
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  those with mortgages who find themselves unemployed do not at present receive any help. That is the system that the hon. Lady wishes to maintain. Why?
  Ms Harman: We are saying that the Government are putting up national insurance contributions—[Interruption.] Conservative Members may laugh, but people think that this is a serious matter. The Government are putting up national insurance contributions, they are cutting unemployment benefit and, at the same time, introducing new measures to cut the help to home owners who become unemployed. We think that that is wrong.
  Our objection to the Bill is not confined to the proposal to means-test after six months. Entirely characteristically, the Government have used the Bill to smuggle in a raft of other measures that will hit hardest those who can least afford it. The Bill will cut the level of benefits paid to young people. In addition to cutting the length of time for which young people can claim, the level of contributory benefit that young people receive will be cut by one fifth. For a young unemployed person out of work for 12 months, the benefit will be cut by at least £500 over that year, even where he or she is still entitled to means-tested benefits.
  The Bill will cut the benefits of those with partners who are unemployed. The current rules provide for contributory payments for dependants, but the new rules will mean that from day one payments for dependants will be means-tested. For example, under the current system, a man with a non-working wife who has savings or redundancy payments just over the limit receives £3,822 in the first 12 months of unemployment. As a result of the earlier switch to means testing and the new rules on dependants, that will be cut to £1,200—a reduction of over £2,500—despite the fact that national insurance contributions will have gone up.
  What it all adds up to is that, at any one time, 250,000 people will have their benefit reduced or cut altogether. That is what the Bill is about. In addition to the cults in benefit, unemployed home owners will face the extra problem of mounting debt from mortgage interest payments. It is clear to everyone that the Bill will inflict misery on many unemployed people, but what justification has the Employment Secretary offered? He has effectively offered three justifications, all of which turn out to be bogus.
  The first justification, which reflects the true nature of the Employment Secretary, is that benefits need to be made less generous to persuade the unemployed to get out and find work. He believes that the unemployed are a feckless group who refuse to look for work. He said:
  "Too broad a benefit system can undermine the morale of those who receive help."
  The past 15 years are a testament to the failure of that strategy. The Government have consistently cut benefits since 1979, but unemployment is now more than double the 1979 level. If cutting benefits put people back into work, we would have full employment by now. Evidence from abroad also shows that there is no simple equation that proves that cutting benefits means that people find work. It does not work like that.
  The vast majority of the unemployed are not out of work because they are work-shy. They are out of work for three reasons: jobs are not available; they cannot earn

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  enough to make it worth moving from benefit into employment; or they lack the skills for existing vacancies. That is the true position.
  Mr. John Sykes rose—
  Ms Harman: I shall not allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene. He is clearly going to ask about our manifesto, which I shall tell him about in two and a half years' time. I shall instead read what the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth)—
  Mr. Sykes rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has made it clear that she is not giving way.
  Ms Harman: The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon said:
  "If we are to reduce dependence, what really matters is the availability and accessibility of adequately paid jobs."
  The hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Duncan Smith) tried to intervene earlier and I shall now accept his intervention if he will indicate to me in advance that he intends to apologise to his constituents for the fact that in the past five years unemployment in his constituency has risen by 137 per cent. If he does not intend to take the opportunity to apologise afforded by my allowing him to intervene, I shall not give way. Will he apologise to his constituents for his broken manifesto promises?
  Mr. Duncan Smith: I have no intention of apologising. The hon. Lady attacked the Government because she believes that they are cutting benefits, but at the same time she says that there is a 50:50 chance that a Labour Government would accept that. I am not asking her to explain, but will she say whether she believes that social security spending is too high or too low?
  Ms Harman: That is a very easy question to answer: social security spending on unemployment is far too high. The Government have pushed it up, not by making benefits more generous but by making more people unemployed. The Government's failure to understand that the difficulties with public finances have been created by their economic failure means that they cannot hope to solve the problem.
  Mr. Sykes: Will the hon. Lady gives way?
  Ms Harman: No.
  Far from helping people back to work, the jobseeker's allowance, by increasing means testing, will force people out of work and on to benefits. It will exacerbate the deep poverty traps in the benefit system, especially for the wives of men who become unemployed. Unemployed people cannot claim income support if their partners are working more than the hours threshold. That means that many families will be better off if, when the husband loses his job, the wife gives up hers and the whole family go on to benefits.
  At one level, the Government have recognised the problem by increasing the hours threshold from 16 to 24, which is welcome, and by introducing the back-to-work bonus, which is unobjectionable. However, while taking that action, which is designed to get some people out of the poverty trap, they are at the same time putting more
  60
  people into the poverty trap. Under the current system, those who work part time or for low pay and whose husbands become unemployed are able to work for 12 months without any fear that their continuing to work will make their families worse off. When that period is reduced to six months, many people will find that they, too, have to give up their job because, if they carrying on working, the whole family will be worse off.
  Many families who might have escaped the poverty trap over a 12-month period because the unemployed husband was able to find work in that time will now hit the poverty trap at six months. Simply by reducing the length of time during which one can claim non-means-tested benefit, the Government are ensuring that the number of people forced to give up employment and go on to benefit will increase. Therefore, instead of helping the unemployed to move from welfare to work, the jobseeker's allowance will shift people from work to welfare. In defence of his proposal, the Employment Secretary does not argue that that is not the case but simply mutters, "Will you reverse it?" Our answer is my explanation why we shall vote against the Bill tonight.
  The second justification is that the measure will supposedly target benefit on those who most need help. Although it is clear to everyone—the Government have admitted it—that 250,000 unemployed people will lose out under the Bill, it is not clear to anyone who precisely will be the beneficiaries of the supposed targeting. Where are they?
  The third justification is that benefits need to be cut because too much is spent on the welfare state. Perhaps I could explain to the former Chief Secretary that the reason why public spending has increased, and indeed why it increased while he was Chief Secretary, and that taxes have gone up, also while he was at the Treasury, is not that the lives of the unemployed are being made more comfortable but that there are so many more of them. Two and a half million people have been forced into dependency on benefits. It is the Government's failure on unemployment and on law and order which has driven up public spending. Instead of dealing with such problems, they are, as usual, making the unemployed pay for their—the Government's—failures.
  The jobseeker's allowance is another example of broken Tory promises. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said, during the election the Tories promised not to increase national insurance contributions, but within a year they had done exactly that. They are now cutting the amount of money that people get in return for their national insurance contributions. No one voted for this cut—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw) has not read or not understood the Bill if he believes that it is not about cuts. The Employment Secretary himself justifies the Bill on the basis that it will cut public spending.
  No one voted for this cut in benefits, just as no one voted for the increase in national insurance contributions. This cut was not in the Tory manifesto, nor were the other tax increases and cuts in provision. It is no wonder that John Maples found that people no longer placed any trust in the Government. People pay more, but they get less. The central elements of the jobseeker's allowance are the hallmark of the Conservative approach to unemployment over the past 15 years—socially unjust, economically flawed and politically duplicitous.

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  Although the major portion of the Bill reflects the same old dogma of the past 15 years, other measures in it mark a belated admission by the Government that their employment policy has not worked. It was when dealing with those aspects of the Bill that the Secretary of State for Employment sounded most uncomfortable. In particular, the Government have at last recognised that long-term unemployment is not a problem that will be solved by the market; it needs particular action by, and particular attention from, Government. The Government have at last responded to Labour's suggestion that they should offer special incentives for employers to take on the long-term unemployed.
  The problem is that, although the Government have accepted the principle, their measures are wholly inadequate. The national insurance holiday for employers who take on those who have been unemployed for two years or more will offer employers just £6 a week. Employers have already made it clear that that is simply not enough and that it does not offer an incentive.
  What is more, the national insurance holiday will not be introduced until April 1996. Why should the two-year unemployed have to wait to become unemployed for three and a half years before they get this measly incentive? The message is clear. People will have to wait until April 1996 for the meagre and inadequate incentives to employers to take on the long-term unemployed. When it comes to helping the long-term unemployed, the Secretary of State does so with reluctance and delay. Cuts can be brought in straight away, but incentives, even small ones, take that much longer. The truth is that, whatever the window dressing in the Bill, it is about cutting benefits and making people more insecure about the prospect of unemployment.
  Although the Tories think that grinding people down with fear and poverty makes them work harder, we take a different view. We believe that Britain can succeed only with an employment policy that attacks unemployment rather than the unemployed, and that aims to make our work force, on whom our economic prosperity relies, confident and secure, and not fearful and insecure.
  There are immediate measures that the Government could and should have included in the Bill to ensure that people get back to work immediately and to modernise our infrastructure. Why do the Government still refuse to begin the phased release of the £5 billion of capital receipts? Why do they not take action to ensure that public-private projects are turned from announcements into action?
  There is also a package of measures that the Government could and should have put into the Bill to deal with the particular problem of long-term unemployment. The long-term unemployed are, of course, not a single homogeneous group. There are young people, for example, who have never worked and who need the opportunity to get further qualifications. There are people who have worked all their lives, but have been made redundant in declining industries and need retraining. We propose a £75 a week tax rebate for employers who take on the two-year unemployed. That proposal, backed up by the minimum wage, would ensure that everyone who reached two years of unemployment was given the chance of work.
  I now come to the minimum wage. It is intriguing that the Secretary of State for Employment has remained curiously silent about the minimum wage, although he is,
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  supposedly, the cutting-edge, leading ideologue of the Tory party against the minimum wage. He did not say anything about it in employment questions and he did not even mention it in his speech. Could it be that he dare not mention the minimum wage because of his embarrassment at the fact that the Government, having carried out consultation about minimum wages in farming, decided to keep the agricultural wages board because there was general agreement, which the Cabinet was forced to accept, that it was fair, that it did not cost jobs and that employers and employees wanted it?
  Mr. Portillo rose—
  Ms Harman: Perhaps the Secretary of State will answer the question when he intervenes. Does he agree with keeping the minimum wage for agriculture? Let us hear the answer to that question.
  Mr. Portillo: I am part of the Government decision to maintain the agricultural wages board. I have, however, a question for the hon. Lady. At what level will Labour set the minimum wage?
  Ms Harman: We are not—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] I am about to answer the question, despite the fact that the answer given by the Secretary of State clearly shows all of us that he does not support the decision to keep the agricultural wages board. Despite the fact that he is Secretary of State for Employment, the Government have overruled him. They have been forced to accept our arguments on the minimum wage. I am confident that we shall now hear a great deal less about the minimum wage from the Secretary of State.
  We will not set the level of the minimum wage two and a half years before the next election. What we will do is to make it clear that we will introduce a minimum wage, as the rest of Europe and America have, because it is fair, because it protects good employers and because, of course, it does not cost jobs.
  Savings in benefits from our programme of a £75 incentive to employers would mean that, although in the first year it would cost £100 million, it would actually save money in the second year. Given that the Government have accepted the principle of tax rebates to get the long-term unemployed back to work, it seems that the most plausible reason for their failure to do anything worth while for the long-term unemployed is the opposition of the Secretary of State for Employment, whose support for the national insurance contributions holiday is lukewarm, to put it mildly.
  Unemployment is not only a terrible experience for those who are out of work; it hangs like a cloud over those who are in work, creating a sense of insecurity among people at work. Increasingly, that is recognised by everyone except the Government. Insecurity is not just bad for those who experience it; it is bad for our economy. Is the Secretary of State shaking his head? We know that he is concerned to see the issue raised in opinion poll after opinion poll. We know that he is concerned that everyone, from the Trades Union Congress to the Confederation of British Industry, mentions that insecurity at work is a real problem. Of course, he does not want to do anything about it because he does not believe that the Government have any role in the labour market. All the evidence shows that an insecure work force are not as productive as a confident, secure and well-motivated work force. Our

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  more successful companies know that and our international competitors, whose economies are doing better than ours, know that, too.
  Security is also about people having the skills required in today's world of work. That means that people in work and people out of work need proper training. The Secretary of State talked in employment questions about training in work. British businesses do not invest as much in training as our international competitors. In France, three quarters of all employers invest more than 2 per cent. of their payroll costs in training. In the United Kingdom, only one third of employers do so. That is why other countries have a more competitive work force and a more productive economy. That is why we believe that, as part of tackling unemployment, the Government must take action to ensure that all businesses make a fair contribution towards training all the people in their work force.
  It is scandalous that, when skill shortages are increasing and unskilled unemployment is rising, the Government are cutting the training budget. The Secretary of State claims to believe in high skills, yet he is cutting the training budget by 12 per cent. over the next three years. Indeed, according to the Government's own figures, they are now spending barely half as much on training for each unemployed person as Labour was in 1979. Contrary to Tory philosophy, we believe that the Government have an important role to play in helping the unemployed back to work, and the Bill does not do that; in ensuring that people have the skills they need, and the Government are not doing that; and in promoting the security and confidence of people at work. That is certainly not happening.
  Last Friday, from the pulpit of Liverpool cathedral, the Secretary of State for Employment—
  Mr. Barry Porter: Oh, God.
  Ms Harman: I shall not comment on that. Last Friday, from the pulpit of Liverpool cathedral, the Secretary of State gave the nation a sermon and, with messianic fervour, he made some promises. He promised fairness, he promised tolerance, he promised liberty and he promised to restore the British people's dignity and self-respect. He promised not only economic prosperity but spiritual prosperity. He talked of his vision of a sense of national well-being in a contented nation. Then, he stepped out of the pulpit, into the Department of Employment, and he has brought to the House a Bill that will make the unemployed worse off. No wonder the British people feel that they cannot trust this Government and that they cannot believe anything that the Government say. The gap between the rhetoric and the reality is nowhere more stark than in the Bill and we will vote against it.
  6.9 pm
  Sir Ralph Howell: I welcome those parts of the Jobseekers Bill which will help to simplify the benefits system. That desperately needs doing and I am sure that the Bill will be successful in that direction. I hope very much that the Bill will make it easier for people to move from unemployment into work. That is also a very worthy part of the Bill. While most people recognise that most of the unemployed desperately want to work, a large section of people are claiming benefit and
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  working in the black economy. The Bill will be successful, to a limited degree, in helping to solve that problem.
  However, I am very disappointed that a great opportunity totally to reform the welfare state has been wasted. We have made a thorough mess of the welfare state—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—all of us, including the Opposition. The Opposition are more responsible for that than anybody else. We have failed to put the Beveridge report into operation. The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) was wrong when he said in his intervention that Beveridge said that benefits should go on indefinitely. He did not. Beveridge said that after three months or six months unemployment benefit would cease and work would be offered. That is exactly what should happen.
  I am also very disappointed to hear the Secretary of State say that he is opposed to the state being an employer of last resort. The state is the provider of last resort. As the provider of last resort, we are spending well over £20 billion, perhaps as much as £30 billion, on supporting the unemployed on the condition that they do nothing whatever to help society generally. It is time that we thought this thing through. We should go back hundreds of years to 1601, when it was the duty of the local authorities to find work for everyone in their locality. In 1911, Keir Hardie introduced a Bill—the last sensible Bill to have been introduced by the Labour party—to offer and establish the right to work. Heaven help those who did not take the opportunity to work given in Keir Hardie's Bill.
  What sense can there be in spending £20 billion or £30 billion while getting nothing whatever in return, while seeing the country become scruffier and scruffier because we cannot afford to paint schools and so on and while being less and less able to afford carers when their services could be used to keep elderly people in their own homes much longer than is otherwise possible? We should re-think the whole matter. The Bill damns itself in as much as we will save only £200 or £300 million here or there, which is negligible and within the margin of error. That means that we will do very little, even in solving the problem of fraud. All in all, we should raise our sights considerably.
  I shall refer to the workstart programmes and the North Norfolk action pilot scheme, which the Department of Employment has declared to be highly successful. We have been piloting workstart for—I believe—18 months. Why on earth do not we make it universal? Every person who took part in workstart saved the taxpayer £30 a week. I simply cannot understand what is causing the blockage. The North Norfolk action pilot scheme was expected to cost the taxpayer another £750,000 to put 100 people to work for 18 months—costing the Government £5,000 a year more for each participant. But, in fact, the scheme proved to be successful because of the number of people who were called in for interview and who then disappeared from the unemployment register because it became a little too hot for them when they were offered work.
  We will never solve the problem of fraudulent claims until we have a proper work test and we shall have a proper work test only when work is offered. Then, we could save millions of pounds and have a much tidier and better country than we have at the present time.

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  Part of our problem is that we have such a weak Opposition. Why are the Opposition so silent on subjects such as how much we spend on unemployment? When he was Chief Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told me that the cost of unemployment was £13.2 billion. That was in 1992–93. For the year 1993–94, according to the Department, that figure has risen to £14.3 billion—an increase of 8 per cent.—while unemployment was either falling or static and while inflation was just over 2 per cent. So, we have an ever-rising bill.
  However, that is not the true cost of unemployment. The predecessor of the former Secretary of State declared that the cost of each unemployed person in the country was £9,000 a year, which, taken altogether, is somewhere in the region of £25 billion to £30 billion. The time has come for an independent inquiry to find out exactly how much unemployment costs and whether we could do something better than spend all that money, which is a total waste and gets us nowhere.
  I have no time for those people who are claiming unemployment benefit who should not be claiming it; those people who work in the black economy. The black economy, as we all know, is huge. But, there is something off about insisting that people go on writing letters and re-writing their curriculum vitae month after month and so on when we all know that we are providing no work for them and that there will be no further work as a result of insisting on those practices. That seems like forcing people to play bagatelle on a board which does not have any holes and it is rather a cruel exercise. I urge the Secretary of State to do what he can to adjust the Bill as soon as possible and to bring in measures which will offer work. The time has come when we should seriously consider introducing a Bill on the right to work.
  6.18 pm
  Mr. Greville Janner: It is always a privilege to participate in a debate with the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Sir R. Howell). He can be relied upon to produce a pungent, independent and articulate approach. What astonishes me so often, knowing his approach, his background and his party, is how often I agree with what he says and how often his colleagues disagree with him.
  I want to begin with the right to work. I have always believed that people are entitled to work. In a decent country, a person is entitled to a home, a good place to live, food, clothing, education and health.
  Mr. Streeter: Entitled?
  Mr. Janner: Yes, entitled.
  Mr. Streeter: By whom?
  Mr. Janner: By a decent, civilised society and that is why I am in politics. We should try to provide in society the right for people to work. The hon. Member for Norfolk, North is correct. He was also correct to use the word "cruelty" in respect of the effect of unemployment on people's lives.
  It is cruel to say to people, "We will give you training for work" when there is no work for them to do when that training is finished. It is cruel to say, "You have paid your taxes and national insurance; you have contributed so that
  66
  you may get unemployment benefit" when the length of time when people will receive that benefit is to be cut in half.
  Mr. Sykes: The hon. and learned Gentleman obviously feels very passionately about his subject. I appreciate and applaud that. However, if he believes that all those things are cruel, why does he want to vote for the social chapter which will destroy jobs throughout the country?
  Mr. Janner: Because it will not destroy jobs; because it has not destroyed jobs in Europe; because disabled people have a right to decent treatment; because people have a right to minimum holidays and because this is the only uncivilised part of the European Community which refuses to recognise those basic decent rights for which we stand in this place. That is why.
  I am looking forward to a Labour Government so that we may join Europe in the social chapter and ensure that the rights of our people—of the disabled, women and people who do not have a right to minimum holidays—
  Mr. Sykes: Wake up.
  Mr. Janner: If I were to wake up and find that, I would do so with joy because we should be serving our people in this country. We do not have much time to do that.
  The Secretary of State said that there is no God-given right to be idle and to live off others. Indeed. No Opposition Member would wish anyone to be voluntarily idle, to be lazy or scroungers and not to work and to live off others. However, from my very long experience, I know that the vast majority of unemployed people are desperate for work. The vast majority of the unemployed are anxious to work. They may have got themselves off the register because they are sick of looking. They may have left the register because of the way in which it is organised, but, in my view and in that of the hon. Member for Norfolk, North, they have a right to work.
  Our job, whether it is on the Employment Select Committee where we work together, whether it is in this House or in our constituencies, should be to find more work for people. I examined the Bill to discover whether it would create jobs. If any part of it would create jobs, I would support it, but I discovered that it does not do that.
  The Bill will not produce more jobs. To have a Jobseekers Bill without producing more jobs is a contradiction in terms. It is like the old story of military intelligence. If one wants a jobseeker's allowance, one must provide jobs so that the people who are seeking jobs can find them.
  When the Bill was published, I read its name because Governments of all parties organise names so that Bills and Acts will smell right to the public. Unemployment benefit is a benefit that people have earned through their work. A jobseeker's allowance is what the Government will allow people to have. There is a difference in terminology as there is in the smell of it.
  The hon. Member for Norfolk, North was right. It is very expensive in terms of human cruelty and suffering to keep people out of work. It is also very expensive in terms of money. A person in work has the opportunity to serve and the chance to earn a living, to pay taxes and national insurance and to contribute towards others who cannot work, perhaps because they are disabled. Many people cannot work through no fault of their own.

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  As the hon. Member for Norfolk, North said, we must see how we can help find more jobs. We must make work available.
  As a lawyer, I examined the Bill to see how the Government define job seeking. It is very interesting because the Government do not do that. The Bill states that
  "For the purposes of this Act, 'available for employment' and 'actively seeking employment' have such meaning as may be prescribed";
  not such meaning as the Government now give them, but as they may prescribe in regulations, just as people will get such money as the Government may allow. Regulations are not primary legislation. The Bill will become an enabling statute. This horrendous rubbish continues:
  "Regulations may prescribe circumstances"—
  they do not have to, they may—
  "in which, for the purposes of this Act—".
  Now, for your pre-dinner enjoyment Mr. Deputy Speaker, please listen and see whether you can understand this:

  "(a) a person who is not available for employment is to be treated as available for employment;

  (b) a person who is available for employment is to be treated as not available for employment;

  (c) a person who is not actively seeking employment is to be treated as actively seeking employment; or

  (d) a person who is actively seeking employment is to be treated as not actively seeking employment."

