1. What steps he proposes to take to work with the voluntary sector to tackle poverty. (186542)

The Government see a vital role for the voluntary sector in tackling poverty. In 2006, more than a quarter of new deal main contracts were awarded to voluntary sector organisations and more than a third of subcontractors are from the sector. Next week, the Department will publish its commissioning strategy. Throughout the consultation on the strategy, we have made it clear that the voluntary sector will play a growing role.

Volunteering provides a much-needed road into employment for many of the long-term unemployed. Brighton and Hove volunteer centre in my constituency has worked with more than 400 voluntary organisations this year, providing the unemployed with much-needed skills, necessary references and some confidence. What does my right hon. Friend hope to do to help provide that service?

I wish to start by paying tribute to my predecessor and the radical programme of welfare reform that he established. I am honoured to be building on the work that he achieved.

I congratulate the centre that my hon. Friend mentioned and reassure her that volunteering and the voluntary sector are at the heart of our programmes to get people back into work. Volunteering can teach people important skills that bring them closer to the labour market, and the voluntary sector plays a growing role in getting people who are on incapacity benefit and those in the new deal back into work.

I welcome the Secretary of State to his position and look forward to debating with him in the months ahead. I also welcome the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform to his new Front-Bench job. He and I have had debates in the past and it is a pleasure to see him there.

Are the Government on track for achieving their target of halving child poverty by 2010?

The Government are committed to the goal of reducing child poverty. We continue to keep the strategy under review and we will make announcements at the appropriate time. However, it is surprising that the hon. Gentleman raises the issue when I do not believe that the Conservative party is committed to even an aspiration, let alone a pledge, to reduce child poverty. Perhaps he would like to answer that point.

I look forward to our changing jobs in the near future. From the lack of an answer to my question, I judge that the Government will not achieve their target of halving child poverty by 2010. Will the Secretary of State give the House a sense of when the Government hope to achieve that target?

As I said, the Government are committed to the target. The House will notice that the hon. Gentleman ducked the question on whether the Conservative party is committed to the goal. Under his predecessor, it was at least an aspiration, but it is not even that now. He is not prepared to say that he shares the aspiration of getting children out of poverty in this country, which is shameful.

2. What assessment he has made of the performance of the Child Support Agency following the introduction of the operational improvement plan. (186543)

The agency’s performance has improved significantly since the operational improvement plan was launched in April 2006.

In simple terms, thanks to the plan, so far, 80,000 more children are being supported by an extra £140 million of payments. The number of uncleared cases is falling steadily and processing times are speeding up.

Several of my constituents are on the old CSA system and fear that they are consequently worse off. What advice can my hon. Friend give my constituents? In what time frame can they expect to be moved off the old system?

We all have a sense of frustration about the timing, and about the difficulties that the existence of two schemes running side by side creates. However, as we have always said, transfer from one to the other could not be undertaken safely or have any chance of being completed until the IT system was up to scratch. That is where the big problem lies. My hon. Friend knows that, as part of the operational improvement programme, major investment is now being made in IT and that there will be a major re-engineering at Easter. From next year, as we move to the new commission arrangement, parents will be able to choose whether to have a private arrangement, stick with an existing scheme that works or move into the new system. After that, we can migrate everyone to one unified system.

The Under-Secretary may know that I held an Adjournment debate as long ago as 24 July last year on the CSA constituency case of Mrs. Sonia Poulton. I do not know how he can stand at the Dispatch Box and say that the agency’s performance is getting better. I have corresponded with him since the Adjournment debate, to which the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire) replied. I tabled a pursuant question for answer on 17 January, and it has not been answered—

Order. Another Adjournment debate might be in order.

I said that the CSA was performing better; I did not say that it had reached a state of perfection. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that the fact that 80,000 more children are being supported, that £140 million more is being collected in maintenance, that the number of uncleared cases is down by 45 per cent. since the plan started and that the agency is now clearing 50 per cent. of cases within six weeks is all improvement. I fully accept that there are still problems with some cases, and I will look into the constituency case that he raises. I will consult colleagues who have dealt with the correspondence and come back to him.

I welcome the improvements in the operational improvement plan that my hon. Friend outlined. He mentioned the computer upgrade, which is due at Easter and upon which a great deal depends. Will he meet me to discuss how staff such as those at the Plymouth office can be encouraged in the work that they are doing, despite the uncertainty that the future holds for them, so that he can continue to make such announcements at the Dispatch Box in future?

