On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your guidance on a matter of procedure? I note that motion 5 on today’s Order Paper proposes that the House rise for the Easter recess on Thursday 2 April. On the same day the G20 summit, which is clearly a meeting of enormous importance, will be hosted here in London. Would it be in order for any Member to table a manuscript amendment proposing that the House rise the following day, in order to give the Prime Minister a chance to make a statement about the summit that he will have hosted?

The motion is unamendable, so it must be put forthwith, but hon. Members are, of course, entitled to oppose it.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday’s Order Paper included a meeting of the new Select Committee on North East Regional Affairs, but there is no mention of it in today’s Votes and Proceedings. I subsequently discovered that it could not meet because it was inquorate, and that the quorum was only three. Surely if a Committee of that kind could not proceed, the fact that it was inquorate should be recorded in Votes and Proceedings. This initiative was trumpeted by the Government as an important regional development, yet they could not get three of their MPs together to launch it.

I can only say that if no proceedings took place because the meeting was inquorate, there is nothing to report to the House.

Further to those points of order, Mr. Speaker. The West Midlands Regional Affairs Committee was also due to meet yesterday, and failed to do so because it was similarly inquorate. As a custodian of the resources of the House, Mr. Speaker, do you not agree that if there is a consistent pattern of regional Select Committees not meeting because they are inquorate, there is a case for reviewing their very existence?

That is a matter for members of the Committees. As hon. Members know, I have often chaired meetings of the House, and some days I have wished that those were inquorate, so that I could go for a coffee—but so often the opposite was the case. Members have a responsibility to turn up at meetings, and they should attend those meetings and do their duties. I will go no further than that.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

rose—

I call Mr. Pritchard first, but I shall come to the hon. Lady, if she is patient. She must not worry.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Sadly, the Wrekin Construction group, which is in my constituency, announced today that it was going into administration. The company has been around for nearly 50 years, and 1,100 people will be affected: 600 jobs will be affected directly, and 500 indirectly. Indeed, jobs will be affected in the great city of Glasgow as well as in Shropshire and the west midlands.

I alerted the Business Secretary to the fact that the company was experiencing short-term financial difficulty, and needed strong support and help from the Royal Bank of Scotland, back in December 2008. The Business Secretary has done absolutely nothing to help the company. Those massive job losses were avoidable. As I have said, the company has been around for nearly 50 years. It has an order book worth £50 million. It is profitable. It is an absolute scandal that although Ministers knew that this was avoidable, the Government have done nothing to save jobs. If the Business Secretary comes to Shropshire, rather than having green custard on his face, he will definitely have egg on his face.

Order. The hon. Gentleman made his case and made his protest, but he went too far when he mentioned the attack on a Minister. An attack on any Minister in this Government should never be allowed, and no Member should give any indication that he or she in any way approves of such behaviour.

All of us, from time to time, face redundancies in our constituencies, and we have a duty to fight as best we can. The hon. Gentleman has been a Member of the House for long enough to know that there are Adjournment debates and there are parliamentary questions, and that he can also seek a meeting with the Minister whom he mentioned. Those are the steps that he should take to try to help the job situation in his constituency.

Further to the point of order made by the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson), Mr. Speaker. I am a member of the newly formed North East Committee, and I received an e-mail from the Clerk yesterday afternoon telling me, prior to that meeting, that it had been cancelled, so that is probably why nobody attended the meeting. I have all due respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I am not sure where he got his information from. If a meeting is cancelled, is there any way of recording that in Hansard?

The hon. Lady has managed to record that the meeting was cancelled, so there we are.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I know that you are in a difficult position on this, but the matter raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) and for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) highlights an important issue. Two regional Select Committee meetings were scheduled to take place, but in fact they did not—although perhaps one of them did take place but because it was inquorate, nothing occurred. Surely that should be registered on the Order Paper the day following such a scheduled meeting, Mr. Speaker, so will you look at whether these matters could be reported in the Order Paper of the House, because I can only say to the Leader of the House, “We told you so”?