  In other words, the Government can do whatever they like. They can make regulations as they see fit which will no doubt be passed at midnight and even the Government rebels will join them. The Government can prescribe.
  We do not know what the Government are going to do, but we do know that what they do will not be fair. They will not make it fair for young people. Why should the Government always make life worse for young people who do not have jobs? Why should the unfairness be loaded on people who leave school or universities who cannot get jobs? Why should the burden of the jobseeker's allowance be placed on 18 to 24-year-olds? Why should it be placed on unemployed people whose partners do not work? Why should this Government of all Governments place the burden on people with £8,000 or more in savings, which they may have as redundancy pay, so that they will, at best, have their income halved? Why place burdens on those people?
  The Bill does not add jobs or give incentives to jobs. It does not create work. It does not even create incentives to work. It reduces the amount of money that the state will pay in benefits, but it does not reduce that amount in the one way acceptable to the hon. Member for Norfolk, North and myself which is reducing it by having people at work so that they do not have to receive the benefit and so they are paying taxes and national insurance. That is the way to reduce the burden. It should not be reduced by making life harder for the unemployed.
  I listened to the enchanting and typical intervention earlier by that somewhat eccentric and delightful hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans). He was talking about scroungers. I have a feeling that that is the bedrock of Tory policy. They believe that everyone who does not have a job is a scrounger. They should go out and look at what is happening.
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  I want to cite a few examples from my constituency which I have served for so long. Male unemployment in my constituency today is 17.4 per cent. Yes, it has gone down and I am delighted about that, but still nearly one in five of males who want a job, even on the Government's method of assessing the figure, cannot get one.
  On the great estates in my constituency, unemployment is much higher. Names that mean much in Leicester—for example, Beaumont-Leys, Braunstone, New Parks, Mowmacre, Stocking Farm—have 30 per cent. or 35 per cent. unemployment, I am told, because unemployment is in patches; it does not stretch. Saying that unemployment is 17.4 per cent. is like the doctor hurrying into the ward and asking the sister, "What is the average temperature of all the patients?"
  The average unemployment among men is 17.4 per cent. and of women it is only 6.1 per cent. I wonder why. The answer, of course, is that they work part-time. If they are not employed, they go off the register; they are not unemployed. Even then, the level is higher than the national average. The national average of male unemployment is 11.1 per cent. One in 10 men are looking for jobs. They are not paying taxes or national insurance, and they are entitled to benefits. Female unemployment in Leicester, West is 6.1 per cent. and the national average is 4.8 per cent. There are women on the register who want work but cannot get it.
  It is a rotten system and it will not be made fairer by the Bill. The Bill will not do much to help. It does one thing, perhaps: it shows some co-operation between two Departments, and that I welcome. I have always believed that Departments should work closely together and that if a decision by any Department creates unemployment, that Department should consult the Employment Secretary of the day. I am in favour of one-stop benefits—I hope that the system works. Those who are in schemes believe that it will not work, but I hope that it does, because that would reduce the burden. Otherwise, what a mess.
  I conclude with a quotation from a book called "A Time To Serve" by Rev. Dr. John E. Brown who, happily, is the father of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown). That book, which has just been produced, and which I strongly recommend because the writer is a distinguished cleric who has no doubt made speeches and sermons from Liverpool cathedral—I suggest that the Minister reads it—states:
  "Lord you must have made a mistake in your calculations."—
  I was wondering whether he had the Government in mind—

  "There is a big mistake somewhere.

  The hours are too short,

  The days are too short,

  Our lives are too short …

  we must not lose time,

  waste time,

  kill time,

  For time is a gift that you give us,

  But a perishable gift,

  A gift that does not keep."

  Unemployed people find that time passes with immeasurable slowness. They have the same short time on this earth as we have. We should work to see that they have work. The Bill will not add to that possibility, and it should be rejected for that reason.
  6.32 pm
  Mr. John Sykes: The year 1995 marks two special dates for me: one celebrates the founding of our family business 150 years ago and the other marks the 700th anniversary of Scarborough returning a Member of Parliament to Westminster, although not the same one. Of course, there has been a labour market in Scarborough and Whitby for much longer than that, and it has thrived without employment directives from Brussels. My experience of the labour market is limited to the practical day-to-day difficulties of running a company involved in manufacturing, retailing and agricultural property.
  The Bill deals with the labour market. We in our business know the value of a flexible labour market, to which the Tory reforms of the past 15 years have made positive contributions—reforms that have benefited companies and employees alike. I talk with business colleagues who also value the Government's approach, some of whom have charge of their European subsidiaries in Europe. What began two years ago as a trickle of rumours across the English channel has now become a hard fact. Companies in Europe are now deliberately pursuing policies designed to minimise the employment of labour. All the passion exhibited by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) will not alter that single hard fact, for it is manufacturers and companies in Europe—not he or the Governments of Europe—who provide jobs.
  The Economist tells us that, despite a sharp increase in overall confidence in Europe, businesses throughout Europe expect to cut their work forces in the years that lie ahead, with one singular and significant exception. That significant exception is the first choice for Japanese and American firms when establishing a presence in Europe. That significant exception has one of the lowest unemployment figures in Europe and one of the best strike records since the 1890s. It is, of course, the significant country of Great Britain.
  What is the other significant difference between Great Britain and the others? It is the absence of the social chapter and the existence instead of a flexible labour market. The Jobseekers Bill will continue and amplify that difference. It is part of the process of reform that is enabling the country to compete.
  The Bill also deals with the provision of welfare. Sadly, Britain's welfare state remains a gold-mine for those who wish to take unfair advantage of it. One of the most unpleasant manifestations of that is the emergence of so-called badly run Department of Social Security hostels in seaside resorts. Young unemployed people migrate from towns and cities and claim a variety of benefits in an altogether more congenial town. Some come in search of work; others have no intention of lifting a finger.
  It has become clear from experience that the work-shy can easily meet current conditions for receiving benefit by adhering to the letter of the law while taking parallel action designed to ensure that they never get a job. The sight of such able-bodied youths lounging on street corners, always with sufficient money for booze and fags, and, in some cases, drugs, is a slap in the face for the decent, hard-working majority.
  In my factory, where take-home pay is up to about £300 a week, we have no trouble finding good, well-motivated workers, but it is frustrating to find new recruits who are playing the present system for all it is worth. One
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  22-year-old lasted three days with us, and he left saying that benefits of £160 a week were worth more to him. Presumably, he preferred to stay home watching videos. [Interruption.] Two others arrived on a Monday. [Interruption.] I regret to tell Opposition Members that I can speak from my experience of employing people. I expect that Opposition Members' experience of employing people extends no further than the research assistants who dominate the Palace of Westminster. I am talking about practical experience.
  Two other people arrived on a Monday. [Interruption.] They took an hour off on Tuesday—we thought to sign off the dole. They did not come back until Wednesday, and then did so only to tell us that they found factory work tiring and to ask whether we would please sack them to make it easier for them to claim their dole. We refused to oblige, of course.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Sykes: I will give way in a moment, if the hon. Gentleman can bear to control himself.
  We refused to oblige, of course, but the men left and, as far as we know, had no trouble slipping back on to the dole.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. Gentleman referred to his former employee aged 22, who left saying that he could gain more money if he was claiming benefit. What wage was the hon. Gentleman paying that young man?
  Mr. Sykes: The hon. Member was not listening to what I was saying. It is always a pleasure to encounter the soft red underbelly of the socialist party from time to time. I was saying that the gentleman concerned received sufficient benefit to make it not worth his while to work. He preferred to stay at home watching videos. [Interruption.] I am afraid that, with the best will in the world, the hon. Gentleman must accept that there are such people. I am relating my direct experience to the House.
  The Bill will make such young men start from their armchairs, if they are tuned into the parliamentary channel this evening, because they will be required to be available for any work that they can reasonably be expected to do. Others will be required to improve their employability. That is another aspect to which the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) must turn his mind if he has not already done so.
  Those young men will have to take steps, if appropriate, to present themselves acceptably to employers. Perhaps that will herald, at last, the last of the Mohicans. If they cannot be persuaded voluntarily to remove the rings from their noses the Bill will lead them—by their noses, as it were—into workfare projects, under which they will be obliged to put something back into the community.
  The idea of workfare has widespread support in the country, and in many ways the Bill's mention of workfare is one of its most exciting aspects. I urge the Government to ensure that whatever scheme is chosen they make simplicity their byword, because an expensive and bureaucratic system will strangle workfare at birth.
  For scroungers and for the feckless, the indolent and the work-shy—[interruption]—there is no good news in the Bill. They may even, rightly, face disqualification

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  from benefit. However, if Britain's welfare system has been a gold-mine for those who wish to take unfair advantage of it—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order.
  Mr. Sykes:—it is and will remain a blessed—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should pay a little more attention to the occupant of the Chair.
  I recognise that hon. Members have not had the chance to use their voices much during the recess, but I should be grateful if they would reserve their comments until they have the Floor.
  Mr. Sykes: I assure Opposition Members that I shall listen to them in silence.
  If Britain's welfare state has been a gold-mine for those who wish to take unfair advantage of it, it is and will remain a blessed relief to those who genuinely need it. Elements in the Bill will be especially welcome to such people.
  Near my home in Scarborough lives a hard-working family, all of whom are in work except the head of the household, who is 50 years old and desperate for a job. The tragedy is that he is almost always told, "Sorry, we are looking for someone younger." In my business experience I find older people reliable, skilled and experienced—I can even extend that description to the hon. Member for Workington.
  My neighbour and many like him, who constitute the long-term unemployed, will be helped back to work by provisions and incentives such as a national insurance holiday for companies that give a job to someone who has been on the unemployed list for more than two years.
  In Scarborough and Whitby we have our own powerhouse of a micro-economy. A wide range of dynamic companies have established themselves on the coast, providing jobs and prosperity. That is what counts. However, when most of my parliamentary colleagues think of Scarborough and Whitby they think of it as a nice place to go on holiday or to retire to. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington is welcome any time.
  Many part-time jobs have been created in tourism and nursing, which suits many of the families living in Scarborough and Whitby, who value the flexibility afforded by part-time work. There is especially good news in the parts of the Bill that help people who wish to engage in part-time work. A claimant's partner will be able to work for up to 24 hours per week without the claimant being disqualified from benefit. The measures that encourage people to leave benefit by taking part-time work as a prelude to full-time work will also prove helpful, as will many other measures in the Bill.
  It is almost three years since I became a Member of Parliament—
  Mr. Janner: Too long.
  Mr. Sykes: It may be too long for the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I expect to be here for an awful lot longer than he will be.
  It is almost three years since I became a Member of Parliament, and in that time the Government have taken many important steps forward—the Trade Union Reform
  72
  and Employment Rights Act 1993, the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994, and now the Jobseekers Bill. All are entirely consistent with the Government's overall strategy of sustaining and building on our achievements during the 1980s.
  British business is now well equipped, with startling advantages in its ability to compete with the world. Opposition Members must not forget that it is the rest of the world with which we are competing. That is nothing to do with post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory or symbiotic relationships of one kind or another; it is straightforward common sense.
  The closing years of the 20th century will magnify continental Europe's failure to create the right conditions for jobs. Its minimum wages, massive welfare systems, extreme employment protection laws, parental leave directives, works councils, directives on part-time work, working hours restrictions and social chapter are all profoundly misguided. Curse Europe's efforts to impose such conditions on the English.
  I finish by reminding the House about my friends who run subsidiary companies in other European countries. One told me before Christmas that he could not afford to take on anyone else in Europe because of the cost of employing people. But I have saved the best example until last. A large company in my constituency has decided not to build a new factory in France, because of the cost of employing people there, and instead has doubled its production in Scarborough. Those are the hard facts, and in the end it is the hard facts that count. That is why hon. Members should vote for the Bill.
  6.44 pm
  Ms Liz Lynne: I welcome one or two features of the Bill, and I shall come to those later. I had been hoping for some positive measures, as had unemployed people throughout the country and many other hon. Members, but unfortunately the Bill is a sad disappointment to us all.
  I had thought that the Secretary of State for Social Security had had a change of heart, especially when I read the speech that he delivered in Northern Ireland a few weeks ago, in which he seemed to take into account the problems of the low-paid and the unemployed, but after his speech yesterday I realised that that was a fallacy and that there had been no change of heart. I did not even expect a change of heart from the Secretary of State for Employment.
  There is no denying that new legislation is needed, but the Bill represents a missed opportunity. The benefits system is too complex and it has too many poverty traps. The Secretary of State for Social Security admitted in the White Paper that the overwhelming majority of people make every effort to find work at the earliest opportunity, so why are these draconian measures needed? The Bill's aim was supposed to be to get people back to work; instead, it will do nothing but save the Treasury money.
  Let us look at some of the specifics—for instance, the measures affecting 18 to 25-year-olds, who now get less income support than anyone else. I have never thought that that was fair, but instead of taking the opportunity to change it the Government have extended the disadvantage. When the jobseeker's allowance is introduced people under 25 who have paid national insurance contributions will still get less—£9.55 less, to

  73
  be precise—than everyone else. How are young people supposed to manage on less than anyone else? Do food, clothes and rent cost them less? Of course not; the proposal is totally unfair.
  Cutting entitlement to the contributory benefit that is now called unemployment benefit from 12 months to six months will make thousands of people with savings ineligible for benefit. Liberal Democrats say that we will reverse that, and I should like to hear a similar guarantee from the Labour party. People who oppose the Government cutting the time from 12 months to six months should say what they would do if they ever took office.
  I asked the Secretary of State for Employment how much it would cost to implement the jobseeker's agreement, and I received a written answer saying that the subject was still under consideration. I now ask the right hon. Gentleman, or whichever of his colleagues is to reply, to give me an answer to that question. We need to know. I know that the jobseeker's agreement is an extension of restart, but so much more weight will be put on the interviews. How much will it cost to train the interviewers? At present many people who go for restart interviews are humiliated and demoralised, and we do not want that to happen with the jobseeker's agreement. The Secretary of State said that the subject was still under consideration, but we need to know those figures now.
  If the Secretary of State for Social Security thinks that people are really trying to find work, and the Secretary of State for Employment agrees with him, why is the Bill necessary? Why not concentrate on the long-term unemployed, and on providing proper training packages for people?
  Will the training necessary for the jobseeker's agreement to work be available? For example, if an unemployed person gives the Government the guarantee that he or she will seek work, and the interviewer says that the person needs training to find a job, will the Government commit themselves to providing the training for which a need has been identified? I doubt it very much, because the training budget has been reduced from £1 billion to £782 million in the past five years. I should like some reassurance from the Secretary of State that training will be available if an unemployed person is identified as needing it.
  At present, a person is allowed to study for 21 hours a week before losing benefit. The Bill provided a great opportunity for the Government to change that, and to make sure that people could study for longer, but the limit will remain at 21 hours. The Government talk about education and training. If they really believed in a properly educated and trained work force, they would ensure that people could study for longer than 21 hours.
  Let us look at the problems that disabled people will face. With the new medical test for incapacity benefit, a lot of people will lose that benefit.
  Mr. Barry Porter: I was much impressed by the hon. Lady's argument about extending the hours of study before a person loses benefit, but how much longer than 21 hours should the limit be? She cannot just leave it there.
  Ms Lynne: It is obvious that someone who is studying will have better job opportunities after he has qualifications, so it is short-sighted to restrict the study
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  time to 21 hours. I will not say what the limit should be for everybody, but a person who is studying should be available for work at the same time. If a job opportunity comes up and he takes that job, he will of course cease his studies. The 21-hour limit is not feasible.
  If disabled people lose entitlement to incapacity benefit, they may try to get the jobseeker's allowance. A jobseeker's agreement will then be drawn up, but what will happen if that disabled person cannot meet its conditions? Will he then be denied the jobseeker's allowance? I should like an assurance that disabled people will not fall through the gap between two benefits.
  There are some good points in the Bill. The back-to-work bonus is welcome as far as it goes—it does not go far enough—as it gives people an incentive to return to work. I also welcome the jobseeker's grant and the year's national insurance holiday for an employer who takes on someone who has been unemployed for two years.
  I also welcome workstart, which the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) mentioned. I do not see why the Government cannot extend the pilot schemes across the country. Indeed, they could go further and introduce a proper benefits transfer scheme under which benefits could be given to employers who take on someone who has been unemployed for more than two years. That would get people back into work, and I am sure that that is what all hon. Members want.
  We need comprehensive reform, not the piecemeal approach of the Bill. Instead of merging unemployment benefit and income support, the Government should merge family credit and income support. That would get people out of the poverty trap and create a new low-income benefit so that people would not lose benefit pound-for-pound when they get back into work. There would be a real incentive, and it would end the situation where the partner of a person who loses his job is sometimes better off going on the dole.
  The Bill is punitive. It proposes some good measures, but the vast majority of it is punitive. It will not achieve the real objective, which is supposed to be to get people back to work. I am desperately afraid that some of the people who cannot meet their commitments under the jobseeker's agreement for whatever reason may be forced into starvation—I know that that sounds dramatic—and some could be forced into crime.
  6.53 pm
  Mr. Alan Howarth: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, in his address in Liverpool cathedral last week, said how struck he had been—particularly since he went to the Department of Employment—by the need for public debate on ethical issues. I welcome that invitation. My right hon. Friend is a person of high seriousness, and he is regarded by many people as the standard-bearer for the Conservativism of the future. I hold him personally in the warmest regard, but I differ profoundly from him as to the course that the Conservative party should take. The Bill crystallises our differences.
  Why have my right hon. Friends—I am not sure how many have been closely involved—introduced the Bill? They have not done it to achieve substantial savings in public expenditure. I do not doubt that the preliminaries to the Bill go back to 1993, when my right hon. Friend

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  was Chief Secretary. There was at that time a fiscal crisis, and no doubt my right hon. Friend took the view that a fundamental review of unemployment benefit and income support might yield substantial savings.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security rightly insists that we attend to a problem that we must address on both sides of the Chamber. That is that the growth of social security expenditure is at least as fast as the growth of the economy. I would put it to my right hon. Friends that the policies to create more jobs that they are pursuing are very much the best way to tackle the problem.
  Meantime, we have found that any savings that the fundamental review may yield from benefits will not be large. The Bill states that savings on benefit costs of £410 million in 1996–1998 will be offset by an increase in administrative expenditure of £280 million in three years.
  Much as I welcome the closer integration of the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service in their practical operations, I do not think that that is the reason why the legislation has been brought in. I doubt whether primary legislation is needed to achieve much that can usefully be done, and the purpose of the Bill goes way beyond making the services more user-friendly.
  My right hon. Friend rightly insists that a condition for the receipt of benefit should be that claimants must be available for work and be actively seeking work. That has not been in dispute, as he suggested, since the time of Beveridge.
  Mr. Paul Flynn: It might be as well—as Beveridge is so misquoted in the House—to recall that, when the actively seeking work principle was dropped in the 1930s, he said:
  "May it never rise again from its dishonoured grave".
  Mr. Howarth: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, but—as my right hon. Friend explained earlier—Beveridge certainly expected the exercise of active personal responsibility on the part of unemployed people.
  The White Paper acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of people who become unemployed make every effort to find work at the earliest opportunity. That is the positive recognition which ought to animate policy. If we take care of the jobs, jobseekers will in the main take care of themselves.
  The White Paper claims that the policy is designed to improve incentives, but I find that the Government's policy is contradictory in that regard. I welcome the concessions on earnings and hours of work on the part of partners before loss of benefit, the relaxation of the rules for trying a new job experimentally, the bonus to encourage people to progress through part-time work to full-time work, the improved transition to in-work benefits and the jobfinder's grant. Those measures complement other sensible initiatives on child care and nursery education. I also welcome the alteration of the rules governing employers' national insurance contributions for those who employ low-paid workers and people who have been unemployed for two years.
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  The Bill, however, moves in the opposite direction in an important sense. It serves to intensify the disincentive for work and saving by switching people on to means-tested benefits and into the poverty trap six months earlier than in the existing system. That seems perverse.
  The true explanation of why the Government are introducing the legislation is to be found in paragraph 2.7 of the White Paper. It says:
  "Changes are needed to make clear to unemployed people the link between their receipt of benefit and the obligations that places upon them."
  The purpose of the Bill is to establish an emphasis. It is to assert a set of values and a view of human nature, society and the role of the state.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was candid in a carefully considered speech to the Conservative political centre in October 1993 when he sought to rehabilitate stigma from its decline at the hands of political correctness and argued that we needed in our public philosophy a renewed emphasis on right and wrong and on personal responsibility. In an address to Church at Work a month earlier, he said:
  "too broad a benefit system can undermine the morale of those who receive help … By its choices, a government demonstrates its philosophy and shows its moral fibre."
  The argument about the effect of poor relief on the morale of recipients goes back at least as far as the debates on the 1834 Poor Law. On that occasion it was not the Tories but the Benthamites who argued that dependence on poor relief should be a "less eligible" and desirable condition and who required that paupers should be distinguished from the rest of society. It was Disraeli, the young future leader of the Tory party, who said of the new 1834 Poor Law that it was
  "both a moral crime and a political blunder."
  Decisions on welfare are—or ought to be—among the most difficult that Governments have to take. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State observes from time to time, they involve issues of moral hazard. I put it to him that they do so not only for the poor but for the powerful and affluent. If Ministers are sometimes uncertain what to do—in all humility, how can they not be?—they should take a risk in the direction of generosity. It may be argued that that way lies fiscal perdition, but I would say that to be generous in this respect is a proper use of our money, which Ministers raise in taxes and hold in trust on behalf of us all. It is perfectly proper and also prudent to do so. We need to consider carefully whether targeting, taken over the life cycle, will save public expenditure.
  The circumstances in which my right hon. Friends make those decisions are of giddying economic and cultural change. Employers are stripping out surplus labour and skills and keeping only the core. They call in outworkers as and when they need them. The cost of supporting spare capacity increasingly falls on households instead of shareholders. Those changes are, no doubt, exhilarating for the strong and ambitious. They are frightening for the less capable and the less fortunate.
  Of course, my right hon. Friends are right to embrace change. There is no prosperous future for us in refusing to face the future. So the Government drive forward. Sometimes, even to their most affectionate supporters, they are reminiscent of Bakunin's chariot of revolution, rolling and gnashing its teeth as it rolls. My right hon. Friends vigorously dismantle the old and throw out historical lumber. Deregulation, flexibility, free trade,