My hon. Friend will know that I have visited the Plymouth office, where I discussed with the staff both the agency’s current performance and the move to the new commission arrangement. I am pleased to report that the staff are behind the work that the Department is doing and fully support the move to the commission. In so far as they have any reservations about their status, which they raised when I visited, we have been able to resolve them by telling the staff that they will remain Crown employees. The staff fully support the changes that we are making, because they want to be part of a child maintenance arrangement that works.

The abolition of pension contribution limits means that children are suffering, as huge pension contributions are now allowable deductions from income assessed for child support. A mother from your hometown, Mr. Speaker, has called this “a loophole that can be exploited by parents lining their own pockets, rather than paying for their responsibilities.” Her MP, the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr. Murphy), has called this clearly unfair. Does the Minister agree, and will he ensure that the law is changed?

As I have already pointed out, despite such issues, the agency is collecting £140 million more in child support than it was before, on behalf of 80,000 more children. The hon. Gentleman knows that when the commission takes over later this year, there will be an opportunity to review other aspects of the agency’s arrangements—he and I have debated the issue in Committee, and he knows that to be the case. The important thing is to ensure that we build a platform of success within the existing agency for when the commission takes over. It will then have the opportunity to review all the arrangements covering the current maintenance systems.

I congratulate the Minister on the improvements he has announced today. Will he indicate—if not now, in a note in the Library—how many children have to wait six months and how many have to wait more than 12 months before the first of their often irregular maintenance payments arrives?

I can certainly supply my right hon. Friend with that information. He is right that there are unacceptable waits in some cases—after all, 38 per cent. of non-resident parents are failing to pay part or all of their maintenance assessment. That is clearly not acceptable, but we are dealing with people who will sometimes go to the most extraordinary lengths to avoid facing up to their clear responsibility, and the agency cannot always do all that it would like in going after them. However, in addition to the improvements to which I have referred, the agency is now taking a record level of enforcement action to go after the non-resident parents who will not pay, with record numbers of charging orders, suspended committal sentences, removals of driving licences and deduction from earnings orders, as well as doing more than ever before to collect arrears.

3. What recent assessment he has made of poverty rates among disadvantaged groups. (186544)

We have made considerable progress in tackling poverty. Since 1998-99, the number of pensioners in relative poverty has fallen by more than 1 million, and the number of individuals in relative poverty living in households continuing a disabled person, after housing costs, has fallen by about 900,000. There are now 600,000 fewer children living in relative poverty, before housing costs, than there were in 1998-99.

The UK has a higher proportion of children living in workless households than any other EU country and, according to the Sutton Trust, social mobility in the UK is at the lowest level of any developed country. What connection does the Minister make between those two facts?

I make the connection that, for 18 years, there was a huge rise in child poverty—[Interruption.] That is a serious point. We cannot measure the life chances of a child who is 10 years old, which is the oldest that they could be if they had spent the whole of their life growing up under this Government. Those figures clearly measure life chances over the past two or three decades. We inherited a significant problem of child poverty; we have cut it by 600,000, and we have measures in place to cut it by another 300,000. The proportion of children in workless households has fallen by 400,000 under this Government. It was rising under the Tories, which damaged children’s life chances, but it is now falling under us. Over the next 20 years, as we are able to judge those children’s life chances, I believe that we will see a significant improvement.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, when dealing with families living at the bottom end of the economic ladder and those with young children, there can be no scope for using the removal of housing as part of the process of getting people back into the world of work? Will he confirm that there are better ways of doing that, and that it would be unworkable and unacceptable to use housing as a weapon in that way?

I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the debate that the Minister for Housing has started about people’s responsibilities in respect of social housing. It is right that, when people get social housing, which is much sought after, we should talk about the responsibilities that go with that. That is exactly the debate that my right hon. Friend has started. One thing that could be done, for example, is to ensure that applicants for social housing get employment support alongside it. We could take other measures as well. That is a debate that my right hon. Friend the Minister and I will be happy to have with my hon. Friend in the coming weeks.

The Department’s own statistics on households on below-average incomes show that, since 2001, the bottom 10 per cent. of families have become worse off. They are going backwards, and getting poorer. How has that come about?

The figures on the proportion of people who are on below 40 per cent. of median earnings—I think that is what the hon. Gentleman was referring to—have been described by the Office for National Statistics as not reliable. For example, there are many people in that category who do not declare any income at all. There may well be a certain amount of fraud in those figures, and the sample size is too small anyhow. The figures that are internationally recognised, which relate to those on less than 60 per cent. of median earnings, have shown a fall of 600,000 since 1997, and we have measures in place for another 300,000 to be taken out of poverty. The clearest contrast, however, is the one between this Government, who are committed to reducing child poverty, and the Opposition, who will not even say that they have an aspiration to reduce it.