The hon. Gentleman has a massive knowledge of these matters, and what I say to him is that the record shows the proceedings of the House, and if a meeting is inquorate and did not operate, it is not a proceeding of the House and therefore there is nothing to report. If this is a concern for hon. Members, they can take the matter up with the Procedure Committee.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your advice and guidance. During the Committee stage of the Coroners and Justice Bill, we had a lengthy discussion on clause 152, which brings in wide-ranging data-sharing powers. During the debate, as is recorded in columns 389-90 of the Committee Hansard for 26 February, the Minister replying said she would sit down with Opposition Members and bring in “a more streamlined version” of the clause. However, the Secretary of State announced in the Sunday press that he would drop clause 152 completely. Why is it that when Ministers give a commitment to deal with matters in Committee or on the Floor of the House, they then go to the press instead? Surely this must be condemned, Mr. Speaker? Because you uphold the rights of Parliament, what can you do to prevent Ministers from behaving in such a way?

What the hon. Gentleman can do is raise the matter when the Bill comes back from the Lords. He is entitled to do that.

Further to the point of order made by my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), and your comments on that, Mr. Speaker. I have followed your suggestion that we ought to seek meetings with Ministers; in respect of both JCB and Waterford Wedgwood in my constituency, I have raised questions with Ministers, but we have not so far had any meetings. I understand that there are pressures on them, but I must say that although you have remarked that we should have meetings, Mr. Speaker, that does not necessarily mean that we get them. I appreciate that is not your fault, but I wish Ministers would do what they are asked to do.

The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced lawyer, and maybe I should have said that Members could “request” meetings, because the request is in the hands of the Minister concerned. When I was a Back-Bench MP with a difficulty, Ministers—who were not in the same political party as myself—were always very good at meeting a constituency Member. [Interruption.] Well, all I would say is that I would hope that when there is unemployment, or there are dangers regarding unemployment, in a constituency, Ministers take that seriously, and meet hon. Members. I think that is very important indeed.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I report that the West Midlands Committee, of which I am a member, did not meet yesterday?

Well, there we are; it has all gone on the record.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the pensions of board members of banks that are wholly or partly in public ownership to be limited in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.

My Bill is born of public anger; there is hardly a household in the land in which anger has not been expressed, and outrage has not been felt, over the greed, selfishness and professional incompetence of a handful of Britain’s most prominent bankers. They, through a combination of overconfidence and professional arrogance, have completely undermined the reputation of, and public confidence in, the British banking industry.

Listening to these people’s mealy-mouthed apologies to the Treasury Committee some weeks ago, I just felt how totally detached they are from the world outside and from the daily experiences in the lives of people in my constituency. There is a total disconnect, and they seem to preside over a world wherein they are accountable to nobody. Their remuneration, pensions, and perks appear to be determined by a small tightly knit group of the privileged, who divvy out the cash like robbers stacking up the notes for the great share-out following a bank heist. Their ruthless decision taking has gone unchallenged for far too long. Since the big bang, successive Governments have progressively trusted them to operate within conditions of carefully manicured deregulation. They have exploited the opportunities that have been offered in a cavalier manner, and are now drawing us back into a period of greater regulation. They have only themselves to blame.

There has been almost a conspiracy of silence from the beneficiaries of those people’s largesse. In particular, institutional investors have rigidly remained silent, for fear of upsetting the dividend streams that have inflated the funds under their management; they themselves have feasted on a culture of fat bonuses and inflated commissions. At some stage it was all bound to come to an end, and now that we have reached that point, we must build on sturdier foundations.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has rightly said that the conduct of those bankers has been “unjustifiable and unacceptable”. If only the international community had responded more positively to his calls, made nearly 10 years ago, for greater international co-operation and supervision, things might have been different. The international banking community knew that no nation state could act in isolation, and step out of line by imposing tighter regulation, without undermining the credibility of its own national institutions. We have become the prisoners of international inaction, while greedy bankers at home have known the truth and have been able to gorge on it—they have dishonoured their profession.

Britain had once been the envy of the world for the success of its banking institutions. We had led the world in innovation with our banking products, investment management services, transfers and competition generally. Now the spivs have moved in to destroy a carefully constructed reputation. My Bill should make them sit up and think twice before they come running to the state for a bail-out at massive cost to the taxpayer; if they want our help they will have to pay for it, and we know that they will not like that.

My Bill would amend section 91 of the Pensions Act 1995, subsection (2) of which deals with the inalienability of occupational pensions and states:

“Where by virtue of this section a person’s entitlement, or accrued right, to a pension under an occupational pension scheme cannot, apart from subsection (5), be assigned, no order can be made by any court the effect of which would be that he would be restrained from receiving that pension.”

Subsection (5) allows the amendment of an entitlement in certain conditions, such as when there has been a

“criminal, negligent or fraudulent act or omission”.