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  contracting out, opting out and targeting are our nostrums. Radicalism is our watchword. In their eagerness for change, I trust that my right hon. Friends will not forget that it is the responsibility of Government to ensure that the victims of change are not destitute.
  In Liverpool, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State took to task some churchmen who had been, he suggested, seduced from individualism into collectivism. I observe to my right hon. Friend that the Church has always usefully reminded us that we are members one of another.
  The dismantling of an old order is not the creation of a new one. As the old dies, the new struggles to be born. As Gramsci noted, in the interval morbid symptoms appear. They include systemically higher unemployment, and casualisation and insecurity extended across society. People are rendered derelict because their obsolete skills, or their lack of skills, mean that they cannot find employment. Inequality widens and the poorest households become poorer.
  We are elected to Parliament and we serve in government with a responsibility to take care of our society. I do not believe that market forces are an invisible hand that of itself will create a worthwhile pattern out of all this. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher as well as an economist and he insisted on the need for what he called sympathy.
  The Bill widens inequality and deepens impoverishment. It would reduce benefits paid to people unemployed over a year by between 20 and 70 per cent. The changes that it seeks to introduce in the benefits system would be prejudicial to families. That seems an aberration for the Conservative party. The changes would be particularly prejudicial to young families. Under the present system of income support, if both partners are below the age of 25, they receive a lower rate of benefit. Under the new arrangements, that will also apply to recipients of contributory benefit. I have never understood the rationale behind the lower rate of income support for 24-year-olds. If people are 24, their household costs are not thereby less than if they are 25. We need to think carefully about the effect of the changes on children. Poverty is most concentrated in families with children.
  I have to say with sadness that I find the Government's policy too harsh. I also find it improvident. The traumas of poverty carry dire long-term consequences both for society and for the Exchequer. Those who are stigmatised and alienated from our society into the workhouse, so to speak—one might say that workwise is our modern workhouse—feel less sense of obligation to society. It is as well that we should consider at least the correlation between lawlessness and unemployment.
  Mr. Barry Porter: I have followed my hon. Friend's philosophical discourse with some interest. It has been intellectually stimulating. He seems to suggest that we should show more generosity. We all agree with that. Is not the dilemma that he has to face, and everyone regardless of party has to face, that by being generous and increasing the unit costs of labour, our industry would become less competitive than it otherwise would be and could not sell its products? That would cause more people to come out of work. That generosity would then increase and keep the circle going. There is the dilemma.
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  While any Tory of the old school—I hope that I can include both of us in that—would like to be as generous as possible, there is a practical difficulty. Unless someone can square that circle, there is no real or obvious answer.
  Mr. Howarth: I was talking about the benefits system, not the minimum wage, although I would willingly discuss that with my hon. Friend. I suggest that if he has a moment, he should go to the Library and look at the research on that subject by Professor Card of Princeton university.
  I wonder how people on income support can manage decently to feed their families and heat their homes. Under the proposals in the Bill, we would require some people on benefit to live in yet deeper penury. As matters stand already, if people, in the opinion of an Employment Service official, leave a job voluntarily or for reasons of misconduct, they are liable to a deduction from their income support of up to 40 per cent. That may last for up to 26 weeks.
  For single people under 25, income support after a 40 per cent. deduction is £21.70 a week. I ask my hon. Friends to imagine what it must be like to try to live on £21.70 a week. In Liverpool, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, towards the end of his address, that among other things,
  "Britain stands for … the freedom of the citizen … to offer his labour and to withdraw it."
  I wonder whether he overlooked that feature of the benefits system when he used those words.
  As it is, we are increasing the use of sanctions. Between April and September 1994, 40,000 people suffered sanctions of up to 40 per cent. for refusing to attend or complete a compulsory programme. That was an increase of two and a half times over the previous year. Disqualifications on the ground that claimants are not actively seeking work have trebled since 1990–91.
  As my right hon. Friend knows, I am concerned about older claimants. It is a remarkable fact that 59 per cent. of people now aged between 55 and 64 are not in employment. That compares with 8 per cent. in 1977 and it is stark evidence of the insecurity and, in all too many cases, the impoverishment caused by technological change and the impact of a global, competitive labour market.
  Under our present rules, which will be perpetuated through this measure, people under the age of 60 will have to seek work actively if they are to receive benefit. As my right hon. Friend told me when I put this consideration to him on a previous occasion, we must not give up on them, but I fear that, for that age group, the requirement actively to seek work will be a humiliating ritual associated with benefit dependency, rather than a functional feature of the labour market. It is as if one of us were to go into the pulpit and tell those older people, "Seek, even though ye shall not find."
  We are introducing a further severity. If a single person, who is in good health, declines to conform with a jobseeker's direction, and if he does not agree with or accept the say-so of an Employment Service official, as my right hon. Friend explained when he opened the debate, he or she will not receive benefit for a fortnight and will have no means of subsistence. Paragraph 4.40 of the White Paper makes it clear that such people would not

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  even be eligible for a loan from the social fund. I was interested in that aspect in relation to what my right hon. Friend said in Liverpool:
  "We must face the new moral and spiritual challenge of living in less adverse times".
  I am not sure that that particular circumstance was what he had in mind.
  The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) rightly drew attention to the possible predicament of about 200,000 people who are eligible for invalidity benefit, for whom there is no work, and whose disability may not be severe enough to qualify them for the new, more stringently assessed, incapacity benefit, but who may find themselves unable to satisfy the availability and actively seeking work requirements to qualify for the jobseeker's allowance.
  On a previous occasion, my right hon. Friend observed that it is the responsibility of the state to provide a comprehensive safety net for the needy. I very much hope that the interests of that group will be carefully safeguarded.
  I am dismayed by the authoritarianism of the Bill. I am perplexed that it should be so. In Liverpool, my right hon. Friend said:
  "The first duty of government … is to create conditions in which people can become what they want to become".
  This legislation is not consistent with that attractive spirit.
  Last summer, about three times the number of people were required to go on compulsory courses than on vocational training after restart interviews. The Government's plans suggest that, in replacing job plan workshops with workwise and 1–2–1, they anticipate that about twice the number of 18 to 24-year-olds will go on compulsory courses. Perhaps that is our variant of workfare, which has its supporters among Opposition as well as Conservative Members. Enthusiasts for that system should realise that we need to be very self-aware as we explore those policies, to be sure that it is not a tendency to indulge the authoritarian personality that is tempting us forward, and that we are genuinely trying to find practical ways in which to help unemployed people.
  The jobseeker's direction is the most authoritarian feature of the policy. It goes well beyond the existing official recommendation and provides that the state should be able to lay down detailed requirements of behaviour for our citizens. It provides vague, but extensive, discretionary powers for officials to require their fellow citizens to undertake activities that seem appropriate to them and to alter their personal ways and style. In Liverpool, my right hon. Friend said that
  "over-zealous intervention by the state undermines
  personal responsibility".
  Mr. Oliver Heald: Does not my hon. Friend agree that, as a society, structural, long-term unemployment is one of the problems that we face? Countries that try to tackle that problem all end up with some element of compulsion. For example, Sweden is the most liberal regime and it is no doubt one of which he might approve, but after a year it requires an unemployed
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  person to take work. Most countries do so, but that is an element of what he is criticising. Surely an element of compulsion is necessary and has to be part of any scheme.
  Mr. Howarth: I am not arguing against the condition about availability and actively seeking work. I have deep doubts about the wisdom of allowing the Employment Service to exercise dictatorial powers over unemployed people. I find that profoundly illiberal.
  In Liverpool, my right hon. Friend observed how much better the democratic state is than the authoritarian variety—certainly, it at least allows us to question the policies.
  I am confused by the Government's moral position. The centrepiece of the policy is the jobseeker's agreement—an undertaking whereby the unemployed person commits himself to be available, to seek work actively and to comply with requirements stipulated in return for benefit—the jobseeker's allowance.
  The Conservative party has always attached importance to contract as a principle that marshals and orders the energies of free enterprise. It is in the nature of a true agreement, however, that it is made freely and not under duress, such as the loss of benefit.
  The Government should also abide by their pre-existing contract. Unemployment benefit is an entitlement based on national insurance contributions, which lasts for 12 months. We are going to substitute for that the contributory jobseeker's allowance, which will be available for six months only. We are taking out the adult dependant's allowance. Similarly, we have been reducing contributory benefits for the long-term sick and disabled. Those cuts for the unemployed and for disabled people come in the wake of a 10 per cent. increase in employees' national insurance contributions.
  My right hon. Friends insist that one should not have something for nothing, but nor should one have nothing for something. What is the Government's view of the contributory principle? Is it simply to be an illusion—a device for rationing benefit—or is it still to be a bargain between the Government, employers and our citizens for the provision of social insurance?
  My right hon. Friends speak moralistically about the "job-shy", but if they rewrite the national insurance contract in their favour, they will undermine their moral claim on the unemployed.
  None of us condones abuse of the benefits system. Nor should we condone abuse of the sanctions system. I commend my hon. Friends to read the latest annual report of the chief adjudication officer. He found that 39 per cent. of Employment Service adjudications in 1993–94 were unsatisfactory and that in no less than 92 per cent. of appeal decisions a claimant disputed the suspension of benefit. He therefore recommended that there should be an
  "investigation of the reasons for the continuing poor standard."
  That report should be read in conjunction with the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux report issued in October, "Benefit of the Doubt", which describes how, in 1993–94, 180,000 people whose benefit was suspended erroneously had to subsist on reduced income support payments or even none. Many had to do so for months on end while waiting for their case to be heard.

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  Those failures in administration and justice are the real scandal. They dwarf the scandal of abuse by fraudulent claimants of benefit. I worry that present policy may make the position worse. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has just left the Chamber because, in response to the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), he said that the Employment Service had not been incentivised to disqualify more claimants. The Employment Service agreement seems to show that a target is set of 135,000 challenges to claimants on the basis that they are not making themselves available for or actively seeking work. I am struck by the confidence of my right hon. Friends, therefore, in systematically encouraging the service to challenge more benefits, given the background of miscarriages of justice described by the chief adjudication officer.
  My right hon. Friends' confidence in the capacity of the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency for wise administration is great. Clause 28 of the Jobseekers Bill establishes new offences. It says that a person is guilty of an offence if he
  "refuses or neglects to answer any question or to furnish any information … under this Act.
  Regulations under this Act may provide for contravention of, or failure to comply with, any of their provisions to be an offence.
  A person guilty of an offence under … any regulations made under this Act, shall be liable … to a fine".
  Are the unemployed to be treated as criminals? They are our fellow human beings and should be able to count on our sympathy and support. What will it do to the morale of our society to proceed in this way? We must base our policy on a belief in human worth and good will. If we do not, we shall provoke a cynicism and demoralisation that will be truly ruinous.
  What will it do to the public service ethos, to create arbitrary powers, systematically encourage officials to disqualify from benefit, sanction claimants even more severely than at present and criminalise them? Why should we do that? Is it to achieve candle-end economies for the Treasury—candle ends that might provide light and even some warmth in the households of the poor? Is it to appease the consciences of the affluent so that they can feel more comfortable, believing that those who are poor are feckless and fiddling the system? Are the poor so undeserving that they deserve this?
  We need to deconstruct some of the Orwellian language in the Bill, such as "jobseeker's agreement" and "motivation courses". How can we compulsorily motivate someone? I am sure that those who work in the Employment Service are decent people—some will no doubt wish to minimise the harsher effects of the policy—but observation of history and human nature suggests to me that if people in their official capacity are given the power to control and punish their fellow citizens, in less than five minutes some of them start to abuse that power. It is fatuous to suppose that there is something so redeemingly British about our officials that it will not occur here.
  The moral energy of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatism lay in her commitment to freedom and responsibility. The history of this Parliament is, perhaps most importantly, that of resistance to arbitrary power. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spoke to Church at Work, he was dismissive of
  "high generosity with other people's money"
  and
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  "collectivised charity".
  He said:
  "High taxes erode personal values."
  But do low taxes enhance personal values? How much could the good Samaritan, my right hon. Friend's moral hero, achieve of himself and alone? The state is an agent and Ministers are trustees of a collective purpose on the part of us all to further certain things—a purpose that kindliness makes us share but mere individualism prevents us fulfilling. Do my right hon. Friends reject the view of lain McLeod, in another address to the Conservative political centre, that it is the task of a Tory to heal and unify?
  The labour market is changing fast. There are few fixities in our national life, but one is the British sense of fairness. My right hon. Friend, like Saint-Just, desires only to act with due rigour and promote virtue. We are not, thank goodness, a nation of puritans or of rednecks. There is no constituency in this country for a kind of country-cousin Gingrichism. Republican virtue is alien to the Tory tradition. In 1945, voters ignored heroic leadership and were mindful of what they took to be the indifference of Conservative politicians in the 1930s to poverty and social injustice. After 1945, the Conservative party learnt the lesson. That precedent contains a warning for the party to which my right hon. Friend and I both belong.
  7.26 pm
  Mr. Frank Field: No one would object to the measure that we are debating today if the country were in a position of full employment. But we are not in a position of full employment, so the task that we set ourselves in this debate is to try to understand the extent to which the Bill helps us to move back to a position of full employability.
  Not for the first time, two Conservative Back Benchers have helped us to understand the failures of a measure before us to live up to the objective of full employability. This is not the first time that I have heard that elucidation from the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) and my hon. Friend—if I may call him that—the Member for Norfolk, North (Sir R. Howell). They have both underlined important points which I merely wish to underscore.
  Above all, I want to emphasise a point made by the hon. Member for Norfolk, North about what unemployment does to people. He did not present it in a fairytale way as though there were only one type of unemployed person, but stressed the image of unemployed people who are nearly broken by the experience of unemployment and who, in a market economy, feel a lack of worth because they cannot contribute fully to the society in which they live. As he said, the picture is more complicated than that. But whatever I go on to say, we must never lose that image from our debates. All of us, especially those with industrial constituencies, see many people in our surgeries who say that they are playing the system. Although their mouths smile, their watery, wintry eyes tell a different tale about what unemployment does to them. It is extremely important to keep that image before us.
  The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon asked what moral lessons we could draw from the Bill. I thought it extraordinary that a Secretary of State who had just

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  journeyed to Liverpool to talk from one of the most prestigious pulpits in that city should have scored a first in this House by introducing a measure concerning the unemployed. He told us that, ever since measures were first introduced here, conditions were attached to benefits. That is true, but it is only one of the issues about which we should remind ourselves at this time.
  There have been many measures against unemployment, whether from Lloyd George and Churchill in the last Liberal Government, Chamberlain in the inter-war period, the coalition Government or from the Governments who followed in the post-war years. But before tonight no Minister has spoken about such a measure without relating it to the moral framework within which the Secretary of State thinks individuals should operate and the moral framework within which society operates.
  It is no longer good enough to think that people outside believe that mention of incentive and the market system means that one has conducted an appraisal of moral systems and how they affect individuals and build up to affect the quality and tone of the society in which we work.
  For a long time, it has seemed that the Government are brain dead when it comes to looking at the moral and physical impacts of their measures on the wider society. I shall recall just three. Millions of our constituents were taught by the poll tax that it pays to break the law. They were given individual tuition in the Thatcher seminars that one could get away with breaking the law and there were no penalties. Millions learnt that lesson, and they store it in their hearts and act on it. Before then, they were proud never to be lawbreakers. The Government pushed them into that position.
  Just before the Christmas recess, an answer was sneaked out about the Child Support Agency. A third of a million people in the country were told, "Well done, lads, for breaking the law and for putting your two fingers up to the Government. Well done for saying that you will not abide by what we enact as the law of this country. We are calling the troops off. The dogs are off you. Don't worry, we will not seriously pursue you for maintenance."
  What sort of lesson is that for the single mums who have been deserted, or for all the fathers who protest because they think that the agency has acted arbitrarily or is asking for too much money from them? What does it mean to them to see the Government reward people who hold two fingers up to the House? The Bill tells the country that it is all right to tear up contracts, because the measures that we pass are contracts with our constituents. When we pass national insurance measures and instruments we levy taxes on people and the agreement is that when they need it, they will get benefit. Now it is being said, "Never mind about that, lads and lasses. We are tearing up that agreement because we are the Government and we can do such things." The Bill may well get its Second Reading, but what will that teach the outside world about honour or about giving one's word or a commitment?
  The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Miss Ann Widdecombe): Surely the contract on national insurance is that the money which is taken under the national insurance heading goes into a fund and is used
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  only for specified purposes such as the provision of unemployment benefit and pensions. Can the hon. Gentleman point to one penny in that fund which has not been used for those purposes? Will he please acknowledge that the fund is used fully for those purposes and that when it is inadequate we use a Treasury supplement? Therefore, we have surely kept our side of the contract.
  Mr. Field: I almost despair. The Minister is very able. Often, when that is said in the House, it is said condescendingly, but I do not mean it in that way at all. She knows perfectly well that that is a mind-boggling way of describing what we mean by legal contracts between Governments and those who are governed. We are not saying to people that should the national insurance fund fall into deficit, we may have to increase national insurance charges to meet the bill. What is on offer is the tearing up of a contract that is understood.
  Successive Government measures have taught people to encourage the worst side of human nature, and that has the most profound effect on our society. The Bill does that in a further way because it increases the number of people who will be dependent on means-tested benefit. The Secretary of State's answer at Question Time was revealing. I asked him how many people, who thought that they had paid contributions to cover them should they become unemployed, would be pushed on to means-tested benefit now that he is tearing up the contract. He did not know.
  The reason that the Bolsheviks so hated the novel "Doctor Zhivago" was that Lara was killed by them and they were so inefficient at going about their killing that they did not even know in which death camp they had done it. The Bill will push a whole army of new people on to means-tested benefits and the Secretary of State who is responsible for the measure does not even know how many will be pushed into that form of dependency.
  What means-tested benefits are doing to the moral fibre of this country is important, and it registers in the country even if perhaps it does not register as fully as it should in the House. The problem is no longer marginal. Nearly 10 million households—I am not double counting—depend on one or other of the major means-tested benefits. That is almost half the country; when their dependants are added, it means that some 25 million people, almost half the population, have their standard of living determined to some extent, if not totally, by means-tested assistance. The Bill will increase that number.
  When David Piachaud and I coined the phrase in the early 1970s about the poverty trap, I thought of it in a sort of passive way. I thought that people would be on benefit and would find it difficult to disentangle themselves. I now realise how simple that was and how much more complicated life is. Over the period since then, there has been a change in attitudes in respect of honesty, and it extends from the boardroom to the benefit office. Large numbers of people are denied the possibility of full-time, reasonably paid jobs and are offered only part-time jobs. They continue to draw benefits and work on the side. The evil of means-tested assistance is that it is spreading to those other groups who have learned under this Government how to break the law and that it pays to do so. Many people know that the way to survive is to do that.