I see from the Annunciator that, following these questions, the Chancellor is to make a statement that will help us to deliver on our 1983 manifesto pledge on banking. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether it will be 25 years before we deliver on our 2005 manifesto commitment to a full programme of action to support disabled people in leading independent lives and to increase their inclusion in the economy and in society? The Independent Living Fund has just announced that it is raising from £200 to £320 the threshold sum that a disabled person must be receiving from local authorities in order to access ILF funding. Will not this worsen poverty and increase disabled people’s exclusion from society?

I believe that that was done in consultation with local authorities and will not affect existing claimants. We do not think that a significant number of people will be affected. My hon. Friend is right, however, to say that the Government have a radical goal of getting equality for disabled people by 2025, and we have a number of policies in place to achieve that. However, I would be happy to talk to him if he has any further suggestions on what course the Government should be pursuing.

The recent report by Leonard Cheshire Disability shows that disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people; I know that the Secretary of State will be familiar with that. Over the past 10 years, the employment rate of people with work-limiting disabilities has risen by just 3.7 per cent., according to the Government’s own figures. What specific policies do the Government have to enable them to do better in future, and why should anyone think that they are any more likely to be successful?

I look forward to meeting Leonard Cheshire Disability and I am happy to look into the suggestions it has made. As the hon. Gentleman says, there has been an improvement in the employment rate of disabled people, but we want to go further. Reforming incapacity benefit by introducing the employment and support allowance will, we believe, help to get about 1 million people off incapacity benefit and into work. At the end of the spectrum where people have really significant barriers to work, we should be clear that we are not saying that they cannot work—we want to support everyone who wants to work—but we are seeing what more control we can give people in that situation so that disabled people, like everybody else, can have the expectation of being able to get into work.

4. If he will meet pensioner groups from East Anglia to discuss payment of old age pensions and related benefits. (186545)

I regularly meet national pensioners’ organisations, which seek to reflect the views of pensioners from East Anglia and other parts of the country. I hope to visit Norwich in the next few months and I intend to meet a pensioners’ group there.

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for that reply, but is he aware that the number of pensioners living in households earning less than 40 per cent. of the national average income is rising to a figure of nearly 500,000? Is he aware, more particularly, that pensioners in East Anglia have been hit especially hard by council tax increases—so much so that many pensioner households are now spending a very large percentage of their income on council tax bills? What plans does the Minister have to help those pensioners who just miss out on council tax rebate to get some respite?

I would hesitate, if I were a Conservative, to complain about pensions, given that under the Conservative Government the poorest pensioners were forced to exist on only £69 a week—barely enough, one would have thought, to pay for a bottle at the Bullingdon club. We have done an awful lot to help pensioners, and the number of pensioners living in relative poverty has fallen by more than 1 million since 1997. Just before Christmas, I announced some new proposals to help large numbers of pensioners who are not claiming pension credit or, indeed, the help that they need with council tax at the moment. When these proposals come into effect next year, we will mount a campaign to encourage pensioners to apply for help with council tax, which will automatically bring them some of the other benefits to assist them more widely. Pensioners’ organisations asked for that, and they have broadly welcomed it.

Will the Minister look again into the disadvantage suffered by people who reach retirement age, but are in receipt of a carer’s allowance and are caring for their loved ones? By what logic are they penalised or disadvantaged, particularly bearing in mind the fact that some devolved Assemblies in the UK are about to consider unilaterally remedying that wrong?

I looked into this problem recently, as some carers raised it with me. The benefits system does not allow for double payments. We are looking into ways of helping pensioners better to deal with some of the problems that they face. There are anomalies whereby someone living in an area receives help while the person living next door does not—and these are a matter of concern to us. I do not have an easy answer for my hon. Friend now, but I recognise the nature of the problem. It is an expensive problem to resolve, but we are still looking into ways of doing so.

5. Whether his Department plans to simplify the welfare system with a view to reducing child poverty as recommended by the Scottish Affairs Committee in its report, “Child Poverty in Scotland”. (186546)

The reduction in poverty has been greater in Scotland than elsewhere, but there is undoubtedly more to do. I welcome the Scottish Affairs Committee report and we will respond to it fully in due course. We need a simpler benefits system to make it easier for people to make claims and understand their responsibilities.

The Minister will be aware that one of the ideas canvassed by the Scottish Affairs Committee, for which some enthusiasm was expressed by those giving evidence, was the equalisation of child benefit rates. What consideration is the Department giving to that idea, and when can we expect it to share its thinking with us?

All I can say at this stage is that we will respond in full to the proposals in the report, which I welcome, as I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s contribution to it. We are taking a number of steps to simplify the benefits system, including the introduction of the employment and support allowance, to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred earlier. We want a system that makes it clearer to people what they are entitled to and how they can access it. As I say, we will respond to the detailed proposals in the report in due course.

