Today marks the centenary of the first labour exchange in this country, which was opened by Winston Churchill in 1910. At that time labour exchanges had separate entrances for men and women and separate rooms for skilled and unskilled workmen, and apparently were often difficult to find, as Winston Churchill himself got lost trying to open the Whitechapel Road exchange. This is an opportunity, however, for us to pay tribute to the work of the staff of Jobcentre Plus. The service has modernised substantially and is offering a very good service, and people have worked extremely hard in what has been a very difficult year as a result of the recession. I urge hon. Members to take the opportunity to do as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform and I have done and visit local jobcentres to thank the staff for all their hard work.
The Secretary of State says that Jobcentre Plus has modernised, but benefit claimants in my constituency have their claims assessed in Cornwall. Would it not be better if they were assessed locally, and preferably face to face?
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we try to streamline services as much as possible in order to provide a fast turnaround and provide people with the information and support that they need as rapidly as possible. That means that we provide local services, but we also provide help through helplines and contact centres, in order both to be efficient and to provide a local service. It is right that we get that balance, and that the hon. Gentleman knows that his constituents can go into a Jobcentre Plus and get help directly in their local area if they need to and if their personal circumstances mean that they have difficulties using the telephone.
I am aware of the unhappy experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent, which in essence came down to poor administration in her local benefit office. The existing rules for income support are consistent, however, with the rules for maternity leave. Both begin at the 11th week before the expected due date, which strikes a fair balance between the interests of the pregnant woman and the interests of the taxpayer. To pull the date forward would privilege the position of pregnant women over that of women in work.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that people who are eligible for employment and support allowance then go on to the pathways to work programme, which has assisted 180,000 people through incapacity benefit and employment and support allowance.
May I tell the Secretary of State that Inverclyde council’s future jobs fund has been assessed by her Department as the second best performing scheme in the whole of the UK? Will she give me an assurance that the focus of the scheme will continue to be on real jobs in the real economy in sectors such as construction, which will enable Inverclyde to see unemployment continuing to fall as it has been falling every month for the past five months?
I am happy to give my hon. Friend that reassurance. The future jobs fund sets us apart from the Tories with their work programme in that we are offering real jobs for at least six months on at least the minimum wage while providing a community benefit. What my hon. Friend says about construction is hugely important because at least 10 per cent. are apprenticeship jobs and if it were not for the fiscal stimulus provided by this Government over the last year—building schools, building hospitals, building roads, building the infrastructure this country needs—our construction industry would be on its knees by now.
The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that six of the 10 debts occurred because of frauds or errors made by customers before 1995. The rate of error has now fallen to 0.6 per cent. and the work to recover the debt has had significant success. The recent report from the National Audit Office noted that the Department has improved its performance; the Comptroller and Auditor General said that there had been significant performance improvements.
In a period of joined-up Government, will the Secretary of State tell us whether or not the Department of Health consulted her about the decision arbitrarily to tear up the reciprocal health agreement between the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom, given the ramifications it has for the chronically sick and disabled and the elderly who want to travel to and from the island?
I will write to my hon. Friend about that.
I do not agree with the hon. Lady that there is a staggering administrative failure. On the contrary, record numbers of children are now receiving maintenance through the system, and the improvements we have implemented have lifted 100,000 children out of poverty.
Last week, I met a group of members of a miners support group to discuss the application of industrial injuries disablement benefit for osteoarthritis of the knee, and they complained of wide variations between assessments given throughout the regions. Will my Ministers ask their medical advisers to look at the medical process to ensure that it is applied uniformly at centres throughout the country?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important point. The whole House would acknowledge what he has done to champion the cause of former miners across the country, including in my own area of Kent. It is important that there is confidence in the system, so we need continuity within the assessment process. I will most certainly look further at this issue and write to him accordingly.
We want to do everything possible to make it easy for people in rural as well as urban areas to obtain the help that they need in order to find work. That is why, as well as providing jobcentres, we are making more information available online and by telephone, and using new technology to make it as accessible as possible. This is a question not just of the support that jobcentres can provide directly, but of our ensuring that we continue to invest in the economy, that jobs are created and that the economy grows, and that means sustaining investment and support for the economy rather than reducing it.
In view of this afternoon’s outrageous attempt by the political scavengers on the Conservative Front Bench to affect an interest in young people, will my right hon. Friend remind them of the full generation of young people who were abandoned without hope and opportunity by the last Conservative Government?