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  The hon. Member for Norfolk, North was right when he said that some people were abusing the benefit system and that we should take specific measures against them. My charge against this measure, as against practically all the Government's measures in this field, is that it roughs up all claimants and assumes that they all cheat the taxpayer. The Government lack the courage or the willpower to target measures at those constituents with whom I strongly disagree because they commit fraud against fellow taxpayers. But the Government's measures do not do that.
  There are general charges to be made against the Government, but there are also important lessons to be learned for the Opposition from this and similar debates. My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) was right to say that, at this stage of a Parliament, we would not give details about what would be in our election manifesto. But the lesson that I draw from a stewardship of Tory Governments that has pushed half the population on to means-tested welfare is that disengagement from that will take a long time. We must first be clear about how it is to be done, and it will then take many Parliaments to achieve it.
  None the less, it is crucial that Ministers in a Labour Government do not give the sort of response that we have heard from Ministers in this Government, who have always adopted the "short fix" approach. They tend to say, "It looks good now; never mind the long-term consequences." That has led to the society that we now have.
  There has been a dispute across the Floor of the House about what Beveridge did or did not say. Beveridge said that a back-up training or work scheme could not be administered at a time of mass unemployment; in those circumstances, control collapsed. Given that—despite what the Government have done to the figures—mass unemployment still exists, it seems proper to give those of our constituents who want to work the right to a job guarantee.
  There is no need for compulsion: so many people want jobs that we shall never have to compel them to take what job opportunities exist. If we seriously believe what Conservative Members have said today—if we hate unemployment because it destroys self-worth—we shall judge the Bill a wretched little measure that will do little to deal with fraud, which is in any event a minor problem compared with mass unemployment, and even less to give our constituents who have waited long and hard in the queues for work a chance to add positively to a society to which, unbelievably, many are still proud to belong.
  7.41 pm
  Mr. Gary Streeter: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), whose views I usually respect. I must, however, disagree with one thing that he has said this evening. He seemed to be saying that it was not possible for Governments to change, clarify or refine policies in mid-term; that could be done only if the change was set out in a manifesto and received the mandate of the population at a general election. Surely Governments must reserve the right during a five-year term to take the steps that they consider necessary to improve systems, focus resources and so forth.
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  Unusually, hon. Members have said a good deal about "morality" today. I believe that the nation's moral framework still stems from our Christian faith; I am proud to consider myself a committed Christian and I should be delighted to make a few comments about morality.
  One reason why the nation's moral fabric is now in disarray is the diminution of our Christian faith since the second world war. If we are to establish a more coherent moral framework, we need to deal with the root problem—the issue of faith. Morality, however, is not just about being nice to people or spending more on welfare; it is not necessarily about acting collectively. There is another side to the morality coin. Morality is also about personal responsibility, about accounting for our lives, about commitment to family and other responsibilities and about not running away from those responsibilities. It is about taking responsibility for our own lives, and not living entirely as we wish.
  Of course there is a societal element in morality, but it cannot be discussed only in those terms; individual responsibility is a huge factor. Although I do not agree with every word of it, I find just as much moral content in the contract that is now being discussed in America as in the report on social justice.
  All sorts of people become unemployed. Some are genuine, good and decent people who are desperate to find work and ashamed that they do not have it; they hate the idea that they may have to take money from the state. We all know people in that category. But there are also people who are lazy—who prefer idleness to industry. Beveridge, of whom we have heard much this evening, recognised that. There are also those who are dishonest and will skilfully exploit any benefit system to their advantage: even as we speak, many hundreds—if not thousands—are involving themselves in the black economy while drawing benefit. Ideally, wise people would assess each individual on the basis of his needs and motivation and decide his benefit accordingly, but that is not possible in 1995. Hundreds of thousands rely on benefits and we therefore need a system to assess all those people, to draw lines in the sand and to create thresholds if the benefits are to be delivered.
  Apparently, some Conservative Members believe that all those who are out of work are layabouts. That is far from the truth. Many of my relatives and long-standing friends in Plymouth have been out of work at times, and have been desperately keen to find work. In the 1980s we heard much from Conservative Members about opportunity and choice, but alongside those two fine words we should place the word "encouragement". We must find ways to encourage those who want to find work and improve their lives to escape and stand on their own two feet.
  Ms Eagle: Many would agree with the hon. Gentleman's view that people should be encouraged to take jobs; indeed, I do not think that anyone would disagree. But how does he think that draconian benefit sanctions, which the Bill increases, encourage people to do anything? Do they not simply humiliate people?
  Mr. Streeter: The hon. Lady does not address the real point. We need to approach the benefit system with both carrot and stick. The jobseeker's allowance is an incentive: it gives people a clear sense of what is expected from them and a clearly defined route through the benefit system, and tells them what they can and cannot achieve.

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  It gives them the encouragement of which I speak. However, we also need an arrangement that cracks down on those who wish to defraud the system. Opposition Members may think that Conservative Members believe that all unemployed people are layabouts, but we do not. Does the hon. Lady believe that all those people are good, honest and decent, and that they lie awake at night saluting the Union Jack and believing in the common good?
  Ms Eagle: The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to learn that I do not believe that.
  Mr. Streeter: So far this evening, I have not heard any Opposition Member—with the possible exception of the hon. Member for Birkenhead—suggest that there are people who defraud and exploit the benefit system, and have no intention of finding work. We must have a system to deal with those people. I wish that it were otherwise, but we live in the real world. We need systems that include targets, incentives and thresholds, and I believe that the Bill is a step in the right direction.
  First, the Bill seeks to target help on those who really need it. There are people out there in the real world for whom we should do much more than we do. However, there are people for whom we do too much and who lean on the state when they should be standing on their own two feet. [Interruption.] Yes, both sorts of people are out there. Opposition Members agree that there are people for whom we should do more, but as soon as Conservative Members suggest that there are people—perhaps only two—who lean on the state when they should stand on their own two feet, Opposition Members say, "Oh, no. That is not acceptable as a thesis." One must see both sides of the coin to discuss this issue properly. That is what the Bill seeks to do—to target and to focus.
  The Bill does not, of course, solve all the problems of targeting, but it is a step in the right direction. It is good that each claimant, who after all receives money from everyone else in the nation, should enter into a bargain with the taxpayer and should clearly understand what is required of him or her. Earlier, much mockery was made of the fact that people would have to sign an agreement. It is important, however, that they should have to sign up for a package of measures and rights. It means that they are personally engaged in the process, as they should be.
  Mr. Ian McCartney: A constituent of mine is 23 years of age, has worked for the past seven years and has paid class I national insurance contributions. He has recently been made redundant. In an agreement with the Government, he made those contributions on the basis that, if he were made redundant, he would receive a level of benefit for 12 months. He now finds that he will receive that benefit not for 12 months but for six months and that, because he is under 25, the benefit will be further reduced, despite family and other commitments. Is not that a moral breach of an agreement with an individual who has made those contributions since he left school and who, through no fault of his own, has been made redundant in the past few weeks?
  Mr. Streeter: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me and all hon. Members in hoping that, as unemployment continues to fall, his constituent will find a job. Two thirds of unemployed people find jobs within
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  the first six months of unemployment. We all know that the contributory scheme is not an investment programme. Through that scheme, we pay today for other people. We do not save for ourselves and for the future.
  The second reason why I support the jobseeker's allowance involves the issue of simplicity. It is important to make the benefit system as simple as possible. I welcome the fact that we are merging income support with unemployment benefit and that we have one system, with, I hope, one centre dealing with benefit claims in most cases. That is far better than traipsing from one location to another and filling in other sets of forms. It is important to simplify the benefit system.
  Thirdly, I welcome the measure because it gives increased accountability. The provisions state:
  "As under the existing scheme, in order to receive jobseeker's allowance, benefit claimants will have to be available for, and actively seeking, work. The test will be extended to ensure that people who take steps deliberately which undermine their prospects of finding work will be penalised."
  I wish that there were not people who took steps deliberately to exclude themselves from work, but all hon. Members know that those people exist. We must make them more accountable to the system.
  I also welcome the back-to-work bonus, which is part of this important package of measures. I believe in the concept of stepping stones and of helping people out of unemployment and full-scale benefit dependency and into part-time work to give them a sense of self-esteem. We should also help them go from part-time work to full-time work if that is what they seek. We must take one step at a time. The jobseeker's allowance will help that process.
  A young lady works for my wife and me at our home just outside Plymouth. The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) will laugh and scoff because that young lady helps my wife with the horses that she owns and enjoys. I am sure that Opposition Members will not accept that it is right and decent for anyone to own horses. In their view, that is a pursuit of the aristocracy.
  The young lady, a single parent, was unemployed for several years. She put a card in a local shop asking if anyone would employ her to work with horses. She was desperate to return to such employment. The months went past and no one employed her. My wife saw the card, made contact, had an interview and took her on 12 months ago on a small part-time basis. That small part-time job, however, has developed into a larger part-time job, which will, I hope, one day be a full-time job. It has helped the young lady to get back on her feet and to buy more for her children this Christmas. The benefit system, including family credit, has helped to support that family. We need that sort of system. It works in practice. Opposition Members may scoff at part-time work, but it is an important way back into work and an important stepping stone.
  Of course there are people who want only a part-time job. I understand that 85 per cent. of people in part-time work want to work only part-time. Why? Perhaps it suits their family circumstances. Perhaps they feel that they want to spend some part of the day with their young pre-school children. Part-time work is important. How foolish it is for Opposition Members to wish to load burdens onto employers to ensure—it seems almost their wish—that they will cease to employ as many part-time people. How foolish it is to load on employers of such

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  workers all the employment rights that normally apply to full-time workers. What will be the result of that? Only a reduction in the number of part-time jobs available.
  Mr. Edward O'Hara: Does not the hon. Gentleman recognise the non-sequitur of which the Government are constantly and reprehensibly guilty—the fact that many people want part-time work does not imply that they do not want full-time work? For them, part-time work is no good.
  Mr. Streeter: The hon. Gentleman will join me again in rejoicing over the fact that employment is falling so rapidly. Both full-time and part-time jobs are being created. I wish Opposition Members would stop criticising part-time jobs. As I said earlier, they are an important stepping stone into full-time work for people who want it. Some people may want part-time jobs perhaps as a second job for the household or to help them support their family.
  The arguments on the minimum wage sound compassionate and excellent in theory. I have no doubt, however, that to impose a minimum wage of £4 a week on a guest house owner in, for example, Newquay for his receptionists, chamber maids and other employees—
  Miss Widdecombe: £4 an hour.
  Mr. Streeter: £4 a week is what some Opposition Members deserve. Imposing a minimum wage of £4 an hour can have only one result: employers will take on fewer employees. The idea of a minimum wage sounds excellent and compassionate in theory, but in reality it is cruel and callous.
  Earlier in the debate, in an exchange between the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and myself, I expressed the view that Opposition Members did not know what it was like to be employers and did not understand how the employment system worked. She says that she has employed people. I am grateful that she acknowledges that fact. I ask her to answer this question. Has she ever had to put her house up as collateral on a business loan? Has she ever lain awake at night worrying about how she will pay the wages that week for her part-time and full-time employees? Has she ever woken up at 5 o'clock in the morning in a cold sweat, worried about where the next order will come from? Until she can answer yes to those questions, she is not qualified to talk about what small businesses, companies and businesses go through in employing people.
  The hon. Member for Wallasey scoffed at the fact that the national insurance contribution holiday for long-term unemployed people is only £6 a week. For many small businesses, £6 a week per employee is a significant sum and could mean the difference between taking a person on or not taking him on. Until she has experienced the workplace and been an employer in that business sense, she will have no understanding of that matter.
  The Bill has my support. It is an important step in the right direction, but the most important thing that we can do for unemployed people is to create real jobs for them. These measures can be of benefit only within a dynamic economic framework and where there is economic growth. Therefore, is not it good news that we live at a time when there is sustainable economic growth with low inflation and low interest rates and when all the businesses
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  that I visit regularly in my constituency are talking about growth, growing order books, increasing exports and taking on new staff?
  The most important thing that any Government can do for their citizens is to provide the economic framework in which jobs are created so that people can find remunerative work which enables them to provide for themselves and their family and to stand on their own two feet. That is the framework in which we are now living. The jobseeker's allowance is worthy of our support. ft is a further step towards targeting help to those who really need it and I hope that the House will support it.
  8.1 pm
  Mr. Keith Hill: We have heard the Secretary of State for Employment claim that the Jobseekers Bill is about more jobs, benefit reform and better services for the unemployed. In reality, it is about the opposite of all those things. It is about job losses, greater dependency, an absolute loss of income for many unemployed people and fewer rights for them all. Far from creating more jobs, the Jobseekers Bill will force more people, especially women, out of work. They will be the partners of unemployed people who, under the present unemployment benefit, which is not means tested, may remain in full or part-time employment for the full 12 months of the benefit. That will change with the shrinking of the contributions-based jobseeker's allowance to six months and the loss of the adult dependency allowance and associated benefits.
  On the Government's own figures at least 150,000 unemployed people will be obliged to switch over to the means-tested jobseeker's allowance in its first full year of operation. Their partners will follow them into unemployment as the clawbacks on family income under the means-tested jobseeker's allowance make work financially pointless for them. The inevitable consequence of the jobseeker's allowance will be a massive switch out of jobs and into dependency.
  The Government proclaim the advantages of the Jobseekers Bill in terms of benefit reform and it is true that there will be some simplification of the procedures. However, what sort of benefit reform means forcing thousands of our citizens into benefit dependency and the loss or reduction of benefit for thousands more? What logic is it that penalises in particular the 18 to 24-year-olds who have paid national insurance contributions and who receive the same rate of unemployment benefit as all other age groups at present, but who will under the jobseeker's allowance find their benefit cut by 20 per cent? How can it be justified that those who have worked longest and saved the most should suffer most under the jobseeker's allowance?
  Anyone who has been a conscientious, hardworking employee all his life but who experiences the catastrophe of unemployment had better beware. If one's savings and redundancy payments amount to more than £8,000—a modest amount at the end of a working life—the unemployment benefit that might be received under the current system will be reduced by half under the jobseeker's allowance. If one claims for a dependent relative, it will be cut by 70 per cent., leaving the princely benefit of £23 a week. In total, nearly one in three male claimants with working partners will lose all entitlement

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  to benefit at six months and nearly two out of three female claimants will lose out entirely after six months instead of 12.
  Already in our society there is a pervasive anxiety about the threat of unemployment. That is understandable. What family has not been touched by it to some degree? At least those in work used to be able to reassure themselves that what they had paid for by way of national insurance contributions they would, in some measure, get back. They could also feel that their contributions justified their entitlement to benefit. It was a source of self-respect for the out of work which the Government are now undermining by their shrinking of the contributions-based benefit. The new and arbitrary powers of benefit sanctions conferred on minor officials in the Employment Service compounds this loss of respect by a further loss of rights for the unemployed.
  The truth is that if one is out of a job, the Jobseekers Bill means a loss of income and a loss of rights. Those two losses mirror the political purposes of the Bill. It is a device to slash public spending regardless of the social cost. It is born out of the continuing Tory conviction that the unemployed have brought it on themselves. What will happen to the £270 million saved by the Bill? Will it be used to help unemployed people? Will it be used for more or better training? The idea is laughable. We all know that it will be put into a pot for electoral bribes later.
  The Jobseekers Bill is dressed up as an attack on the work-shy. Yes, authentically work-shy there may be. The White Paper says:
  "Experience shows … that a small minority seek to abuse the benefit system."
  "Experience" is all very well, but who are those people and how many of them are there? The sparsity of the evidence is matched only by an excess of rhetoric such as we have heard in the Chamber tonight.
  This year the Secretary of State for Employment—we all know about his vast experience in these matters—instructed the jobcentres to challenge 135,000 claimants about the genuineness of their search for jobs. He wants to take them off benefit. Last year his predecessor set the target at 69,000. Are we to understand that the number of the feckless unemployed has doubled in the past 12 months? It does not matter that every serious study of the unemployed shows that the overwhelming majority hate being out of work and are desperate for jobs. In Tory dogma, if one is unemployed, it is a personal failure and the workshy and the job hungry are all tarred with the same brush. If the Minister disagrees she should listen to the logic of my next observation.
  Some of us, perhaps even the Minister, would say that if a person had been in regular employment for all or most of the two years or more before losing a job, it would create a reasonable presumption that such a person was committed to work. After all, what normal person, having worked consistently, would forfeit a regular pay packet to luxuriate on unemployment benefit of £45 or £46 a week, even for 12 months? Yet, such individuals who are out of work through no fault of their own will, under the jobseeker's allowance, pay the penalty for being unemployed by seeing the time in which they are entitled to benefit halved. Under the guise of tackling the work-shy, the Government are penalising the job hungry. The Government's message to the unemployed is that it
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  is their fault that they are out of work; the Government intend to take them by the scruff of the neck and rub their noses in it.
  Mr. Heald: The basis of the hon. Gentleman's speech seems to be that these measures will not work, but I can recall that on previous occasions when the Government made suggestions to help the long-term unemployed back to work, the Opposition said exactly the same thing. How does he therefore explain the fact that 250,000 people have gone back to work in the past nine months?
  Mr. Hill: I doubt very much that many of them were the long-term unemployed. It does not seem likely that compulsion and coercion are the way to get the long-term unemployed in particular back to work, although compulsion and coercion are the ethos of the measure that we are debating.
  The Bill gives significant new powers to Employment Service officials to withhold benefit payments if claimants are judged not to be available for work or actively seeking work. In future, benefits may be stopped if claimants are deemed not to be taking steps
  "to present themselves acceptably to employers",
  to quote the White Paper. There is enormous scope for the use and abuse of arbitrary judgment in that phrase alone.
  Still more threateningly, benefits may now be stopped for up to half a year if a person is considered to have left a job without good cause. The White Paper promised that the legal concepts involved in determining "good cause" would be defined more clearly by legislation. We now know, however, that the definitions do not appear in the Bill but are to be published subsequently in the form of regulations. It appears that a great deal is to emerge in regulations although this is a matter of human and legal rights.
  The proposal means that the most permissive and possibly dangerous element of personal interpretation by minor officials will not be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. It is a deeply worrying development and has been made worse—
  Miss Widdecombe: What was that?
  Mr. Frank Field: My hon. Friend said that it would not be subject to proper scrutiny. We shall not be able to change it—
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. This is not the occasion for cosy chats.
  Mr. Hill: It is a deeply worrying development which has been made worse by the additional anxiety that front-line jobcentre officials may in future be able to impose benefit sanctions without external adjudication. The fundamental importance of that safeguard is demonstrated by the fact that, in 1993, 44 per cent. of those appealing to the independent adjudication service had their benefits reinstated after they had been stopped by Employment Service staff. That safeguard is not in the Bill, but the Secretary of State for Employment reassured the House today that an independent adjudication procedure will remain in place. It is an essential concession and I invite the Secretary of State or the Minister of State to confirm that the procedure will now be inserted formally into the Bill.

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  Nevertheless, considerably wider powers for benefit sanctions will appear on the statute book. That is why the National Union of Civil and Public Servants, which represents many of the staff at the Benefits Agency and jobcentres, was absolutely right to warn that such staff will be seen increasingly not as the helpers but as the "policers" of the unemployed.
  We can draw no conclusion other than that this measure will add to a climate of coercion and compulsion in the benefit system. It will force many people on to worthless training schemes or into low-paid, temporary or part-time jobs which will be useless for their long-term employment needs. If one asks what the jobseeker's allowance offers unemployed people, the answer is less chance of getting benefit and more chance of losing it.
  The Bill will do nothing for the vast majority of unemployed people who sincerely want a job, but it will ensure that losing one's job will be a more painful experience than ever before. That is why the House should reject this mean-spirited and vindictive measure.
  8.14 pm
  Lady Olga Maitland: This has been a debate of considerable passion, but I was somewhat disappointed to hear the angry words of the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill). For him to describe the Bill as "mean-spirited" and "useless" strikes me as if he has overlooked the main issue, which is that the Bill will give the unemployed every possible opportunity to get back into work. It is the reverse of what the hon. Gentleman suggested.
  When passions are running high, it is important to take a step back. While we care deeply about the plight of the unemployed, we do not help if we blind ourselves to reality and clear thinking. It is important to take an almost lateral view of the topic and look at it from the point of view of the unemployed person who is trying to get back into work and from that of the employer who wants to take him into his employ, whether part time or full time, or to undergo training.
  I heartily welcome the Bill. Social security costs are escalating and if we do not take firm control now, whichever party happens to be in power in the next century will have a huge problem to solve and the entire community will be shouldering an unbearable cost.
  We should examine with a clear mind ways to ensure fair play for all. A minority must not be allowed to take taxpayers for a ride. We have a black economy, and people are in fact stealing when they claim social security while at the same time earning cash in hand. That is to be condemned.
  Mr. Flynn: Has the hon. Lady read the book written by the hon. Member presently in conversation with Madam Deputy Speaker? It is called "The Age of Entitlement" and contains a chapter entitled "The Demographic Myth" in which the hon. Gentleman says that the Government have exaggerated the number of elderly people in the next century because they wish to distort policies, as they are doing now? The book was written by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts).
  Lady Olga Maitland: Although I have the greatest respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts), it does not necessarily mean that I have to concur with all his comments. I regret to say that I have not read his memorable book, but I shall.
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  The Bill aims not only to ensure fairness for the taxpayer, who has a responsibility to support those in need, but to encourage those who are out of work to get back into work. It aims to shift the reluctant, which is not always easy. I have talked to them. I can think of one young man who came to my surgery saying that he was a bartender. I said, "If you are not prepared to take work as a bartender, why don't you think of something else to do?" "Oh," he said, "I only want to be a bartender." More than that, he said, "I want to be a bartender only in a particular type of bar." That told me that he did not want to get back to work at all. When I pressed him on the point, he said that he was quite happy to live on a minimal amount because it came from the Government and required him to do nothing. That is unacceptable. It is absolutely right and appropriate that we should create a climate in which people who are young and able-bodied do not sit around because it suits them.
  I find it rather depressing that we are now in a new climate in which people are polarised. There are those who are keen to work, who are part of the engine of this country and who are driving it along. We see that tremendous initiative and enterprise in all age groups. There is another, much smaller group—a very unattractive group—who are almost the professional unemployed. They take part in demonstrations, it does not seem to matter which. We saw them demonstrating outside Parliament against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill. We now see demonstrations about animal welfare taking place on the south coast. There is a group of people in that crowd who should be asked clearly and persistently, "What are you doing to try to get back to work? Are you actively seeking a job? Are you genuinely available for work?" I think that there are some who do not fit that category.
  The wider picture is that there is undoubtedly positive movement in the job market today. As has been said earlier, the number of jobless has fallen by 45,800 since October. The figure has fallen by almost half a million since December 1992. More than that, in my constituency, the unemployment figure is now down by 3 per cent. and is only just above the level of the late 1980s.
  Ms Eagle: The hon. Lady has just mentioned the unemployment figures in her constituency. Does she know how many vacancies there are in her constituency in comparison with the number of people who are searching for them?
  Lady Olga Maitland: I shall come to that point later in my address. I can only say that the number of vacancies is rising excitingly.
  Mr. McCartney: The hon. Lady referred to the jobless in her constituency. Does she accept that in the past five years, unemployment has risen by a staggering 164 per cent?
  Lady Olga Maitland: I will not agree to the figure of 164 per cent., but I agree that there has been a rise in unemployment. The truth is that today, unemployment is down. More than that, I draw the attention of the House to a reply that I received from the Minister of State, Department of Employment. She tells me that the Employment Service has placed almost 2 million people in jobs in the past year, which is 16 per cent. more than in the previous year. That has to be a triumph and one on which we can build.