As a member of the Committee, may I say that one of the most concerning aspects that we came across was that disabled children are four times as likely to be in poverty as non-disabled children? Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that of the £34 million allocated by the Government and specifically targeted on that disadvantaged group, not one penny has reached a health board, a local authority or a social work department? Will he join me in condemning the Scottish Government for their behaviour?

I am very happy to condemn the Scottish Government. My hon. Friend raises an important point. He knows that the children and young people’s review, conducted as part of the comprehensive spending review, has a major focus on the needs of disabled children and improving their life chances. I welcome his contribution.

Will the Minister answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) but ducked by the Secretary of State on what year the Government intend to reach their target of halving child poverty in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom?

I understand that the target has been reached in Scotland. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we remain committed to making further progress and to the abolition of child poverty entirely by 2020. We have made good progress. The number of children growing up in poverty has fallen by 600,000 since 1997, it having doubled under the policies of the Conservatives.

6. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of worklessness among under 25-year-olds since 1997. (186547)

9. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of worklessness among under 25-year-olds since 1997. (186552)

The level of 16 to 24-year-olds not in work or full-time education has fallen from 17.8 per cent. in 1997 to 16.9 per cent. today.

I welcome the Minister to his new position. Given the high figure of people aged 16 to 24 who are out of work, and in particular given that the number of people in that age group who are economically inactive and not in full-time education has increased by 144,000 since 1997, does he still maintain the position that the current Prime Minister advocated in 2005, that youth unemployment has been virtually abolished?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind welcome. Let me make two points. First, it is true that the population of young people has increased, but the percentage—the proportion—not in education, employment or training has fallen, as I said to him. Secondly, it is also the case—this is the important point—that many fewer young people today are unemployed for long periods, and the periods in which they are out of education, employment or training tend to be short.

To pick up on the point about my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in May 1997, more than 85,000 18 to 24-year-olds had been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months. That fell last month and it is now fewer than 7,000. My right hon. Friend was absolutely right.

May I pick the Minister up on his point about the duration of employment of young people? Does he agree that it is scandalous that the proportion of people who have been through the Government’s new deal for young people and still have a job within one year of leaving is less than one half of those people who get a job in the first place? In other words, one out of two lose their job within the first year. Does he agree that that figure urgently needs to be improved?

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that 750,000 young people have gone into work through the new deal; much of that has been sustained work. That is the reason for the dramatic improvement in unemployment across the economy. He may well have seen the employment figures published last week, which show that more people in the UK are in work than ever before—almost 29.4 million—and that for the first time since June 1975 the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has fallen below 800,000. That is dramatic progress. The new deal for young people is an important part of the explanation for that. Of course we need to go further, and we will do, but employment opportunities today are unprecedented for young people and others. We are determined to make the most of them.

Will my right hon. Friend look at the progress made in the Cheshire Oaks retail area in my constituency, where he will see a partnership between the FE college, local authorities, the DWP and employers, who together have set up a retail training centre, which has had a profound impact on the life chances of people from some of the most disadvantaged parts of the constituency? Will he discuss that with his opposite numbers in the Department with responsibility for employment and see whether the model can be applied elsewhere?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Very good progress is being made as a result of the partnership arrangements that he describes. He gave a good constituency example of local employment partnerships. Last Thursday I was at the Nissan plant in Sunderland, signing a local employment partnership with the company. We have said that through Jobcentre Plus and its partners we will ensure that people have the skills and abilities to secure the jobs that are available, the other side of the deal being that employers will give disadvantaged unemployed people a fair crack at those jobs. I am confident that we will continue to make substantial progress in reducing the number of people who have been out of work for some time.

This September, the new 14-to-19 curriculum and the first of the new diplomas will begin. The number of apprenticeship places is expected to continue to rise, from the current 240,000 to the eventual target of 400,000 a year, and in due course we will make it compulsory for 16 and 17-year-olds to remain in education and training. How will Jobcentre Plus be involved in those developments? May I suggest that it can play an important role in continuing to engage employers in providing for the necessary expansion in skills training opportunities?

Jobcentre Plus will continue to play a central role in brokering partnerships and the other arrangements that my hon. Friend has described. It is true that we must address skills increasingly in the welfare system.

My hon. Friend was also right to draw attention to the growing number of apprenticeships, which almost disappeared altogether under the last Government. Now, 100,000 apprenticeships are being completed each year, and we have the longer-term objective outlined by my hon. Friend. In future, people taking up the flexible new deal will go to Jobcentre Plus, where they will be helped by advisers; specialist tailored help will then be given by others who are contracted through Jobcentre Plus, which will thus have a central role, while working with a wide array of partners.