My right hon. Friend is correct. The level of claimant unemployment in the 1980s was twice as high as it is today, and young people were abandoned for many years without support or help. We must never abandon a generation in that way again. We should bear in mind that unemployment kept increasing after the recession had ended. That is why investment to support the recovery this year is so important now.
What I really object to is the right hon. Gentleman’s pretence that the problems caused to the global financial system by the greed and excess of a very small number of people should be paid for by our taking from public sector workers their modest pension support, which amounts to an average of £5,000 a year. That is the difference between our values and those of the Conservative party. We will protect such support, whereas they cannot wait to rip up the public sector pension contract for all public sector workers.
People with skills within the construction sector have just been made redundant and unemployed and have signed on at my jobcentre. They want to work on the railways, but they need certification in order to do so, and the jobcentre will not pay for it. There is therefore a void, leaving people on the unemployment register when jobs are available. All that is needed is someone to help with funding. What does the Minister think?
I am sure that my hon. Friend has studied carefully the White Paper that we published last month. One of the things that we seek to do is increase our personal advisers’ flexibility so that they can give people more personalised support in circumstances such as those that he has described. We particularly want to increase flexibility in their use of the new single skills fund that we have created, along with the skills accounts, so that when there is a real prospect of a job at the end of the process we can deploy funds to help people.
We devote a great deal of time and effort to trying to ensure that pension credit is claimed by those who are eligible for it. We have partnerships with 200 local authorities, we organise regional advertising, and we arrange 13,000 visits a week to vulnerable pensioners. Only last week I spoke to a pensioner who had just been told that she was eligible for an extra £32 a week, and that she would not have to pay her council tax.
Pension credit makes a real difference to pensioners’ quality of life. We want them to claim, and we are reaching out to them. If there is anything that the hon. Gentleman can do in his own constituency, such as talking to local pensioners, we shall be more than grateful.
Will the Minister explain why the Government are not encouraging the Child Support Agency to get on with it and transfer people from the old system to the new, fairer, percentage-based one?
I am sure my hon. Friend realises that it takes time to build the new computer system for the new system. We do not want a repeat of the sort of shambles and collapse that we have seen in the past. We therefore think that this is a case of more haste, less speed.
Unemployment in my constituency is now significantly higher than it was in 1997. Despite the initiatives of the past 13 years, were not young people better off in work in 1997 than out of work in 2010?
As I pointed out earlier, the claimant count for young people is, in fact, about half what it was in the ’80s. It is a major concern that young people have been affected by the recession, however, and that is exactly why this party and this Government are funding the youth guarantee, providing hundreds of thousands of additional opportunities for young people, but the hon. Gentleman’s party opposes that and wants to cut it. [Interruption.] If he really cares about young people, he should have a word with his own Front-Bench team.
Order. I recognise that the House is eagerly awaiting the Foreign Secretary’s statement, but, even so, far too many private conversations are taking place in the Chamber. That is very unfair on both the Member asking the question and the Minister answering it.
Although most people agree with the principles of the employment and support allowance, there is a group of people who pass the work capability assessment, but who may still have health issues that are acting as a barrier to work. Will Ministers ensure that they are given proper advice, instead of being put on to jobseeker’s allowance and then being ignored, and not getting specialist help to make it easier for them to find work?
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. We know that some people who undertake the work capability assessment and are found to be able to work may still have a health condition that makes things difficult for them in some form or another, or that may affect their attitude to work. It is important that they get appropriate help and support. That is exactly why we are looking again at the pathways programme—at how it works and to whom it applies—and at what kind of support people should have, regardless of what kind of benefit they are on.
It is striking that Shelter and landlord associations both agree that the eight-week limit for the local housing allowance trigger to kick in, and for that to be looked at when someone has gone into arrears, is causing a problem. It is causing people to get into debt and landlords not to get their money and to be put off taking on social tenants. Are the Government reviewing that?
The hon. Gentleman is obviously unaware of the fact that 200,000 more people than in 2008 are currently in the private rented sector. Of course we believe that housing benefit can be improved; that is why we have just published a consultation document setting out our proposals.
Given that the Office for National Statistics has just revealed that 2 million pensioners in this country are still living below the breadline, will the Government look again at their policy and their commitment to means testing, by revisiting Margaret Thatcher’s decision to breach the link with earnings, and reintroducing that valuable earnings link?
The House has legislated to ensure that pensions will be linked to earnings within the lifetime of the next Parliament, and I also hope the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that the ONS pointed out that we had broken the link between old age and poverty for the first time in our history. We inherited soaring pensioner poverty from the Conservative party. We have reversed that trend, but we know that there is still more to do.