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  It is not just a matter of us getting more people back into work, although we must continue to strive to do so. We must also show considerable imagination. I congratulate the Government on having, to date, 15 different schemes and initiatives to help people back into work.
  Dr. Robert Spink: There are 23 schemes.
  Lady Olga Maitland: I stand corrected. I understand that there are 23 different schemes, which is even better than I had expected. The schemes build on the £600 million package of work incentives which were announced last November.
  I give the House a taste of the initiatives that have been put into motion. There is the travel-to-interview scheme whereby unemployed people can no longer say that they cannot go for an interview because they cannot afford the fare. That particularly applies when the interview is outside their home area.
  I especially appreciate the job search seminars which offer coaching to unemployed people to help them develop their job-hunting techniques and interview skills. That is extremely important. Often people who are not very articulate do not know how to present themselves when they go out into the job market. Some of them barely have a clear idea of exactly what they can do and what they want to do. No employer will take on an applicant who turns up with a muddled approach and, perhaps, an untidy and messy appearance. If such applicants only had a bit of forethought, training and assistance, they could give a much better justification of their real skills.
  I have great praise for the system of job clubs all over the country. I have seen them being effective in helping very demoralised people in inner-city areas, such as Tower Hamlets and Haringey. In my constituency as well, people get tremendous moral support from coming together, talking to other people in the same plight and getting one-to-one advice and support in their job applications.
  I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Sir R. Howell) for his work over a long period in encouraging workfare or, as it is known in this country, the workstart pilot schemes. I very much hope that one day I shall be able to visit one of the pilot schemes—I understand that all four of them are up in Norfolk—which are well worth seeing. The Secretary of State for Employment would be well advised to think carefully about how these schemes can be developed. Helping the long-term unemployed into work can only benefit everyone in society, not just the individuals concerned.
  Mr. O'Hara: I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady's eulogy about efforts to put people back into work in her constituency. I happen to have some statistics here; one must put the matter into context. Unemployment in the hon. Lady's constituency has gone down by 19 per cent. in the past year, but by only 1 per cent. in the past three years. Indeed, in 1989–90, unemployment went up by 148 per cent.
  Lady Olga Maitland: The hon. Gentleman still overlooks the fact that unemployment is down; he is
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  juggling with statistics. For the man who has managed to get a job, that job means a tremendous amount. The truth is that the Labour party would almost die rather than admit that schemes operated by the Government are a success.
  I pay tribute to another Government scheme—the jobfinder's grant—under which up to £200 is provided to an applicant for tools for his trade. I understand from my local jobcentres that that could have quite a significant effect on those who are in manual work, whether painters and decorators or carpenters, and who have felt that a lack of capital support for buying essential tools has kept them out of the job market when they could easily be back in it.
  We must, of course, understand the mood and morale of someone who is without a job. I have seen such people being deeply demoralised, especially those who, as has been said by hon. Members on both sides of the House, have worked for 20 or 25 years and who suddenly, in mid-life, are cut off in their prime. I have felt deeply when I have talked through those problems with people who have come to see me. I understand their feelings and I can feel their shock.
  There is, however, another group whom we must take into account. We must teach them how to be more flexible in their approach to finding new work and how to be more imaginative. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) asked earlier how we could teach people initiative and enterprise. I believe that we can by raising people's confidence, self-esteem and self-worth, and by giving them the feeling that they count for something and that they are important. It is amazing how, once that framework is in their minds, they can leap over a mountain that they had not believed they could leap over. All that could be done is being done through the framework provided in the Jobseekers Bill. I find that the problems of apathy are very serious, especially among the young.
  I shall digress for a moment on the subject of the young. The time has come when we should try to create a climate in which we educate the young not to start families until they know that they are on a job ladder. It is staggering to read cases, such as that recently reported in the newspapers of a young girl who had her first baby while she was aged 14, who is now aged 16 and is expecting her third child, while her partner—they are not married—is only 19. How could they possibly have thought that they were ready to support a family when there was no job on hand? They were clearly burdened with their domestic problems and it somehow escaped them that they would have a moral obligation, if they were to have a family, to ensure that they would be able to provide for their children. That is known as moral responsibility.
  It would be a great help if, in bringing up young people through the education system, they were taught to understand that having children is an obligation of responsibility, which means ensuring that they accept training and, by the same token, ensure that they embark on a career and have a job structure before they start with the expenses of having children. Indeed, it denies children security if their parents willy-nilly bring them into the world without any thought or planning.
  It is very important to recognise those people who have been caught in the benefit trap, who want to get out and want to get back to work. The Bill will do just that. The Bill especially delights me—it is a relief—because

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  through it the triplicate form-filling, the complicated administration of seeking support and getting back to work will come to an end and we shall be able to replace the out-of-date, confusing two-benefit system. That is right. It is long overdue. Undoubtedly, the measures in the Bill will be easier to understand and will streamline administration, which in turn will mean better targeting and improved services for the jobless. In the end, the individuals who are seeking help will feel that one-to-one relationship, which we want to build, so that they have a sense of commitment not only to agreeing to look for work but to those to whom they will be answerable.
  I welcome the suggestion that people should sign an agreement demonstrating their commitment to returning to work. That is very important. It is very easy for people to slide into a benefits syndrome without realising that it takes two to tango—the providers of the benefit and the recipients. It takes two to recognise that they have a job to work together to get that unemployed person back into the work force. Signing an agreement emphasises that commitment. It would be of great benefit to build on the programme, which the Government have already started, of working out a planned job search and helping unemployed people with the whole mechanics of looking for work. Making the process more formal and more structured can only be to everyone's benefit.
  I also welcome the stick and carrot approach. On the one hand, we have the stick, the commitment and the sanctions as they are applied, and on the other we have the carrot, the tax-free, back-to-work bonus, which will undoubtedly encourage people to leave the benefits system in the long term, particularly those who have been working part-time. The stepping stone of part-time work is an essential part of building up self-confidence, about which we should not in any way be embarrassed or shy. Staff in my local jobcentre are confident that the back-to-work bonus will take off and will work. They are, after all, the people at the coal face and can speak with authority.
  We were talking earlier about the opportunities of getting people back into work. The good news is that there are more opportunities today than there have been in the past few years. Certainly in my constituency there are more jobs now in the retail trade; in shops. There are more jobs in clerical work. There are also more jobs in the building trade, which is very significant, although, admittedly, those jobs command slightly lower wages than they did in the past.
  One word of advice that I would give to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is that although it is all very well getting the training schemes well established, as we have, we nonetheless need to match them with more work experience. That applies especially to school leavers who, at the moment, in some schools, are put on a two-week job opportunity or work experience scheme, which can work very well. Sadly, not enough schools are pushing that scheme hard enough. To give young people that first taste of the real world of work is an enormous help, not only in training, but because an employer can see that they have had some experience of an office environment.
  I am disappointed that the Labour party is still absolutely dedicated to the idea of a minimum wage. It strikes me that that is a windmill which we will have to knock to the ground. Labour Members are raising people's expectations falsely and they are doing no favours to the 2 million people who will undoubtedly lose
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  jobs as a result of a minimum wage. I find it strange that even Labour Members have admitted that there are flaws in their own scheme. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), when he was interviewed by Brian Walden on London Weekend Television, said:
  "I knew the consequences were that there would be some shake-out, any silly fool knew that".
  It would be wise if the Labour Government took heed of their own errors in the past. It should be remembered that every Labour Government for more than 60 years have presided over an increase in unemployment.
  I trust now that Labour Members will support the Bill and realise, in their anxiety to get people back to work, that the Bill is undoubtedly the best possible chance for all people who are fearful, afraid, need help and need support. We have now got it for them.
  8.37 pm
  Mr. Paul Flynn: The Secretary of State referred in his speech to the living memory of hon. Members in the House. He may well have been thinking of the strange anniversary, on the seventh day of this month, which marked exactly 60 years since the Unemployment Assistance Board came into being. That board originated from a decision made by Ramsay MacDonald's Government of 1931 to limit the duration of unemployment benefit to six months. It is interesting to think that that system may well be coming back, because then many of the benefits were paid by local authorities.
  That Government also introduced a system decreeing that unemployed people would have to undergo a means test. That may not be in the memory of many hon. Members, but it is certainly in the memory of my family, as my father was one of the people in that period who underwent that means test, having suffered from a war injury which meant that he never worked again. I remember how embittered he was throughout the rest of his life because, a short while after that means test, the War Department decided to change his pension from an amount which was attributed to his war wound—he was shot—to an amount which was aggravated by his war wound.
  The bitterness felt by that generation is about to be reproduced. The Government at the time decided to nationalise the means testing of the unemployed. The Unemployment Assistance Board, which was invented by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Neville Chamberlain—who had his problems later on—applied itself to its task with such enthusiasm that, in the first month of its operation, it brought this country closer to revolt than at any time this century. Hundreds of thousands of families found their incomes savagely reduced. Hon. Members of all parties and from all parts of the country protested loudly.
  After only four weeks of the new scheme, the Minister of Labour rose in the House to announce a standstill. The cuts made to that point were cancelled and arrears were paid. Until new regulations could be introduced, the Unemployment Assistance Board was to pay each unemployed person the amount payable under existing regulations or what that person received previously from the local authority. There was rejoicing in the valleys

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  because the valleys of south Wales were among the most generous and fair in respect of the amounts they paid in benefits.
  Those events are worth recalling because the Government are embarking on a repetition of the actions of their predecessors. Once again, in April 1996, the duration of unemployment benefit is to be cut to six months. That is an exact replica of the earlier system. Benefit rates are to be cut and, once again, there will be a big increase in the number of unemployed people who are subjected to means testing.
  We heard the myth from Conservative Members tonight. We heard it principally from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), who has just spoken, and from the Secretary of State, when he spoke on Radio 4 the other day. It was difficult to find any room for thought between the Secretary of State's populist rants. Conservative Members continue to talk about taxpayers' money and about a contract.
  When the jobseeker's scheme was originally introduced, the Government said that the reason for it was that unemployment benefit was not much different from income support. They are absolutely right about that. The fact that an insured benefit has decreased to the level of the safety net has not occurred by magic.
  What has happened is an extraordinary story. The main thrust behind Beveridge was not simply the fairness of a national insurance scheme. He was interested in the efficiency of such a scheme. As Beveridge pointed out at the time, a multiplicity of private insurance companies collected a few pence every week for all kinds of insurance benefit. Fifty per cent. of the premiums paid were dissipated or wasted. The scheme was very clumsy.
  That is precisely what is happening now as the Government are trying to force people into highly inefficient private pensions and private benefits in respect of which there are two major problems: first, the schemes pay poor benefits, and 4 million people in personal pensions will curse this Government when they reach old age because they have been forced into such schemes; and, secondly, the people whom the Government are telling to take out schemes to insure their mortgages and to protect themselves from unemployment are the very people who cannot afford the premiums because they are at high risk.
  Let us consider what has happened to unemployment benefit over a period when premiums have risen by 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. There has been a huge increase in premiums. However, while there should have been an increase in the rate of unemployment benefit in comparison to the rate in 1979, there has been a decrease for a family of 41 per cent., if we consider the figures in line with prices, and of 56 per cent., if we consider the figures in line with earnings—which is the best line to take.
  The Government have taken an insured benefit; they have jacked up the premiums by a huge percentage, but they have cut the amount received by 50 per cent. When the Secretary of State was speaking this evening, I was speaking on the telephone, in a routine call, to a young man in my constituency. That young man was in despair. He had been through the system. He had been on the schemes and had done what the Government had told him to do. He tried to do a training course, but met obstacle
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  after obstacle. The latest obstacle related to a job as a professional driver in respect of which he faced an insurmountable premium for that scheme. He is one of the many people who have been through the whole gamut of lost opportunity and who have faced all those blank walls. Nothing in the Bill will help that young man.
  The Bill is so mean that even the much-vaunted back-to-work bonus, which in principle is not a bad idea and has some merit, is to be affected. On 12 December, the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the temporary hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans), admitted that the Government were going to claw back money from the back-to-work bonus scheme. They are going to make a profit from it. They cannot keep their greedy little hands off it.
  The whole point of the wretched scheme is to try to claw back money from the worst-off and to cheat them on national insurance to build up the bribe that the Government hope to offer in the next general election. Everyone knows what is happening. The Government have advertised the bribe so often that it will not work. They should learn that lesson.
  Miss Widdecombe: I am intrigued by the hon. Gentleman's comments about the back-to-work bonus. Given that at the moment, over and above the disregard, we take away pound for pound and that, in future, we are going to give back 50 per cent. of the remaining earnings up to a maximum of £1,000, how are we profiteering from the back-to-work bonus?
  Mr. Flynn: If the Minister reads Hansard of 12 December, she will see that the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security admitted that the change would produce savings for the Government. He said:
  "Further information is currently being collected to allow this to be assessed."—[Official Report, 12 December 1994; Vol. 251, c. 535–56.]
  The Minister will have to ask her hon. Friend the Under-Secretary how that is to be achieved, because that is what he said.
  The Government are treating the whole business as an attempt to disguise a cut in benefits and as a way to force the unemployed into the ritual humiliation described by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth). I crossed swords with the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon about the 1920s and Beveridge, but I discovered later in his speech that he knew precisely what the effects of the actively seeking employment test and the other tests were.
  Beveridge said that the actively seeking work rule in the 1920s was a humiliating and futile experience. When it was used, unemployed people in south Wales could not receive benefits unless they proved that they had actively been seeking work. Unemployed people from Rhondd Fach had to cross the valley to the Rhondd Fawr and the unemployed from the Rhondd Fawr had to cross the valley to the Rhondd Fach. That simply used up shoe leather. However, they had to get a stamp. A member of the Labour Ministry at the time disguised himself as an

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  unemployed person and wrote a book on the subject called "The Myth of the Scrounger" in which he made the point that the only people who—[Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is becoming difficult to hear the hon. Member because of other people's muttered interventions.
  Mr. McCartney: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The reason for the muttered interventions is that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) spoke for 25 minutes, keeping both Opposition and Conservative Members from taking part in the debate. She has now left the Chamber before my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) has finished his speech, contrary to normal practice.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware.
  Hon. Members: Yes, but it is a courtesy.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I can deal only with matters of order.
  Mr. Flynn: When that rule was changed, Beveridge said that it would never rise again from its dishonoured grave because of its futility and cruelty to the unemployed. As we have heard, seek and ye shall not find. That is precisely the theme of the Bill. Its title is meaningless in terms of its purpose. It is about a cut in unemployment benefit, and a vicious, thoroughly unjustified one. It is a breach of faith to millions of people, wrapped up and disguised in a confidence trick.
  8.49 pm
  Mr. Nigel Evans: I shall make a short contribution as I know that hon. Members are extremely keen to speak. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate.
  I am proud to represent Ribble Valley, which has the lowest unemployment in Great Britain, but that does not mean that I am complacent. Just before Christmas, one of the factories in the village in which I live closed, making more than 100 people unemployed. Just before Christmas is never a good time to do such a thing, but it made the misery even more unbearable for families in the village. Although the vast majority will find jobs in 1995, some people may not. I must be extremely conscious that for each unemployed person in a constituency, irrespective of the level of unemployment, it is a personal tragedy for them and for their families.
  I am also conscious of the point made by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) about people who are getting on in years becoming unemployed; it becomes increasingly difficult for them to find work. We must direct more attention to people in their mid-50s who are looking for work. We have an aging population, and we must pay far more attention to the quality of people in their 50s who are looking for work. They still have a massive amount to contribute.
  The jobseeker's allowance is a welcome simplification of the system. There was reference to the benefit reducing from 12 months to six months. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) and others questioned whether Labour Members would reverse that position if they regained office. We simply could not obtain an answer from Labour Members. It is as though they are afraid to
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  make any commitment until just before the election, when they will pounce on the electorate and say, "This is what we are going to do." It is as though they are afraid chat any of their policies could possibly be costed between now and the next general election.
  Opposition Members have suffered greatly in the past. We know that their figures did not add up, and I suspect that they will not add up in future. Opposition Members have decided to hide their commitments until the very last moment. They will have an opportunity toward the end of the debate to consider one of their famous U-turns and say whether they would reverse the legislation which I hope will be passed tonight.
  The contract is important. It is between those who are employed and those who are unemployed, as well as many others. One side will contribute through their taxes to ensure that those who are unemployed are given opportunities to make a real contribution. It is important to have a job, just for the sake of self-worth and to give people a purpose to life and self-respect. Like most hon. Members, I believe that the vast majority of people want to work. We must give them that opportunity. We must give them a hand, not just a handout, because the latter does not give an unemployed person a more realistic chance of a job.
  We have gone through a deep recession. People who survived the previous recession untouched have been hit by the next one. Businesses have gone through a particularly bad time. We have a record number of self-employed and small business people. They have made a real commitment. Many of them have their houses tied up in their businesses. If their businesses fail, they will risk losing their houses as well. Some of those people have suffered greatly. They work all the hours that God sends. They must consider how much it costs to employ people and how they will find the money to pay the wages bill at the end of the week or at the end of the month. They are our entrepreneurs. We must do as much as we possibly can to give them incentives to start and to give those who have started the opportunity to grow and to take on other unemployed people. It is our duty to ensure that those conditions exist.
  It is not an easy option to start a business these days; it is a big risk. It is difficult to obtain capital in the first place. Woe betide businesses if they make a profit, because many Opposition Members think that that, is wrong and that those businesses should be taxed. Making a profit is a disincentive for Opposition Members. I hope that all hon. Members give credit to small businesses and the people who work hard and make their contribution. Conservative Members talk about ensuring that we will give every business man a chance. Opposition Members and others scoff, but we must ensure that such people are given a chance.
  Opposition Members cannot have it both ways. They talk about giving people the opportunity for work and, in the same breath, they talk about the minimum wage, which will make more than 1 million people unemployed. They talk about limiting the working week and about piling social costs on to employers—all with good intentions, no doubt—but I hope that people will remember that each of those on-costs has a cost itself. It is a cost like a tax; it takes away opportunities for business people to invest and it takes away the incentive for them to put in greater hours and to take greater risks.

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  Opposition Members rush like lemmings to sign up to anything that comes out of Europe, backing any socialist claptrap that emerges from the cauldron which boils in Brussels. They have been to the socialist mountain top and they want to jump off and to take opportunity and hope with them. We must ensure that they do not have the chance to do that. The one great difference between socialists and Conservatives is that socialists talk about caring, yet all the policies that they want to introduce fly in the face of it. We Conservatives must get on with caring. We must deliver the goods, just as we have done over the past 15 years.
  I was proud to serve on the Standing Committee that considered the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill last year. It was an excellent start. We must ensure that the deregulation initiative has another thrust this year to ensure that the on-costs on businesses are stripped away so that business is given even more opportunity to invest and grow.
  Given all the initiatives about which we have talked, opportunities for employment will grow in 1995. There was a fantastic start throughout 1994, and we must ensure that it continues. It is said that two thirds of those who become unemployed find work in the next six months. We must ensure that many more do so in 1995.
  The one great thing that is always hidden when monthly unemployment statistics are produced and it is said that unemployment has fallen by 43,000 or 50,000 is the massive flow of people throughout the system who have either gone into or come out of employment. The days when one went into a job at 16 and stayed there for the rest of one's natural working life have gone. There is far more flexibility within the work force. We must recognise that. There are more opportunities to take not just one career but more than one career.
  I applaud the work of the employment services. Last year, I visited the employment services in Clitheroe and in Preston. They are doing tremendous work to help people into employment. The contract between those who are seeking work and the Government is right. It will ensure that those who are unemployed receive exactly the right help that they will need to go into employment as soon as possible.
  Like many other people, I also believe that—even if we put the question of fraud on one side—when people are simply not interested in finding work and just want to live off the state, we must clamp down as much as we can, because what those people do costs the country a great deal of money. It is also a massive disincentive and a slap in the face for all the people who get up early in the morning and go out and do a day's work—especially those who work at a job in which they have no great interest, yet who want to do that work for reasons of self-respect. We must ensure that others do not ride on their backs.
  The many Government schemes already in operation to help people get back to work have already been mentioned. They exemplify what we must do. We must try to provide help for the people who need such help to get into work. With the jobseeker's allowance, people will get that help, and we shall ensure that the contract signed between the unemployed and the Government is fulfilled, so as to help everybody and to give everybody a better chance in 1996 when the proposals come into effect.
  8.58 pm
  Mr. Malcolm Chisholm: I remember listening with incredulity when, in the 1993 Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the jobseeker's allowance as a measure to help the unemployed gain employment. It was a similar experience listening to the Secretary of State today. The Bill is not about helping the unemployed to gain jobs but about helping the unemployed to lose benefit, helping their partners to lose their jobs and helping the unemployed to lose the meagre rights and choices on training and employment that they already have.
  The underlying economic rationale of the Bill, apart from public expenditure cuts to pay for next year's tax bribes, is to force the unemployed into ever-lower paid employment. And the Bill is shot through with the nasty social authoritarianism of the new Tory right, as typified by the two Secretaries of State who have been jostling for the lead role in introducing it.
  The main mechanism to help the unemployed to lose their benefits is, of course, the six-month cut-off point; 30 per cent. of men and 57 per cent. of women will lose all right to benefit after six months because they will not qualify for the income-related allowance. The system is even worse for certain groups of people, such as the young. If a young person has a partner or is married, only 40 per cent. of the benefit that would have been paid under the old system in a year will be paid. Someone older who has received redundancy money and who has a dependent partner will receive only 30 per cent. of what would have been paid under the old system.
  Things are no better for someone with a married partner. The increase in means-testing will drive many partners of unemployed people out of jobs. It will not be worth their while to work because if they do their partners will not be able to claim benefit. Again, women will probably be more adversely affected. What is more, like many people who cease to qualify for the jobseeker's allowance after six months, the people driven out of work in that way will not figure in the unemployment statistics, because there will be no reason for them to sign on.
  Unemployed people are not only being cheated of unemployment benefit. It is worse than that; many of them will be denied jobseeker's allowance, too. One of the most alarming parts of the Bill appears in clauses 15 and 16, which describe how all sorts of new ways will be devised to deprive unemployed people of their legitimate benefit entitlements.
  The first such concern is the length of time for which people may be denied jobseeker's allowance. Clause 15 twice mentions a period of between one and 26 weeks. We have also been told that hardship payments will be denied to many people who are disqualified, although I do not believe that that is mentioned in the Bill.
  The second concern is about who will make the decisions. On the first day of this year The Observer contained an article about a leaked document from the Department of Employment suggesting that many decisions would be made by front-line Employment Service staff rather than being referred to an adjudication officer. I hope that the Minister will touch on that question in winding up. Given the number of wrong decisions now made, the proposal causes serious worry.