Is it not a fact that 1.25 million people between the ages of 16 and 24 are neither in work nor in full-time education, more than when the Government came to office? Is it not also true that half a million young people up to the age of 35—I consider them still to be young—are not in employment at all? Have not the millions of pounds spent by the Government on various schemes missed their target?

Certainly not. Let me repeat what I told the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose). The proportion of young people not in education, employment or training is down, not up, and many fewer young people are unemployed for long periods. I also refer the hon. Lady to the employment figures published last week. They showed a rise in the employment rate and a fall in the unemployment rate, a fall in the claimant count in every English region—and in Wales and Scotland—a rise in the number of vacancies, and the fewest redundancies across the economy in the last quarter of last year since records began in 1995. Those are the results of the new stability achieved in the United Kingdom’s economy over the past 10 years, and of our active labour market policies.

I join others in welcoming the Minister to his new post. May I gently suggest that he avoid some of the woes that his predecessors have experienced in trying to suggest that the huge increase in the number of foreign workers is some sort of answer to the deep-seated problem of youth unemployment? Should he not face the fact that the new deal has too often acted as a revolving door taking young people from one period on benefits to another, which is reflected in the statistic that youth unemployment is 13 per cent. higher than it was when the Government took office? Is there not also a connection between that and the 400,000 increase in the number of young people living in poverty since 1997, which means that nearly a third of them are in that position? Is it not time that the Government faced up to those problems, and we saw some fresh thinking?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome, but he needs to look at the figures a little more closely. It is a shame that Opposition Members were not worrying about this group of young people when the Government they supported were doubling the rate of child poverty between 1979 and 1997. He appears in the figures he has cited to have included full-time students, who are certainly in no sense part of a lost generation; they are being prepared for the opportunities ahead. Unemployment is down, the claimant count is down, and the number of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months has fallen from 85,000 in May 1997 to fewer than 7,000 today. We will continue to make sure that the substantial number of opportunities being created in the economy are available, including to people who have been out of work for a long time.

7. If he will hold discussions with the Health and Safety Executive on the regulation of sunbeds. (186548)

The Government’s cancer reform strategy commits the Department of Health to review options for controlling health risks through regulation of the sunbed industry, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, including the HSE.

I thank my hon. Friend for her answer, but I ask her to make representations to the HSE on the leaflet IND(G)209. I am particularly concerned about the leaflet, as it has not been updated since 1995 and it needs to include important information for young people on sunbed use. Please will she ensure that?

I thank my hon. Friend for her question, which is important as malignant melanoma of the skin is among the five most common cancers in the 15 to 24 age range, and it is estimated that skin cancer rates will treble over the next 20 to 30 years. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that the HSE is shortly to put out for consultation a revision of its guidance on sunbeds, and that the guidance advises that all tanning salons should be staffed and calls up World Health Organisation guidelines that people under 18 years of age should avoid sunbed use.

10. What steps he is taking to improve the access of benefit recipients to affordable credit; and if he will make a statement. (186553)

Access to affordable credit is vital to help tackle vulnerability and reduce poverty. Total Government investment in the growth fund has now reached £80 million, and that is helping to fund tens of thousands of affordable loans to people in receipt of benefit.

I thank my hon. Friend for that response, but many benefit recipients remain exposed to the activities of some loan companies that conduct their business along the lines of sub-prime lending. Does he agree that there is much to be gained by his Department co-operating with colleagues at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in the promotion of easy-to-access credit unions?

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, and he is absolutely right to point out that many people are victims of the doorstep loan sharks, who sometimes apply interest rates in excess of 1,000 per cent. without, of course, declaring that. We want to protect people from having recourse to such unaffordable credit, and the investment we are making through the growth fund is leading to a substantial expansion of the credit union movement. My hon. Friend is right that we are working with colleagues in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, which is funding hundreds of advisers who are working in local areas giving free, face-to-face advice to people on managing their debt.

Will my hon. Friend redouble his efforts and get in contact with credit unions, which up and down the country do tremendous work in ensuring that good credit is available to low-income families? My own union in Nuneaton is doing very well, but I have to say that if we put as much effort into this area as we have done into saving Northern Rock, we would help an awful lot more people at the poor end of the stick.

The credit union in Nuneaton is one of the credit unions that is receiving additional support through the growth fund investment that we are making. That investment is helping to increase substantially the scope of this country’s credit union movement. I know that in some areas where growth fund money is being invested the number of people joining local credit unions has doubled, and we hope to see much more of that as we go forward with the next two or three years of growth fund investment. We are finally putting resources behind expanding an important sector that is working in all of our communities and assisting people on low incomes.