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  The third big area for concern is the increase in the number of reasons for imposing benefit penalties. The jobseeker's direction is the most notorious of those, and the aspect that has had most publicity is the idea that someone may be disqualified because of a jobseeker's direction relating to his or her appearance or behaviour. That is a good example of the social authoritarianism that I mentioned earlier.
  There are many other reasons why people may be disqualified, some of which build on things that are already happening. People are already losing benefit if they refuse to go on certain courses, and that trend will be increased and intensified by the Bill. If people were being sent on real training courses it might not be so bad, but the training budget for next year is being cut by 20 per cent. and many of the courses that people will be forced to follow, on pain of losing benefit, are not genuine training courses.
  The other big turn of the screw will be forcing people to take undesirable and unacceptable employment. Not many people lose benefit on the grounds of refusing employment, but the Bill explicitly states that many people will now lose benefit or incur penalties if they refuse to take a particular job. That is one of the underlying reasons behind the Bill. There are a number of undesirable jobs which people rightly do not want because of their appalling wages or conditions, but people will be forced into those jobs. As more people are driven into low-paid employment, the larger pool of people in low-paid employment will drive low wages even lower. That is the economic thinking behind the Bill.
  I shall touch on other aspects of the Bill more briefly than I wanted to because other Members want to speak. One thing that has concerned me following constituency casework is the way in which people are unjustly disqualified from benefit because of alleged misconduct on leaving a job, and that will get worse following the Bill. At least a person has six months' disqualification followed by six months' unemployment benefit at the moment, but it appears in the Bill that that person will now get six months' disqualification followed by no benefit at all. There are appalling problems in the Employment Service in relation to that measure.
  Recently I attended a social security appeal tribunal with one of my constituents almost one year after he had lost his job. He had had a six-month disqualification, and his appeal was at last heard 11 months after he lost his job. As happens in the majority of cases, it was discovered that he should not have had his benefit disqualified, and he got it back 11 months after losing his job. The Minister should look at that, and also at the good report from the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux about the matter which came out last month.
  Another area to which I wish to refer is the tightening of the availability for work rules. Clause 6—I do not have the time to go into it in detail, but the matter was dealt with well by my hon. and learned Friend for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner)—suggests that the rules will become even tighter. At the moment, we are told that there is a target of 135,000 people having their benefit stopped this year for not actively seeking work.
  Another constituent of mine recently had his benefit stopped, despite the fact that he was studying for only five hours a week. There is a technical rule which has been pushed through that someone who is paying more than £100 for fees—even if he is studying for only five hours
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  a week—will have his benefit stopped. Fortunately for my constituent, his fees were being paid through a bursary and I managed to challenge that ruling. But that is happening already, and clause 6 suggests that it will intensify. It is alarming that clause 6 states that "availability for employment" and "actively seeking employment"
  "have such meaning as may be prescribed."
  We can only worry and wonder about what those meanings might be.
  We need positive action from the Government to tackle the problems which the unemployed face. A minimum wage is a key demand, and others include a supply of appropriate jobs, high-quality training, the abolition of the 21-hour rule and reform of the earnings disregard regulations which hold a lot people out of employment. In the Bill, the higher disregard for the long-term unemployed is being abolished. We also need the preservation of the social insurance principle.
  The Government are running out of steam when it comes to doing anything positive for the unemployed, but, unfortunately, they are not running out of steam when it comes to attacking the unemployed and driving the wages of people lower and lower. I hope that this will be one of the last bankrupt Acts of this bankrupt Government, who cannot go too soon.
  9.8 pm
  Mr. Oliver Heald: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) reflected some of the differences which we have seen all too often during past weeks in the Labour party. He said that having a jobseeker's direction on an issue such as appearance was ludicrous. I think that that was the word the hon. Gentleman used. Other Labour Members have said the same thing.
  Yet who was it—only few months ago—who said of the jobseeker's direction:
  "If it is simply a matter of dress, deportment and drawing up a good curriculum vitae, or trying to motivate people, no one could object."—[Official Report, 24 October 1994; Vol. 248, c. 635]?
  Yes, it was the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). So again we see that the Labour party simply cannot agree on these issues. We have heard today in The Guardian about the differences over Europe. We have heard about the differences over clause IV and on education. On employment, we have heard the same story again today.
  Britain has been able to deal more effectively with unemployment than other European countries because of the regime that the Conservative Government have put in place. Speaker after speaker has criticised the measures in the Bill and assumed that they will not work. However, the evidence is that the measures that the Government have put in place are working.
  When I was elected in 1992 my constituency had higher unemployment than it does now. The same is true of the constituencies of most hon. Members. I can see Members on the Opposition Benches of which exactly the same is true. In my constituency unemployment has fallen by 1,000 in the past year alone. When we consider why that is and compare ourselves with our partners in Europe, the answer is clear. We have a competitive economy. We have a spirit of entrepreneurship. We have the lowest business taxes in Europe, the lowest on-costs, one of the

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  lowest levels of Government borrowing, low inflation and a good quality work force who have been highly trained as a result of the activities of the Government.
  We often hear from Opposition Members about structural unemployment, but Britain is the only country in Europe which is successfully tackling that problem. Twenty million people across Europe are unemployed, but in Britain, uniquely, unemployment is falling. We have one of the highest levels of labour participation.
  When we deal with an issue such as jobseeking and the unemployed, we have to recognise that people have responsibilities and duties as well as rights. I mentioned the hon. Member for Garscadden a moment ago. Let us have a little wisdom from him on this subject, too. He said on 22 October 1992, two years ago:
  "I'm certainly not afraid to say we should go and look at the argument that there are responsibilities and duties, as well as rights, for those who are on benefit".
  I see that he agrees today that that is right.
  Can we seriously argue that people have responsibilities and duties if we do nothing about it when people breach them? There must be some sanctions as well as incentives. I argue that the sanctions proposed in the Bill are the minimum required to enforce the rights and obligations that are imposed by the Bill.
  First, the test of availability for work will be that people should actively seek work. That will be extended to ensure that people who take steps which deliberately undermine their prospects of finding work will be penalised. I should have thought that people who do not actively seek work should face a penalty. That is the basic contract between the taxpayer and the person involved. The person should be available for work full time for a minimum of 40 hours. If people expect to receive benefit full time, they should be prepared to work full time.
  If Opposition Members criticise and say that it is wrong that people should be deprived of benefit if they are not making the effort that the Government require through jobcentres, what are they saying? They are saying that if people do not fulfil their obligations and duties, nothing should happen and people should be allowed to continue merrily without facing any sanction. That cannot be right.
  Similarly with the jobseeker's direction, if the contract between the jobseeker and the Department, along with advice and guidance and the element of compulsion, does not succeed in helping the person back into work, why should there not be a direction to give that person the help and encouragement that is needed to get back into work?
  Let us consider the argument that my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) employed. He described a situation in which many elderly people have been out of work for extended periods and said that one cannot force them to look for work. He is saying that, if one is elderly, one can be written off and that one need not be required to look for work. He was being ageist. Opposition Members may laugh, but older claimants should be encouraged. They should have the same opportunities and should be dealt with in the same way as any other claimant, on a level playing field.
  When I recently visited my jobcentre—it is one of the new integrated centres, in which the advice and benefit services are provided in one place—it was pointed out that the centre actively encourages employers to consider
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  older applicants and that, if the latter do not receive the encouragement that the Government believe to be vital, we are doing neither them nor the taxpayer justice.
  If the Government are prepared to make the effort through the jobcentres, elderly claimants should not say that they are not prepared to make the effort to find work because they believe that it is hopeless. It is wrong for hon. Members to argue that, unfortunately, it is impossible to find work if one is elderly. We often hear such arguments about education from Opposition Members. They say that in inner city areas the situation is hopeless, one cannot expect to achieve much and that there is no point making comparisons or publishing tables as the children will never succeed. They are using exactly the same argument for the elderly.
  The Government, through the encouragement that they are giving jobseekers in the Bill, are attacking some of the main issues. I confess that I am an adviser to the Federation of Recruitment and Employment Services, which deals with the private recruitment industry. Its members have frequently pointed out to me that jobseekers are concerned that they do not receive adequate encouragement to take jobs and that it is easier for them to be dependent, even though they may not receive as much benefit, than to take a job. Some of the measures in the Bill will tackle that head on. For example, the back-to-work bonus available under the scheme will encourage people to leave benefit by taking part-time work as a stepping stone to full-time work.
  Mr. Roy Thomason: Does my hon. Friend agree that the package contains a range of incentives for all unemployed people to get back into employment and that it gives them a chance that the Opposition would deny? It extends the challenge and the chance to seek employment, which many people would not get under the present system. The Opposition are trying to sabotage people's efforts to gain employment. They are hurting the unemployed by resisting these measures.
  Mr. Heald: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Not only will the Bill simplify the benefits system, but, as he said, it will provide the unemployed with the opportunity to get back into work.
  The back-to-work bonus scheme is one of the methods being used. In addition, let us not forget the employment-on-trial scheme, which will enable the claimant to take a job after three months of unemployment, without incurring any penalty if he voluntarily decides that the job is not for him within a period not exceeding four weeks. Many unemployed people facing the difficult decision to try a different area of endeavour will welcome that opportunity.
  Much has been made of the fact that couples and individual spouses will have no opportunities under the jobseeker's allowance. But a strength of the new system is that the period in which a partner is allowed to work will be increased to 24 hours without loss of entitlement to benefit. The Bill will therefore make a considerable contribution to getting unemployed people back to work.
  My constituency suffered the difficulties of cuts in the defence industry, as did some other constituencies. In Hertfordshire, a task force approach was taken, with the county council, the TEC, the local authorities, business clubs and so on working together to try to promote employment. That approach has succeeded and, now that

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  the business side is right, we need employees to get back to work with proper training so that Hertfordshire can continue to succeed as it has over so many years. Since I became a Member of Parliament, unemployment in my constituency has fallen and I believe that it will fall faster as a result of this measure.
  9.22 pm
  Ms Angela Eagle: Even the Bill's name is flawed. The switch from unemployment benefit to jobseeker's allowance is a cruel joke at a time of mass unemployment. It is Orwellian wordplay of the highest order. Unemployment benefit is compensation for being unemployed, paid for by national insurance contributions. The jobseeker's allowance is allowed to failed jobseekers who are encouraged to blame themselves for the position in which they find themselves.
  Other aspects of the Bill are equally Orwellian and sinister. There is an authoritarian behavioural requirement for jobseekers, the exact details of which are not in the Bill but will be put before us in regulations at a later date. The compulsory jobseeker's agreement is a new twist in benefit sanction and is illiberal in what is meant to be a democratic state. In that respect, I associate myself almost entirely with the arguments put forward in the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth), who uttered many warnings to which his party should listen.
  We have no information on the meaning of the "jobseeker's direction" or on what will be required of people unfortunate enough to be out of work. Will they be expected to cut their hair, lose weight or change the colour of their skin? After all, discrimination exists in the job market and we need reassurance from the Government about what people will be put through in order to keep the increasingly meagre benefits allowed by the Bill.
  My objection to the Bill is that it is written and designed as if to deal with the most incorrigible recalcitrants who will never have work. Those regulations are then applied to everybody, regardless of their circumstances. The Bill assumes that unemployment benefit claimants, who are the victims of the Government's economic incompetence, are all lazy, work-shy shirkers who need to be forced into a job. The reality is very different. The vast majority of unemployed people are desperate to work and their mental health suffers on the dole. The benefits on which they live are now so low that they live on or below the poverty line. The Bill will worsen that—[Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have had occasion before, although the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) was not present, to deal with sedentary interventions.
  Ms Eagle: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Sir R. Howell) pointed out, the Bill has a massive hole in it. The Government abdicate their responsibility to create jobs for jobseekers and make a virtue out of it. They do not recognise the duty accepted by all previous post-war Governments to maintain a stable and high level of employment. On the contrary, they reward highly paid managers of privatised utilities for destroying a massive number of jobs.
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  In my constituency in Merseyside, 82,410 people are currently unemployed and there are 5,186 job vacancies. That means that 16 people are chasing each job. In my constituency there are 3,882 unemployed people and 157 vacancies, which means that 25 people are chasing each job.
  I object to the Bill because it blames the 24 out of 25 people in Wallasey who are unsuccessful in obtaining those jobs. It punishes them for not succeeding, but as the simple application of logic makes obvious, only one out of the 25 can succeed in filling the vacancy. A better CV, a haircut or even gleaming teeth will not help the other 24 people to succeed.
  The Bill is introduced at a time when structural changes in the labour market are obvious. There is casualisation, segmentation, further deregulation and reductions in pay, all of which create instability. People move in and out of employment and are sometimes stuck in unemployment and are punished for it.
  The Bill contains no analysis of the reasons for unemployment and makes no attempt to meet the needs of the unemployed. It contains very large sticks with which to beat them. That is why it is so objectionable and why we should return to a system in which the unemployed are accorded fairness, dignity and rights. They should not be treated in this authoritarian and obnoxious way by a Government who have long ceased to care for their plight.
  9.25 pm
  Mr. Donald Dewar: The one thing that I can say about the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) is that, in his own way, he is quite engaging. His one characteristic in common, I think, with most hon. Members is that he does not take himself very seriously. If he is trying to argue that duties and responsibilities are never honoured unless there is a directly threatening sanction, he has a very miserable view of the human species which few of his hon. Friends would share.
  I shall start with a complaint, although I do not want to make too much of it, and a rather remarkable circumstance. I picked up the Bill when it was first published and saw that it was presented—it says so on the back—by the Secretary of State for Social Security. The right hon. Gentleman is around the House. We saw him in the building and he even appeared briefly in the debate. However, he decided not to appear at the Dispatch Box, which I find a little puzzling.
  One of my ingenious colleagues has suggested that the right hon. Gentleman is taking part in a job share: he is in ideological communion with the Secretary of State for Employment. They will do the job turn about, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, because they are intellectually indistinguishable. That is not entirely satisfactory. If this measure is important and a great Government showpiece it is somewhat discourteous to the House for the Secretary of State not to appear. I hope that I have put that in reasonable terms.
  The Bill is depressing at a superficial level that is nevertheless worth mentioning. It is evidence of the depressing fashion for remote government. One can read the text with care and learn not a lot. Almost everything in the Bill is to be prescribed and will be done by regulations at a future and indeterminate date. Its

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  corpulent linguistic patterns are a delight to the insider. No doubt it is draftsman's padding of which he or she is proud, but it does not help the general public who may want to look at the measure. The simplest concept becomes complex. As something of a barrack-room lawyer in my own right, I ought to take great delight in, for example, clause 9(4), which deals with income and capital. It states:
  "Circumstances may be prescribed in which—

  (a) a person is treated as possessing capital or income which he does not possess;

  (b) capital or income which a person does possess is to be disregarded;

  (c) income is to be treated as capital;

  (d) capital is to be treated as income."

  There are acres, stricken page after stricken page, of similar verbiage.
  We have been led through something of a moral maze today. I genuinely enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth), who pushed the boat out even further than he usually does in defining his distinctive position. I was intrigued to hear, from Conservative Members, Disraeli and Gramsci working in harness—even if it was in a good cause. It might be stretching it to say that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) entertained us for 24 minutes—she is not the most sympathetic figure on the Conservative Benches—but I look forward to the fulfilment of her very precise prediction that, under a Labour Government, she would find it necessary to knock down windmills. That will do very little for property values in Norfolk.
  Then there was the Secretary of State. I had no idea that he had such a touching faith in—despite an incomplete knowledge of—the works of the late Lord Beveridge; I shall certainly remember that.
  One stark fact, however, stands out from this interesting debate. The Bill is essentially about cutting public expenditure, reducing entitlement and undermining rights, and that is the essence of our objection to it. The core of the Bill is the cut from 12 to six months, about which the Secretary of State said very little. I can understand that—he wanted to concentrate on other matters, no doubt for good tactical reasons—but the cut is serious, in that it is unquestionably an attack on the contributory principle.
  The Minister of State came to the Dispatch Box full of vim and vigour, but her intervention bore all the marks of the product of much time spent working on a bad case. It seemed that she had come up with something that she thought might just stand up, but it clearly did not.
  People talk about the contract between Government and governed. We have heard a good deal about a speech that was made in Liverpool cathedral. Religious venues currently have a strange attraction for Conservative Front Benchers. The right hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Lilley)—not in his local cathedral, but addressing the Birmingham diocesan conference—recently discovered that there was a strong case for a minimum wage, in that he at least accepted that the principal cause—or, rather, economic cause; I must be precise—of social instability and marriage breakdown was the low wage paid to unskilled manual workers. That at least opened a chink for common sense.
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  If we believe, as these gentlemen do, in the contract between Government and governed, this exercise in Treasury expediency has a hollow, mean and unpleasant ring. Let me give an example of what I mean. One of the virtues seen by those with tidy minds in the Departments of Employment and of Social Security is harmonisation of benefit structures. When it comes to the treatment of those under 25 and over 25 respectively, their logic seems to suggest the importation of rules that are currently part of the income support structure to the new contributory jobseeker's allowance. If that had been applied to the coming year—it will come into effect in the year after that, but the pattern will be similar—a 24-year-old who had made exactly the same contributions as a man of 25 living at the other end of the street would receive £9.70 a week less than that man during the six-month period that is allowed.
  I find that extraordinary. The Government's explanation is that someone of 24 earns less, expects less and therefore deserves less; but, as everyone knows, people of 24 eat as much and dress as expensively as older people, and the bills are every bit as big.
  There is an interesting omission in the litany that is advanced to defend that proposal. We hear nothing about the "back to basics" philosophy. In the days before "back to basics" had a bad name, there was an additional argument: people would be persuaded, forced, encouraged, stimulated or motivated—all those nice euphemisms—to stay at home. That was the reason for such a substantial reduction.
  I enjoyed the exchanges between the right hon. Member for St. Albans and the Select Committee on Social Security on 26 January, when the right hon. Gentleman was questioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mrs. Kennedy). On the split between 24 and 25-year-olds, he said that the rules were
  "the same for everybody in the sense that everybody under 25 will be treated the same and everybody over 25 will be treated the same."
  As an attempt at a reasonable defence, it is very sub Lewis Carroll but definitely in that league.
  As I have explained, an income support rule on the 24 and 25-year-olds split has been imported into the contributory jobseeker's allowance. I must confess that I discovered that quite late in my exploration into these matters, but clause 1(4) contains an innocent looking provision on waiting days. A waiting-days concept will be introduced into the means-tested jobseeker's allowance. That concept was previously used only for unemployment benefit—the equivalent of the contributory jobseeker's allowance. I presume that the result of that will be that under part II of the Bill everyone who receives the contributory jobseeker's allowance will have to wait for a prescribed number of days before the benefit comes into effect; they will not receive it from the date of application, as they do now with the contributory benefit, which is being replaced.
  It sounds complicated. It is a lovely proposal from the Treasury's point of view because it will save £40 million, as I heard in an answer to a parliamentary question. The proposal is the mirror image of what has been done with the 24–25 split. I deduce from that—I do not see any other deduction that I can make—that harmonisation is being pursued not in the interests of clients, justice or any other concept but simply to achieve the cheapest option. That

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  is harmonisation at the lowest common denominator. It tells us a great deal about the way in which the Government work and what they are trying to achieve.
  We are told that the jobseeker's allowance will produce savings of £140 million in the first year and £270 million thereafter. It will be expensive to introduce. I say to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne), who waxed eloquent about the difficulty of getting a figure on the matter, that the financial memorandum printed at the front of the Bill states that the figure is £280 million over three years. We are told that there may even be 3,000, if not redundancies, at least redeployments in the Department of Employment. There is a great deal of disorganisation and a great deal of administrative expense. A fair degree of injustice and very minor savings will occur, even if one takes it from a Treasury viewpoint.
  I ask the Secretary of State for Social Security to cast his mind back to the exchanges in the Select Committee on Social Security, this time with my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who asked who would pay. The right hon. Gentleman replied:
  "It is savings, so no one will be paying it."
  It is some sort of magic, painless, bloodless performance where savings are made for the Treasury and can be clawed out of the Budget, but no one pays. When rightly pressed by the chairman, the right hon. Gentleman was driven from that position. He said that
  "Those who least the need help of the taxpayer"
  will pay. We are talking about not a targeted benefit but a contributory benefit. It is not a relevant argument but it provides an interesting insight into the Secretary of State's view of the contributory principle that he pretends to defend. Almost 250,000 people will face the bill. They will be without the contributory jobseeker's allowance after six months at a cost of £180 million in 1997–98. Many will find themselves without an adult dependency increase. Again parliamentary answers tell us that no fewer than 5,000 will be forced on to means-tested benefits at any one time as a result. Spouses will have to give up work, very often to protect the husband's benefit. Of course, a large number of people will find that thrift has been punished because they have more than £3,000 in savings or perhaps £8,000 in savings, which takes them out of the jobseeker's system. After six months they will find that they are either bereft of benefit, forced on to means-tested benefits or left dependent on some other member of their family.
  There is a massive inconsistency in" the Government's position and it is illustrated by the facts. This is a serious argument. The Government rail, in my view quite rightly, about the difficulties of means-tested benefit. At the same time, they deliberately introduce measures that force many people on to means-tested benefits. That happens under other legislation as well as the Jobseekers Bill. For example, under the Social Security (Incapacity for Work) Act 1994, 90,000 people in the first year and 190,000 in the second year will be forced on to means-tested benefits or on to the dole queues. The Government may make bigger and better savings, but there will be even greater misery, frustration and depression for the people who do not necessarily deserve that fate but who become the casualties of this sort of legislation. It will not do and the House should not vote for it.
  There is another side to the argument. We are told that there is a stick and a carrot—that the Bill will help workseekers and encourage the work-shy. All that is
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  contained in a rather nice little blue pamphlet. It is a sort of canvassers' aide memoire which was distributed at the Conservative party conference. I suspect that the phrase "encourage the work-shy" is a euphemism.
  Some have argued that all this talk is simply gesture politics, posturing and playing to the Conservative party gallery. They say that it is tough talking but that nothing will really change. We will have to wait and see. I have said repeatedly that I fear that there is a strong hidden agenda. To be fair to Ministers, it is not hidden very thoroughly or consistently. A Conservative party brief produced for this debate includes a section entitled:
  "Tougher sanctions on the Work-Shy."
  It was interesting at Question Time this afternoon that, when faced with the neanderthal views—I use that phrase advisedly—of the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Maidstone (Miss Widdecombe), did not repudiate them but hurried to tell the hon. Gentleman that she hoped that the Jobseekers Bill would go at least some way towards allaying his fears. I do not want to live in a Britain where the fears, delusions and prejudices of the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield are pandered to. In fairness to the Conservative party, I am sure that on the boat out I will find not only the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon but many others as well, and quite right, too.
  There are some good things in the Bill. There is the back-to-work bonus, but it does not make the transition to work any easier. It rewards those who are successful in finding work. It reinforces success but does not help those who do not have the equipment to be successful. For many of the most vulnerable it will be a case of perhaps jam tomorrow, but it is much more likely that it will be jam never.
  The national insurance holiday for those who have been unemployed for two years is a peelie-wally little attempt to deal with a real problem. It is worth about £6 a week. That is the incentive. Surely the Government who invented the national lottery can do better than that.
  The jobfinder's grant, the extension of family credit on a test basis, and the job trial extension are not in the Bill and will have to be considered on another occasion.
  I know that I am running into the Minister's time and I make no apology for that given what happened earlier in terms of the allocation of time and the agreement reached behind the Chair. I believe that I am within my rights.
  One of the favourite examples of self-deception and delusion that afflicts Conservative Ministers is that they carry with them the support of a large number of outside bodies with expertise. However, even they cannot imagine that that is true in this instance.
  Carers' organisations are very worried about the lack of a right to the jobseeker's allowance for those who cease caring, perhaps because of the death of the person cared for. There were sympathetic noises from the Secretary of State for Employment, but I assure him that we shall return to the issue in Committee. I hope that his sympathy will extend to practical help when we get there.
  The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, the Disablement Income Group and the coalition of young people on social security have condemned the Bill. Almost everyone involved has said that it will not do and that it is inappropriate.

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  I remember the speeches, which have been referred to, made by the Secretary of State for Employment. I remember his speech about the need to restore deference in our society so that everyone knows his appointed place and keeps to it. However, the other side of deference is stigma. My worry is that, whatever the intention of some people in the Conservative party, the end product will be an extension of stigma, with all its disastrous consequences for the unfortunate in society. Those who have suffered misfortune, which may be economic or health related, will find themselves in the dock, stigmatised as economic failures and seen by many less tolerant people as social outcasts. That should not be the House's intention. The Bill is not merely about Treasury expedience; it is a social philosophy that still has about it the smell of less eligibility, which is why we shall vote against it tonight.
  9.45 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) made a valiant effort to sit on both sides of the fence. He wondered whether the Bill was tough or whether it was merely talk that would change nothing. He spoke of hidden agendas and ended with a fantastic peroration on the principles of stigma, which had nothing to do with the Bill. The mealy-mouthed concession in his closing remarks was that there were some good things in it, such as the back-to-work bonus.
  I suppose that we should be grateful that the hon. Member for Garscadden was not quite as bizarre as the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), who saw something sinister in the back-to-work bonus because it might save money in persuading people to go back to work.
  Let us deal with the fundamental principles behind the Bill.
  Mr. Flynn rose—
  Mr. Evans: I shall not give way, as I have very little time.
  The first principle of the Bill is to improve the operation of the job market, but we heard nothing about that from the Opposition parties. Secondly, when it came to improving the service to the unemployed by means of a uniform streamlined service, they grudgingly conceded that there might be something somewhere in the Bill that would achieve that end, but they based their miserable attack on the premise that anything involving streamlining was harmonisation on the worst possible basis.
  The third principle is to improve value for the taxpayer, but that did not receive a single word of support from the Opposition, who ridiculed the considerable savings and treated them lightly. The smokescreen of an attack offered by the hon. Members for Peckham (Ms Harman) and for Garscadden was focused on the reduction of the period of receipt of contributory benefit from 12 to six months. It was spoken of as if it were a breach of faith or a breach of a private contract, which is absolutely absurd.
  The contribution system of national insurance has always been a scheme regulated by statute, the terms of benefits of which have been altered over the years
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  by successive Governments—including Labour Governments—as circumstances have changed. That must be so, because the basis of the scheme involves a number of parties: it involves those who draw from the system from a given moment in time and those who contribute to it for the greater part of their working lives. Parliament is the guarantor that the scheme is operated fairly. The National Insurance Act 1946 introduced a 30-week period plus additional days if the number of contributions was more than 26. The National Insurance Act 1966, introduced by the Labour Government, introduced the period of 12 months, with an earnings supplement for up to 156 days.
  The most startling reason for the change, which the Opposition have completely ignored in this debate, is the fact that the national insurance scheme depends on the number of those paying in and the number of those paying out roughly balancing. We know full well that, with the increased proportion of the aged in the population, there must be an adjustment, which will be the matter of a separate Bill on pensions.
  The hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) said in an intervention that, somehow or other, there was a breach because nobody had been given notice of the change. This is not a proposal to come into force immediately, even if the House passes the Bill tomorrow. The proposal will not come into force until April 1996. Notice has been given. Nobody believes that even a private contractual arrangement cannot be altered when notice has been given. My hon. Friend the Minister of State rightly pointed out that the fundamental purpose of the national insurance scheme is that it is earmarked taxation. The promise is that the purposes for which the money is spent are those for which it is raised.
  The savings involved are not trivial; this aspect of the Bill will save £180 million. The interesting challenge which, I have no doubt, will resound around the country over the next month and the next year, and when the next general election comes, is the question that the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) wholly failed to answer: if the Government's proposals are wrong, will the Labour party promise to reverse them? It is a simple question. Either this is a matter of principle, which is how it has been argued, or it is a minor, contingent matter depending on transient economic circumstances. Labour will not answer; it does not wish to answer because it wants the bills never to come in and it wants the country never to be aware of the costs. The hon. Member for Peckham asked—
  Mr. Flynn: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Evans: No. I shall finish shortly. The hon. Member for Peckham asked where the winners, as opposed to the losers, would be under the Bill. I emphasise—[Laughter.] The cackling and the frivolity ignore the fact that the back-to-work bonus will benefit about 150,000 people. The employment-on-trial provisions will benefit about 200,000 people and the national insurance contributions holiday is expected to benefit about 120,000 people. The hon. Member for Garscadden mocked the fact that—
  Mr. Dewar: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Evans: I shall not give way because the Opposition pressurised me on time.

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  The hon. Member for Garscadden mocked and said that a £6 a week concession was meaningless to a small employer. That is not the case, as was shown by my hon. Friends the Members for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) and for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald). They have pointed out that there are very real incentives in the proposals. One should, perhaps, ask a further question, which was originally put by my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough. How many of those who are seeking jobs—
  Mr. Dewar: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Evans: No. I shall not give way. I have been pressurised on time unfairly and I propose to continue.
  How many of those about whom there has been a great deal of talk have put their houses up on a bank guarantee? How many of the people of whom the Opposition spoke appreciate the difficulties of running small businesses, of maintaining solvency and of being able to provide the jobs that will promote prosperity?
  The hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) talked in the most classic, old-fashioned, socialist way about everyone having a right to work, and about everyone being entitled to a good place to live and a good education. All highly desirable, no doubt, but there was not the beginning of an understanding that such matters have to be paid for. There was not the beginning of an understanding that it is the members of the population who work who have to provide the earnings on which such standards can be maintained.
  Mr. Dewar: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Evans: No. I have been cheated out of my starting time and I shall not give way.
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that it is a tradition of the House that Ministers give way at least once in their speeches and that if—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. It is not possible for the Chair to rule on a point of order when what the hon. Member has to say cannot be heard.
  Mr. Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would you confirm that it is a tradition of the House that Ministers give way at least once during their winding-up speeches and that, if they do not, it tempts the House to behave in an unruly way and to consider—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is a not a point of order for the Chair. The House has become unruly in the past few minutes of this debate and it must now settle down.
  Mr. Evans: It is also the tradition of the House that the Opposition give the Minister a chance to speak. I was short-circuited. The point which the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West was making totally failed to deal with the question that all those excellent matters of which he spoke have to be paid for.
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  The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) said that the only point of the Bill that she could see was that it would save money for the Treasury. That is not in itself a matter to be spoken of with such levity. May I give her—
  Mr. Flynn: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I hope that it is a genuine point of order.
  Mr. Flynn: It is a genuine point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could you remind the Minister, who is making his first, and possibly his last, Front-Bench speech—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is a not a point of order at all.
  Mr. Evans: I was about to assist the hon. Member for Rochdale on the specific matters which she put to me. On the question of training, 225,000 long-term adult places for training are expected next year and the Government have given their guarantee of providing training for all 16 to 17-year-olds. I give the assurance that the disabled will not fall—
  Mr. Dewar rose—
  Hon. Members: Give way.
  Mr. Evans: To expect me to give way in the last four minutes of my speech is unrealistic. I am trying to answer serious points made by the Liberal Democrats. I am amused that the Labour party apparently does not think that the Liberal Democrats are worth replying to. I am very interested to hear that, but never mind. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hesitate at this late hour to intervene, but the House must now settle down and give the Minister the opportunity to reply.
  Mr. Evans: I shall give way happily to the hon. Member for Peckham if she will answer the question which she has totally failed to answer at any stage of this debate: will she permit a future Labour Government, if ever such a Government should exist, to reduce and reverse what this Government are proposing in the Bill? That question will haunt her. Somehow, when it comes to a comment which the House may think would address the most material question, intervention comes there none.
  My hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter), for Scarborough and for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) made the most important point that there must be a fair reciprocity of interests, a balance of interests between the taxpayer and the claimant. The talk by the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill) of a climate of coercion and compulsion is exactly the kind of grotesque exaggeration which has so harmed British politics in recent years. [Interruption.] It goes down in history—rather like privatising the national health service—as a load of fabricated nonsense.
  One of the fundamental mechanics of the Bill, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North in particular explained and defended, is that there should be a jobseeker's agreement. The purpose of that agreement is to assist the jobseeker. It is based on the present back-to-work plan. It is designed to spell out and set out the steps that the jobseeker will take, to which he agrees.

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  It is right that the individual jobseeker should be invited not only to discuss those terms with the person at the employment office but to agree them.
  I am very concerned about the attack on the next stage of the mechanics of the Bill—the question of the direction. I can give the assurance that the direction will be subject to the ordinary process of adjudication, so the more fanciful fears expressed by some Opposition Members are wholly without foundation. The point is that a direction and some degree of compulsion are necessary to strike a fair balance between the taxpayer and the claimants. The work-shy are an unknown quantity, but they are thought to be one in six claimants.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 304, Noes 269.

  Division No. 32]

  [10.00 pm

  AYES

  Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

  Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

  Ailken, Rt Hon Jonathan

  Coe, Sebastian

  Alexander, Richard

  Colvin, Michael

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

  Congdon, David

  Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

  Conway, Derek

  Amess, David

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

  Arbuthnot James

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Ashby, David

  Couchman, James

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Cran, James

  Atkins, Robert

  Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

  Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

  Baldry, Tony

  Day, Stephen

  Banks, Matthew (Southport)

  Deva, Nirj Joseph

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Devlin, Tim

  Bates, Michael

  Dicks, Terry

  Batiste, Spencer

  Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen

  Beggs, Roy

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Bellingham, Henry

  Dover, Den

  Bendall, Vivian

  Duncan, Alan

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Duncan Smith, Iain

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Dunn, Bob

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Booth, Hartley

  Dykes, Hugh

  Boswell, Tim

  Eggar, Rt Hon Tim

  Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

  Elletson, Harold

  Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

  Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Bowden, Sir Andrew

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Bowis, John

  Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

  Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

  Brandreth, Gyles

  Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

  Brazier, Julian

  Evennett, David

  Bright, Sir Graham

  Faber, David

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Fabricant, Michael

  Brown, M (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Browning, Mrs. Angela

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset)

  Fishburn, Dudley

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Forman, Nigel

  Burns, Simon

  Forsyth, Rt Hon Michael (Stirling)

  Burt, Alistair

  Forth, Eric

  Butcher, John

  Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

  Butler, Peter

  Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)

  Butterfill, John

  Freeman, Rt Hon Roger

  Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Lincoln)

  French, Douglas

  Carrington, Matthew

  Fry, Sir Peter

  Cash, William

  Gale, Roger

  Churchill, Mr

  Gallie, Phil

  Clappison, James

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Garel-Jones, Rt Hon Tristan

  120

  Garnier, Edward

  Maitland, Lady Olga

  Gill, Christopher

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Gillan, Cheryl

  Malone, Gerald

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Mans, Keith

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Marland, Paul

  Gorst, Sir John

  Marlow, Tony

  Grant Sir A (Cambs SW)

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Mates, Michael

  Griffiths. Peter (Portsmouth, N)

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Grylls, Sir Michael

  Merchant, Piers

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Mills, Iain

  Hague, William

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archibald

  Mitchell, Sir David (Hants NW)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Moate, Sir Roger

  Hanley, Rt Hon Jeremy

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Hannam, Sir John

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Hargreaves, Andrew

  Moss, Malcolm

  Harris, David

  Needham, Rt Hon Richard

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hawkins, Nick

  Neubert Sir Michael

  Hawksley, Warren

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Hayes, Jerry

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Heald, Oliver

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Hendry, Charles

  Norris, Steve

  Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence

  Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley

  Hill, James (Southampton Test)

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (G'tham)

  Ottaway, Richard

  Horam, John

  Page, Richard

  Hordern, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Paice, James

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Patrick, Sir Irvine

  Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Hunt. Rt Hon David (Wirral W)

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Pawsey, James

  Hunter, Andrew

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Pickles, Eric

  Jack, Michael

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Jessel, Toby

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Rathbone, Tim

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Redwood, Rt Hon John

  Jones, Robert B (W Hertfdshr)

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Richards, Rod

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Riddick, Graham

  Key, Robert

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Kilfedder, Sir James

  Robathan, Andrew

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Robertson, Raymond (Ab'dn S)

  Knapman, Roger

  Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

  Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  Knight, Greg (Derby N)

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Dame Angela

  Knight, Dame Jill (Bir'm E'st'n)

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Knox, Sir David

  Sackville, Tom

  Kynoch, George (Kincardine)

  Sainsbury, Rt Hon Sir Tim

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Scott, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Lawrence, Sir Ivan

  Shephard, Rt Hon Gillian

  Legg, Barry

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Leigh, Edward

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

  Shersby, Michael

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Sims, Roger

  Lidington, David

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Lord, Michael

  Soames, Nicholas

  Luff, Peter

  Speed, Sir Keith

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Spencer, Sir Derek

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Spicer, Sir James (W Dorset)

  MacKay, Andrew

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Maclean, David

  Spink, Dr Robert

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Spring, Richard

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Sproat, Iain

  Madel, Sir David

  Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

  121

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Viggers, Peter

  Steen, Anthony

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Stephen, Michael

  Walden, George

  Stern, Michael

  Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

  Stewart, Allan

  Waller, Gary

  Streeter, Gary

  Ward, John

  Sumberg David

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Sweeney, Walter

  Waterson, Nigel

  Sykes, John

  Watts, John

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Wells, Bowen

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Wheeler, Rt Hon Sir John

  Taylor, Sir Teddy (Southend, E)

  Whitney, Ray

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Whittingdale, John

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Thomason, Roy

  Wiggin, Sir Jerry

  Thompson, Sir Donald (C'er V)

  Willetts, David

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Wilshire, David

  Thornton, Sir Malcolm

  Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

  Thurnham, Peter

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macc'fld)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Wolfson, Mark

  Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)

  Wood, Timothy

  Tracey, Richard

  Yeo, Tim

  Tredinnick, David

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Trend, Michael

  Trotter, Neville

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Sydney Chapman.

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Adams, Mrs Irene

  Clelland, David

  Ainger, Nick

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Coffey, Ann

  Allen, Graham

  Cohen, Harry

  Alton, David

  Connarty, Michael

  Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

  Corbett, Robin

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Corston, Jean

  Ashton, Joe

  Cousins, Jim

  Austin-Walker, John

  Cunningham, Jim (Covy SE)

  Banks, Tony (Newharn NW)

  Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr John

  Barnes, Harry

  Dafis, Cynog

  Barron, Kevin

  Dalyell, Tam

  Battle, John

  Darling, Alistair

  Bayley, Hugh

  Davies, Bryan (Oldham C'tral)

  Beckett, Rt Hon Margaret

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Beith, Rt Hon A. J.

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Bell, Stuart

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'dge H'l)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Denham, John

  Bennett, Andrew F.

  Dewar, Donald

  Benton, Joe

  Dixon, Don

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Dobson, Frank

  Berry, Roger

  Donohoe, Brian H

  Betts, Clive

  Dowd, Jim

  Blunkett, David

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Boateng, Paul

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Boyes, Roland

  Eagle, Ms Angela

  Bradley, Keith

  Eastham, Ken

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Enright, Derek

  Brown, N (N'c'tle upon Tyne E)

  Etherington, Bill

  Burden, Richard

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Byers, Stephen

  Fatchett, Derek

  Caborn, Richard

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Callaghan, Jim

  Fisher, Mark

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Flynn, Paul

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Campbell-Savours, D N

  Foulkes, George

  Canavan, Dennis

  Fraser, John

  Cann, Jamie

  Fyfe, Maria

  Chidgey, David

  Galbraith, Sam

  Chisholm, Malcolm

  Galloway, George

  Church, Judith

  Gapes, Mike

  Clapham, Michael

  George, Bruce

  Clark, Dr David (South Shields)

  Gerrard, Neil

  122

  Godsiff, Roger

  Mahon, Alice

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Mandelson, Peter

  Gordon, Mildred

  Marek, Dr John

  Graham, Thomas

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester, S)

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Martlew, Eric

  Grocott, Bruce

  Maxton, John

  Gunnell, John

  Meacher, Michael

  Hain, Peter

  Meale, Alan

  Hall, Mike

  Michael, Alun

  Hanson, David

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Hardy, Peter

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Milburn, Alan

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Miller, Andrew

  Henderson, Doug

  Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)

  Heppell, John

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Hinchliffe, David

  Morley, Elliot

  Hodge, Margaret

  Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wy'nshawe)

  Hoey, Kate

  Morris, Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

  Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Home Robertson, John

  Mudie, George

  Hood, Jimmy

  Mullin, Chris

  Hoon, Geoffrey

  Murphy, Paul

  Howarth, Alan (Strat'rd-on-A)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  O'Brien, Mike (N W'kshire)

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)

  Hoyle, Doug

  O'Hara, Edward

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Olner, Bill

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  O'Neill, Martin

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Patchett, Terry

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Pearson, Ian

  Hutton, John

  Pendry, Tom

  Illsley, Eric

  Pickthall, Colin

  Ingram, Adam

  Pike, Peter L

  Jackson, Glenda (H'stead)

  Pope, Greg

  Jackson, Helen (Shef'ld, H)

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Jamieson, David

  Prentice, Bridget (Lew'm E)

  Janner, Greville

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Jones, Barry (Alyn and D'side)

  Prescott, Rt Hon John

  Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Mon)

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Jones, Lynne (B'ham S O)

  Purchase, Ken

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd, SW)

  Radice, Giles

  Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

  Randal, Stuart

  Jowell, Tessa

  Raynsford, Nick

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Redmond, Martin

  Keen, Alan

  Reid, Dr John

  Kennedy, Charles (Ross, C&S)

  Rendel, David

  Kennedy, Jane (Lpool Brdgn)

  Robertson, George (Hamilton)

  Khabra, Piara S

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Co'try NW)

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Roche, Mrs Barbara

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Rooker, Jeff

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Rooney, Terry

  Lewis, Terry

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Liddell, Mrs Helen

  Ruddock, Joan

  Litherland, Robert

  Salmond, Alex

  Livingstone, Ken

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Sheerman, Barry

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Loyden, Eddie

  Simpson, Alan

  Lynne, Ms Liz

  Skinner, Dennis

  McAllion, John

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Smith, Chris (Isl'ton S & F'sbury)

  McCartney, Ian

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Macdonald, Calum

  Snape, Peter

  McFall, John

  Soley, Clive

  McKelvey, William

  Spearing, Nigel

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Spellar, John

  McLeish, Henry

  Squire, Rachel (Dunfermline W)

  McMaster, Gordon

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  McNamara, Kevin

  Steinberg, Gerry

  MacShane, Denis

  Stevenson, George

  McWilliam, John

  Stott, Roger

  Madden, Max

  Strang, Dr. Gavin

  Maddock, Diana

  Sutcliffe, Gerry

  123

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Sw'n W)

  Timms, Stephen

  Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

  Tipping, Paddy

  Wilson, Brian

  Tyler, Paul

  Winnick, David

  Worthington, Tony

  Vaz, Keith

  Wray, Jimmy

  Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold

  Wright, Dr Tony

  Walley, Joan

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Wareing, Robert N

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Watson, Mike

  Mr. Eric Clarke and Mr. Dennis Turner.