11. What recent steps he has taken to help lone mothers into work. (186554)

There has been a welcome and large rise in lone-parent employment in the past 10 years. From October, lone parents with older children will be required to seek employment. From April, the in-work credit will be available nationally, and we will pilot a new credit to ensure that lone parents are at least £25 a week better off in work.

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Recently, I visited the solve-it programme at Falkirk football club with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne). It has an objective of getting 65 per cent. of single mothers who attend back into work, and it has recently been hitting that objective successfully. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister join me in commending the solve-it programme and all those involved in it? Does he agree that it is a great example of how a football club can truly serve its local community?

I am pleased to share my hon. Friend’s commendation of that initiative. We are also ensuring that lone parents are better off financially in work, because work is good for people’s health, their children and the self-esteem of their children. Everybody benefits when lone parents can get back into work, and I welcome the work in my hon. Friend’s area.

Everybody would wish to support genuine lone mothers back into work when that is appropriate. However, does the Minister not appreciate that the current tax and benefits system discriminates against married couples? Will he look into that at the earliest possible opportunity?

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that everybody is better off when parents are in work. We have made the changes that I have referred to for lone parents, but the point also applies to couples. It is in everybody’s interests for people to be in work. Where there is a question whether people are better off in work, Jobcentre Plus advisers can make a calculation to show the financial gains of work, and the better off in work credit will help further. I think that we can agree across the House that it is in everybody’s interests for parents to be able to work.

My understanding is that, under the new deal for lone parents, when lone parents attend jobcentres for interviews their child care and travel costs are met, whereas when they move to the new jobseeker’s allowance regime they have to meet those costs from their benefits, which could act as a bit of a disincentive and perhaps lead to sanctions. Will the Minister undertake to look into that, to ensure that lone parents who move from the new deal to the JSA regime are not disadvantaged in such a way?

I will certainly examine that point. We want to ensure that lone parents plan for a better future for themselves and their children, and that will require lone parents moving on to more appropriate benefits when their youngest child is 12 and over from October this year, as she knows, and 10 and over and seven and over later. I shall certainly examine her point and drop her a line in response.

15. What plans his Department has to provide further assistance to people experiencing fuel poverty. (186560)

We expect to pay 12 million winter fuel payments this winter. In addition, the Pension Service is currently working with energy suppliers to target further help to 250,000 vulnerable pensioners in receipt of pension credit throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. We are also working closely with other Departments to develop a cross-governmental strategy to help further reduce fuel poverty.

Will the allowances for fuel increase in line with the cost of fuel this coming year?

That is a decision that the Chancellor will no doubt announce in due course. It is not for me.

I call Anne Moffat; I call Anne Snelgrove. Is Sally Keeble here? No—what I can do is to move on to Topical questions.

rose—[Interruption.]

Order. It is not the hon. Gentleman’s fault that others cannot be here.

T2. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities. (186533)

Last November the Government announced a strategy for reducing the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training. As part of those proposals, from next April all young people who have not been in employment, education or training for at least 26 weeks by the time of their 18th birthday will be fast-tracked to the intensive support and sanctions regime of the new deal. If they fail to find work after six months, they will be referred to a specialist provider from the voluntary or private sector.

I can announce today that we will look to contract with providers who will work with young people in this category to do substantial amounts of work-related activity, underpinned by a minimum of four weeks’ full-time work-related activity relevant to the individual. That is an important new initiative to connect young people to the world of work and ensure that they learn basic skills such as teamwork and work-related disciplines, including timekeeping.

May I say that that was absolutely fascinating? However, two years on from the Buncefield, explosions the inquiry is still going on behind closed doors. Although I criticise its being done behind closed doors, I have no criticism of Lord Newton and his team. Could the Secretary of State assist the inquiry team in reaching a conclusion on whether a criminal prosecution should take place and whether compensation can be paid to my constituents who have suffered so much?

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is interested in my more general announcement, as many Conservative Members have raised the issue of people not in employment, education or training.

I know that the hon. Gentleman has been campaigning vigorously on the issue that he raises. I will ask the Health and Safety Executive for an update on progress and I would be happy to meet him to discuss his concerns. Clearly, everyone wants to bring the matter to a conclusion as rapidly as possible.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his deserved promotion, but since he took office pronouncements on welfare reform have sent mixed messages: on the one hand, they have threatened to take people’s houses, and on the other, they have promoted the idea of financial incentives. When will he face up to the real barriers put up to benefit claimants by the huge complexity of the benefit system, which he has not so far addressed? Will he start by introducing plans for a single working-age benefit, which would do a lot to reduce barriers to work for many benefit claimants?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am happy to consider the issue that he raises. It has been considered by many Secretaries of State and the question is always how one moves to such a system without creating a large number of losers, which would it make very difficult to introduce, and compensating all those losers, which would make it very expensive. A single working-age benefit system is desirable in theory, but whether it could be achieved cheaply in practice is a very different question.

This week I am meeting the office bearers of the Livingston and Blackburn credit union, who are a formidable group. At present, only individuals can join credit unions, but the officers want to know whether groups, such as mother-toddler groups, can be allowed to join. Has my right hon. Friend given any thought to that idea?

I am happy to raise that point with colleagues in the Treasury and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. As my hon. Friend knows, we are increasing significantly the support that we give to credit unions to address financial exclusion. There is also a significant role for the social fund, and we will bring forward proposals shortly.

T3. How much is being spent on benefits for migrant workers and their families, especially those from eastern Europe? Is he aware that there is growing concern about what many people believe to be an abuse? What is he going to do about it? (186534)

If the hon. Gentleman knows of a specific abuse, he should raise it and I would be happy to look at it. A key part of being in the European Union is that, just as when people from this country retire to Spain they have access to social services there, when people from other parts of the EU come here, they have access to the same support here. The European Union has been very good for our economy and those of other member states, and it will continue to be so. I believe that we disagree on that particular issue.

In reference to the Secretary of State’s earlier announcement, does he agree that the Connexions organisation is doing a superb job in trying to tackle the category of young people who are not in education, employment or training—the NEETs? Connexions Leicester Shire, which has an office next door but one to mine, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Leicestershire county council and Leicester city council. This year, Connexions Leicester Shire is targeting especially white British young people who live in disadvantaged areas of west Leicester and west Leicestershire. Is it right that it should target specific subsets of hard-to-reach young people? NEET numbers do show some resistance to decline over the years.

My hon. Friend is right to say that the Connexions service plays a vital role in the agenda. My announcement included the need for Jobcentre Plus and Connexions to work closely together. They will work closely with young people before those young people reach the age of 18. A key part of that policy will be to raise the education leaving age to 18. We are saying that we believe that once people reach 18, if they have been out of education, employment or training for six months, they should be fast-tracked into a system whereby, if they do not find a job within six months, they will be required to do a substantial amount of work-related activity for at least four weeks. We will also be looking for providers who want to put that at the heart of their strategy to get young people back into work.

T4. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss regeneration on the Alton estate in my constituency? Despite his deprived areas stats and all the money that is being targeted at communities to help tackle joblessness, the subject of opportunities is being missed. Only the cohort of people in such areas is considered, rather than the opportunities that are provided afterwards in those areas for people who live there already. Will he meet me to talk through the issues so that we can make the most of regeneration in Roehampton and not miss the important opportunities for those who live on the Alton estate? (186535)

I know that the hon. Lady has raised the issue before and is worried that the Roehampton area has not been included in the fund. The fund was allocated according to criteria of need, and that is the right way of doing it. I am happy to look at the evidence that she has raised but, clearly, basing the distribution on need is the fairest way of proceeding.

T5. Youth unemployment remains a problem. I do not want to bandy statistics about, but I would like an answer from the Minister. Macclesfield boasts one of the most advanced learning zones in the country: a virtually new secondary school; a virtually new college; and a sixth-form centre. What initiatives will the Government take to ensure that courses are available at the college, in particular, to attract young people who are economically inactive? I believe that the college and its joint facilities with the school and sixth-form centre provide a golden opportunity to encourage more young people to come into work and to stay in work. (186536)

Given all those achievements, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents vote Labour at the next election to ensure that the investment continues.

T6. Over the past five years, some £22 million has been given to permanent expatriates who live elsewhere in the European Union in the form of the winter fuel payment. That figure includes more than £12 million to permanent expatriates in Spain, Malta and Cyprus. At a time when pensioners are struggling to pay rising winter fuel bills in this country, is it not ludicrous that a large amount of public money should leave the UK in the form of winter fuel payments to go to people who live in far warmer climates? (186537)

The people who are abroad and in receipt of winter fuel payments are, by and large, people who have worked and paid their taxes here, who have moved abroad and who were in receipt of winter fuel payments before they moved. It seems that the hon. Gentleman is advocating that we should now remove those payments from them. I have some concerns that people in warm climes are receiving payments, and we will look at that. However, it is their right to receive the payment because they received it when they were here. Is the hon. Gentleman proposing that thousands of people cease to receive payments to which they were previously entitled? We need to be clear about what he is proposing.