  Welsh, Andrew

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

  JOBSEEKERS BILL [MONEY]
  Queen's recommendation having been signified—
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Order [19 December],
  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Jobseekers Bill it is expedient to authorize—

  (1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any sums required by the Secretary of State—

  (a) for making payments by way of the jobseeker's allowance and the back to work bonus;

  (b) for making grants in connection with resettlement places;

  (c) in respect of any other expenditure incurred by him under or by virtue of the Act;

  (2) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided; and

  (3) the payment into the Consolidated Fund of—

  (a) sums estimated by the Secretary of State to balance payments made by him by way of contribution-based jobseeker's allowance;

  (b) sums estimated by the Secretary of State to balance sums recovered by him in connection with payments made by way of income-based jobseeker's allowance;

  124

  (c) sums recovered by the Secretary of State by way of repayment of grants for resettlement places—[Mr. Wood.]

  Question agreed to.

PETITION

  Disabled People
  10.24 pm
  Mr. Tom Clarke: Six and a half million disabled persons and their carers in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are looking to us to introduce legislation that will outlaw the discrimination that they have suffered for far too long—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. Will hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber please do so quietly and will those remaining please stay in their seats?
  Mr. Clarke: I am privileged to present a petition that has been signed by 32,000 people, and the number is still growing. It demands that the House introduces positive measures to remove discrimination—measures that will be seen as tangible, enforceable and fair. In so doing, we will restore the confidence that disabled people once had in the House. With your permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will be delighted to present that petition, which reads:
  To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The Humble Petition of Residents from throughout Great Britain
  Sheweth.
  That the overwhelming support for a Disabled Persons' Civil Bill in both Houses of Parliament should lead to urgent and meaningful legislation in this session.
  Wherefore your petitioners pray that your Honourable House will urge the Prime Minister and his Government not to impede a measure which has already been implemented in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America.
  And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will every pray &tc.
  To lie upon the Table.

  Social Fund
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
  10.27 pm
  Mr. Kevin Barron: Hon. Members are not leaving, are they?—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. Will hon. Members leaving the Chamber please do so quietly?
  Mr. Barron: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I applied to the Speaker's Office to bring up the treatment of one of my constituents, Mr. Michael Pitson, and the local social fund and how it operates within the Rotherham area.
  It is one of Parliament's great strengths that we are able to use the Adjournment procedure to highlight individual cases and I hope that that never stops. We represent millions of people and we should be able to raise individual cases here when we believe that an injustice has been done.
  Mr. Michael Pitson is a married man with two young children who lives in Maltby—a village in my constituency. He worked at Silverwood colliery in October 1992, when the President of the Board of Trade made an announcement about the future of the British coal industry. It is ironic that Silverwood colliery was not on the original hit list of coal mines at that time, although it subsequently closed. Like many others, Mr. Pitson had joined the coal industry thinking that he had a secure future. That was not to be.
  Following the closure of Silverwood colliery, Mr. Pitson decided to change his career and applied to train as a nurse in the mental health field. He passed the entrance examination in December 1992 to commence a three-year course leading to a higher national diploma in nursing—mental health branch. Mr. Pitson wrote to many colleges and, after an interview, was accepted at Humberside college of health.
  Mr. Pitson came to my constituency surgery last April and explained in detail his problems finding accommodation for himself and his family. Initially, I asked him to put the matter in writing as I wanted to consider his problem. He wrote to me and said:
  "On being accepted by Humberside College of Health I went to the council office in Hull to inquire about a council house in or near the Hull area. The spokesperson for the council told me that because I would have student status I was not eligible for a council house in the Hull area.
  After this I went to Grimsby council to apply for a house on that side of the Humber and travel to the hospital over the bridge. No luck here! To be eligible for a council house in Grimsby you had to have lived in Grimsby for one year or more.
  Having looked at the council map I noticed two councils that border the Hull area. Holderness is only two miles from De La Pole Hospital"—
  where Mr. Pitson had been accepted to take a course.
  "They told me that if the course had been inside their border, they would have offered me and my family a council house but because it was two miles outside their area, they said, 'Sorry can't help'.
  The other bordering council was Beverley, who said if I wish to return to Beverley and were of pensionable age, no problem, but at a mere 26 and with a family they said, 'Sorry, nothing to offer'.
  126
  So having tried all the councils I approached several private rental agencies. All had the same answers to my inquiries—as I was only a student nurse and currently unemployed they were unwilling to take me on their books. I have also had my name on the home swap list, but to the present I have had no inquiries."
  Mr. Pitson wrote to the Department of the Environment and the Prime Minister. He received a letter from the Government Office for Yorkshire and Humberside telling him about the "Homeswap" scheme and giving him a list of other agencies to which he could talk. At the beginning of July, he thought that he had made a breakthrough. He wrote to me and said:
  "I am writing to thank you for all your help in trying to find me and my family a home in Hull, so I can take up my nursing course. But like me your efforts seem to be hitting a brick wall.
  So as a last effort before giving up I tried ringing around all the estate agents in the Hull area. Then to my surprise I came across an estate agent who not only rented the type of home I was looking for but they were also willing to accept me. The houses they were offering all had a monthly rent of £350. As I am eligible for rent rebate I approached Hull council who said once I had moved in, there would be no problem with claiming housing benefit to the full amount. Hooray, victory at last!"
  Mr. Pitson went on:
  "Not so, the estate agent said to secure any property they would need 1 month's rent plus £100 administration fee before I could move in. So not giving up I went back to the Social Security office to see if I could have the first month's rent in advance. They said `No', I was not eligible for housing benefit until I had moved in, and I could not move in because I have not got the £450 needed. So after getting so close the brick wall strikes again."
  I then wrote a letter to the Benefits Agency in July. I said:
  "I have been corresponding on Mr. Pitson's behalf about the possibility of him getting housing on Humberside where he had been offered a course in a higher education diploma in nursing starting in March of next year. I have enclosed a copy of a recent letter from the college. I also enclose for your information a copy of a letter I received a few weeks ago from Mr. Pitson saying that our attempts over the last few months to find housing for him and his family on Humberside had shown some fruit, but were eventually dashed because of the need to have a month's rent paid in advance.
  I would like to know if there is any possibility of Mr. Pitson being assisted in moving house and if a payment for rent in advance could be secured from Social Security.
  Throughout the months that I have been dealing with Michael Pitson, he has shown nothing but a determination to get on in his life both for his own sake and that of his family. It appears that he now has a good opportunity to move into higher education and at some stage, hopefully in the not too distant future, to move off benefit dependency. I would hope that all people concerned will assist in any way that they can to make this happen."
  The reply from the local benefits agency stated that it had no record of a budget loan claim, but that he had been sent the requisite forms. The letter also stated:
  "A claim for rent in advance is generally considered to be of medium priority. At present we are only able to make loans of high priority items. However until we know the full circumstances we are unable to consider whether in Mr. Pitson's case the loan could be considered as high priority."
  His application for a loan was made in August for advance rent and a bond and it was subsequently rejected.
  Mr. Pitson waited for my return from holiday before asking me about what to do next. Unfortunately, the wait meant that he was outside the 28 days allowed for appeal. I wrote to the local office and to their credit the staff there accepted the reason for Mr. Pitson's delay and allowed

  127
  the appeal to go ahead. Mr. Pitson was interviewed again on 23 September and in his review the report officer stated:
  "Directive 8 is satisfied for a loan but a bond is excluded under Direction 12/0, and rent in advance is of insufficient priority … for a loan to be offered. Also, by refusing the bond there is no need of the rent in advance. Therefore, it is a nil award."
  That is typical civil service speak. He is told that because he could not have a bond anyway, there was no sense in offering the loan. I told Mr. Pitson that if he could get the rent in advance I would write to the person with the house and try to get him to accept that Mr. Pitson was a responsible person and should not need a bond. The report also stated:
  "the district loans budget could only constantly sustain payments for essential household items as the budget is under pressure due to the number of claims. The state of the district budget is 47.39 per cent. remaining for 51.78 per cent. of the financial year."
  An appeal was lodged against that decision and it was sent for independent review. The review agreed that the social fund officer had made the right decision and that it should stand. It appears that the directions that cover only three items under the discretionary directive fund exclude everything but a loan—if it has the right priority. Direction 29 states that a community care grant cannot be made for housing costs other than minor repairs.
  Because Mr. Pitson had applied for one month's rent and bond money to help him rent a private home for himself and his family, it was considered that the provisions of direction 29 prevented an award of a community care grant. Direction 12 states that a budgeting loan may not be awarded in respect of rent in advance where the landlord is not a local authority. The officer stated:
  "I consider that the provisions of Direction 12 prevent an award by way of a budget loan for the bond money. Direction 23 states that a crisis loan may not be awarded in respect of an advance … where the landlord is not the local authority."
  The officer went on to consider the provision of direction 23 in relation to an award for a crisis loan, which again was not for this purpose. He stated:
  "There are two types of social fund loan, a crisis loan and a budgeting loan. I do not consider that Mr. Pitson qualifies for a crisis loan as the expense must be to assist Mr. Pitson in an emergency or a consequence of a disaster. Budgeting loans are intended to help the applicant."
  One of the criteria is that applicants must be in receipt of income support for 26 weeks. Mr. Pitson fulfilled that criterion, and consequently could have received a budget loan; but he was not considered to be a sufficiently high priority.
  The inspector stated:
  "To decide the priority of this application I have in particular considered the nature, extent and urgency of the need. I have also considered the guidance on priority issued by the Area SFO"—
  the area social fund officer—
  "and the state of the district loans budget.
  In his guidance dated the 1 April 1994, the Area SFO said that the district loans budget could only consistently sustain applications considered to be of a high priority."
  The inspector then mentioned percentages.
  I looked at the guidelines relating to discretionary social fund criteria for community care grant, crisis loans and budget loans. The area SFO, who is normally the
  128
  manager of the local benefits agency, issues guidance each year for SFOs who administer the fund at the desk, as it were. The area SFO tells SFOs:
  "You are reminded that while Section 140(5) of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 requires you to take account of this guidance it is only one of the factors to be considered by you in reaching a decision.
  Whilst SFOs are required to have regard to the following guidance, it is not binding on them and is only one of the factors which they should consider in reaching their decision. It cannot be expected to cover every situation that will arise in deciding the overall priority of an application. SFOs must, using their discretion, consider every application on its merits, and have particular regard to the individual circumstances of the application, and the need for the item or service. SFOs should consider raising the level of priority where needs of the applicant and the circumstances warrant it."
  That clearly was not done in this case.
  The guidance goes on to discuss crisis loans. Of course, the SFOs must grant such loans only when they deem the applicant to be experiencing a crisis.
  In April last year, the area social fund officer—the district manager of the scheme—signed guidance on priority levels. That was a clear recognition of the position, and effectively an instruction to local social fund officers. The guidance that he signed stated:
  "I consider that currently, for grants, payment of high priorities can be consistently sustained from the budget without exceeding it."
  If that was the guidance at the beginning of the financial year when the budget was known, what happens to medium and low-priority applications? Clearly, they fail. It is a mockery for the Government to lay down guidelines for high, medium and low priorities if the budget does not meet medium and low priorities, and as a consequence any application in those categories fails.
  I asked Rotherham metropolitan borough council's social policy unit how many people in the borough were living below the poverty line and might need assistance from the discretionary social fund. The unit wrote to me as follows:
  "The most recent statistics available (November 1994) show that a total of 38,370 people are currently in receipt of Income Support in the Rother and Dearne area. The comparative figure for the same month in 1993 shows a total of 37,165—indicating an upward trend of over 3 per cent. This figure, of course, only shows the number of Income Support 'cases' and therefore does not cover the total number of people in each case who are living at this level (ie partner of Income Support claimants, children etc). It is also very difficult to ascertain the total number of people living below the poverty line as not everyone claims their entitlement to Income Support and are, therefore, not shown in the statistics above (for example pensioners who only live on their retirement pension)."
  The unit also supplied me with information on the number of successful applications made to the fund between April and November last year. In August, when Mr. Pitson applied, 1,998 applications were made. August was the only month between April and November when the figure fell below 2,000. Such a figure is clearly not adequate for the needs of the district.
  Figures calculated from the 1991 census show how Rotherham has high levels of deprivation in many economic sectors. The social policy unit states that unemployment is defined more widely in the census than in the official Department of Employment figures and that it includes all people seeking work, whether registered or not.
  Unemployment in Rotherham has increased since April 1991, in particular as a result of pit closures and restructuring in the iron and steel industries. The national

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  England and Wales unemployment figure was 9.17 per cent. The shaded areas on the map that I hold in front of me shows the communities with more than 18 per cent. unemployment in the borough. Average unemployment in the borough in 1991 was 11.9 per cent. Maltby, the village in which my constituent lives, is in one of the shaded areas and suffers from that high unemployment.
  The social policy unit's study also showed that, out of 56,802 children in the district, 12,151 were living in non-earning households. It said:
  "The national average is 17.35 per cent, the shaded areas in the map"—
  which include Maltby—
  "indicate the enumeration districts in which the percentage of children in non-earning households is at least 34.7 per cent. of children in all households."
  That is nearly twice the national average. Children living in and around the village are disadvantaged compared with other people.
  The Government have a duty to assist people like Michael Pitson to get on in life and to make a career change from an industry that will not have the sort of jobs that it had in the past. His treatment at the hands of many institutions, controlled directly and indirectly from central Government, was the opposite of the assistance that Michael Pitson should have had. We have debated the Second Reading of the Jobseekers Bill. Michael Pitson applied for an allowance to seek work and it failed. He was not of a high enough priority. He and his family should have been of a high enough priority. He said that he wanted
  "to move out of an area like mine with such high levels of deprivation and unemployment, to have this career change and to get back into average work again."
  Places like Rotherham, which suffer this level of deprivation, should have social funds that are adequate and will meet not just high priorities, in terms of their discretion, but medium and low priorities. I urge the Minister to look at the operation of the social fund in Rotherham to ensure that it adequately meets the needs of people so that people like Michael Pitson and his family can receive the assistance that they should receive from the Government.
  10.47 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans):-The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) has presented classically a constituent case. I agree that it is a matter of great importance to the House that Members of Parliament should have the opportunity to pursue individual cases. He has developed his argument to solve the issue of the social fund in the Rotherham region.
  I begin by dealing briefly with Mr. Pitson's case. It is important that we should understand precisely what lessons can be learnt from this matter. The hon. Member for Rother Valley, with the usual courtesy, approached my officials and various inquiries and discussions have taken place behind the scenes. I am happy to be able to tell the House that it looks as though a loan will be made from an access fund by the regional health authority, which will meet the initial housing cost that Mr. Pitson needs. That is an important matter and it was a surprise to the hon. Gentleman and myself as a letter was posted at the end of last week over the holiday period.
  Mr. Barron: Does the Minister accept that if I had not telephoned the people at the college early last week to tell them about this Adjournment debate, they would not have known about Mr. Pitson's housing problem and he would not have known that the college had a fund—even the college was surprised—to help people with families? We are still left with the problem that Mr. Pitson does not have a home to move into. I hope that the Minister will address that.
  Mr. Evans: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's first point is yes. The hon. Gentleman has pursued his constituent's interests with energy and I understand that it is as a result of his approach to the relevant college that an access fund loan is now available.
  There is still the problem of finding private rented accommodation, but it looks as if the problem of the initial cost of a fee plus some form of rent in advance can be met, as it is intended that it should be by the system, through an access fund loan.
  Happily, the purpose of all this is to enable Mr. Pitson to attend a three-year full-time nursing course at Humberside college, beginning in April this year. The hon. Gentleman might like to consider with his constituent, who has been awarded a bursary at a higher level than the present income support level, whether he is entitled to any of the in-work benefits such as housing benefit or possibly family credit. We do not have enough information and a proper application must be made. It may be that more can be done.
  Let us suppose that an access fund loan had not been available. It does not necessarily follow that nothing could have been done for Mr. Pitson. At the discretion of a local authority, if it deems it reasonable, housing benefit may be payable on two separate dwellings where one of the partners is away on a training course.
  I must be careful about my comments on the operation of the social fund as it applied to Mr. Pitson because, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the decision-making and the review of decision-making is an independent process. I endorse entirely the account of the facts given by the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps I can explain what appears to have happened. The first decision of the social fund officer on 15 August 1994 was that a community care grant was not possible because direction 4 was not satisfied. The second decision was that a budgeting loan for a rent bond, deposit or administrative fee—however it is dressed up by the prospective landlord—was refused as that is a specifically excluded item under direction 12(O). As the hon. Gentleman said, the request for rent in advance was refused on priority grounds. As the hon. Gentleman explained, the social fund inspector upheld that subsequently.
  Since it is an independent process I cannot comment on the particular case. However, perhaps I can explain to the hon. Gentleman and the House the Government's thinking behind the scheme and the directions as they are drawn. The issue of deposits and whether there should be provision for them is a very old and difficult one. Direction 12(O) came into being deliberately to exclude them because the previous scheme had escalated dramatically. Between 1981 and 1986 the sums involved increased from £18,000 to £3 million as the number of cases increased from 750 to 33,000. In 1987–88 the sums involved had reached £10 million.

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  There is no easy answer to the problem. If one does not pay, the poor applicant who wants the home cannot jump the hurdle. If one does pay, human nature is such that every private landlord in every circumstance will demand such a deposit. [Interruption.] The difficulty is that if a contract is to be entered into freely it is a matter of bargain between the parties. If one of the parties is paid a blank cheque by the taxpayer, there is an inevitable tendency for the other to take advantage of it.
  The Department of the Environment is examining a pilot scheme to help with deposits run in conjunction with the Notting Hill housing trust. The Government's general thinking on this matter is that direction 12(O) represents a sensible policy.
  The case for rent in advance failed on grounds of low priority. I must say that I find it difficult to comment on this aspect. The hon. Gentleman explained the facts of his constituent's case—I have no doubt that the House was sympathetic to Mr. Pitson—but we do not know about any other claims that were made or the context in which the priority was established.
  In 1993–94, the social fund made 21,600 rent-in-advance loans worth nearly £3 million. I heard what the hon. Gentleman told the House about the sums available under the fund and how the fund operates in his constituency. I should be able to comfort him to the extent that the local guidance to which he referred as an instruction is not, in fact, an instruction.
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  The Government's view of the social fund is that it is generally working well, focusing resources on those most in need of help and making the most effective use of the available resources to help large numbers of people. Since the scheme began, nearly 1.7 million non-repayable grants have been awarded and more than 8.5 million interest-free loans. Last year, the fund helped 5 per cent. more people than in the financial year ending in 1993. Our commitment to this important aspect of provision is clear. We have given more money to the fund every year and that was also the case in 1994–95, even with fierce competition for public funds.
  The social fund's gross budget now stands at more than £50 million higher than two years ago. As recently as November, the loans budget was increased by £13 million, a 5 per cent. increase on the allocation announced at the beginning of this financial year. I should explain that Rother Valley had its portion of that. It was made possible by the improved performance of the Benefits Agency in recovering loan repayments, in part due to the new computer system introduced last year. Recycling money in the form of recoverable loans is a successful and effective way to use public funds as it increases the amount of help available. The proportion recovered is substantial and the money can be used again and again.
  The Government will continue to keep the operation of the fund under close scrutiny and we shall make improvements to ensure that the considerable help provided by the social fund goes to our most vulnerable citizens.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Eleven o'clock.