T7. Following the decision of the pensions regulator to apply a longevity factor of 89 years to private sector pension funds, what assumption is the Minister making about the longevity that is appropriate to public sector pensions? What difference will it make to public sector liabilities if the age of 89 years is chosen? (186538)

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there have been substantial changes in the way in which public sector pensions are dealt with. There have been extensions of the age at which people are entitled to receive things, and there have been changes to the way in which some of the funds have been structured. There are different ways in which public sector pension schemes are funded, and trying to apply something to the public sector that is directly related to issues to do with defined benefit systems in the private sector is misplaced. If the hon. Gentleman feels that the comparisons are direct, he needs to look at the issue with a great deal more care than he has until now.

T8. Will the Minister confirm that in 1997 67,000 people had been on incapacity benefit for five years or more and that today 1.5 million people have been on incapacity benefit for five years or more? Can he explain how the Government have managed to preside over such a culture of long-term welfare dependency? (186539)

I am afraid that the Conservatives have just got their figures wrong on this. As has been pointed out, they have failed to reflect the fact that there was a change in the name of one of the benefits, so they have added two completely different categories. What actually happened was that, when the Conservative party came to power, 700,000 people were in that situation, and we inherited a situation where there were 2.6 million such people—more than treble the number. The figure has started to fall under this Government, but we want to do more.

That is why we are introducing the employment support allowance from October this year. Instead of judging people on the basis of what they cannot do, which is the system we inherited from the hon. Gentleman’s Government, we will judge people on the basis of what they can do. There will be an earlier medical assessment at 13 weeks. There will be greater support for people who will not be expected to work, but greater requirements to look for work for everyone else in that category. This is a major reform of the system—one that was not undertaken by his Government. The reason the numbers increased was that they were happy to see them increase. We are not happy to see them increase—they are falling under us—and we have now set ourselves the goal that 1 million more people will come off incapacity benefit by 2015. That is the most radical reform of the system that this country has ever seen.

T10. I have a number of engineering companies, particularly in the aerospace industry, in my constituency. One of the problems that they have is in attracting young people to engineering; it is not seen as the kind of work that they want to do these days, but it is extremely important to those companies. Given that more and more people are staying on at universities, but that they are sometimes failing to find jobs, what can the Government do to ensure that young people who go to university take the appropriate courses that will enable them to find work and that will also satisfy the engineering companies in my constituency that struggle to find the right employees? (186541)

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important issue. Aerospace has been a very big success for the UK economy over the past few years, and a success that we want to continue. The Engineering Employers Federation said in its recent review of the state of manufacturing that there had been something of a renaissance in UK manufacturing more broadly. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we need to make the most of those new opportunities in engineering to increase employment among people and to give them access to the opportunities that are becoming available. That is why the new diploma in engineering, to which reference was made earlier, is an important step and why it is also so important that we are increasing the number of apprenticeships in aerospace and elsewhere.

I visited Nissan in Sunderland on Friday. The company is just about to add a third shift for the production of the Qashqai vehicle. It is having to recruit 800 extra people that factory alone for that, and it thinks that another 400 jobs will be involved in the supply chain nearby. In addition to all that, the hon. Gentleman is quite right that we need to encourage young people—

Order.

For the specific 12-month period up to today, are child poverty levels rising or are they falling?

Figures will be published later on this year, and the hon. Gentleman will see them when they are.

Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Hammersmith and Fulham volunteer centre on the excellent work that it has been doing recently on outreach to homeless, long-term workless households and in trying to find jobs for those people in places such as the West Kensington estate? However, the H and F volunteer centre is about to have its funding reduced due to the impending end of the North Fulham new deal for communities project and the loss of £50,000 a year in funding. Will the Minister agree to meet me and representatives of the volunteer centre to discuss how the Government might be able to help them to continue their excellent work?

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, we are moving towards a flexible new deal, rather than having individual programmes, which is widely recognised as the right approach to deal with people’s individual needs. I believe that that approach is supported by his party.

The Work and Pensions Committee was clear that one of the Child Support Agency’s biggest problems was the IT system—the computers were described as completely unworkable. How much of the old CSA computer system will be carried over to the new system? If the amount will be substantial, how can Ministers be certain that the new system will be any better than that before?

We have always acknowledged that IT problems have bedevilled the agency for a long time. As I said earlier, major investment in IT is taking place as a result of the operational improvement plan. A major fix of the system is taking place over the Easter period to put in place a completely new method of operation. When the new commission takes over later this year, it will inherit the existing systems and contracts—much improved—but it will be for the commission to decide for the long term what IT system it wants to support the arrangements that it will introduce.