Those conditions do not appear to arise in the Fred Goodwin case, although the issue of negligence is still to be decided on, following the inquiry being undertaken by United Kingdom Financial Investments Ltd. It would, however, be possible to amend subsection (5) to include the acquisition by the state of a majority of the share capital in the company when the company was deemed incapable of trading as solvent, and was faced with administration arising out of the actions of individual directors. That is the substance of my Bill.

We know from events over the past week or so that the Government are being advised that forfeiture or even amendment of the Fred Goodwin pension entitlement is problematic. We now learn in the press that an attempt might be made to sue two senior executives for negligence in the exercise of their discretion over the payment. Again, we are in unknown territory.

The pension situation for employees of RBS is very different from the one enjoyed by Mr. Goodwin. Since 2003, new employees of RBS have not been able to retire early on a pension until the age of 55. Mr. Goodwin, aged 50, closed the final salary pension scheme—the one from which he is benefiting—to new entrants. Next year no employee, irrespective of their start date, will be able to draw their occupational pension before the age of 55. Employees over the age of 50 who resign, and who might be eligible for a pension at the age of 50, can claim the pension, but it is reduced by up to 40 per cent. for early payment. For RBS employees and pensioners who were employed by the company before 2001, the company also applies a pension clawback when they reach state retirement age. Irrespective of whether they qualify for a state pension, RBS claws back up to 30 per cent. of the value of a basic state pension from their company pension. That is having a disproportionate and detrimental effect on older pensioners, especially women part-timers.

My Bill does not deal with the Goodwin case, as it is not retrospective. However, it at least deals with conditions that might arise in the future if further banks need bailing out. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House of Commons said in a recent BBC interview, the Goodwin settlement is not a pension,

“It is a severance payment.”

I say that it is a severance payment dressed up as a pension, and we want our money back. That is a message that the greedy and grasping Mr. Goodwin should take on board. We recognise that his pension pot, part of which was presumably transferred in, is small in comparison with the total of toxic liabilities that remain the responsibility of RBS.

Other banks, too, might wish to keep that message in mind. I am thinking of Lloyds Banking Group, which has just this week received further protection for further billions, made necessary by its takeover of HBOS. Lloyds has always been a first-class bank. Indeed, in October it ran an advert that read, “We’ve been rated Britain’s safest and most trusted bank. You could say we’re a bank you can bank on.” Within months of that advert, Lloyds, acting in the public interest to avoid HBOS’s collapse, had taken over the bank only to find that HBOS had failed to reveal the toxic nature of its liabilities, bringing Lloyds, a good bank, to its knees. When Eric Daniels and Victor Blank considered the bonus and £6 million pension pot of Peter Cummings, the former head of corporate lending at HBOS, did they really think that he deserved it?

My Bill would not sort out excessive pensions paid in banks that have been able to avoid taxpayer support and guarantees; neither is it retrospective. It is a Bill for the future. In the meantime, the country asks that those who mismanaged banks, destroyed savings, undermined share prices, depressed pension funds, threatened the existence of charities and the security of millions in retirement, and put tens of thousands on the dole should give some of their ill-gotten pension money back.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Ann Clwyd, Rosemary McKenna, John Battle, Mr. Michael Clapham, Mr. Peter Kilfoyle, Mike Gapes, Mrs. Anne McGuire, David Taylor, Andrew Mackinlay and Mr. Dennis Skinner present the Bill.

Ann Clwyd accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 July and to be printed (Bill 73).

I inform the House that I have selected the amendments in the name of the Prime Minister in both Opposition day debates.

I beg to move,

That this House notes that unemployment rose by 146,000 to 1.97 million in the three months to December 2008, the highest level since August 1997, that the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in January 2009 rose by 73,800 to 1.23 million, and that the number of vacancies in the UK fell by 76,000 in the three months to January 2009 to 504,000, the lowest figure since records began; further notes that unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds was 616,000 in the three months to November, the highest total since 1995; further notes that the Government has failed to establish a national loan guarantee scheme to increase the flow of credit to businesses, and calls on the Government to establish such a scheme; further notes that the Government failed to introduce necessary welfare reform during the years of economic growth; further calls on the Government to relax the rules on jobseeker’s allowance to allow unemployed people rapidly to take up training opportunities; believes that the Government should immediately cut taxes for firms taking on new employees who have been unemployed for three months; notes with concern the failure of the procurement process for Flexible New Deal, and further calls on the Government not to backtrack on the use of the private and voluntary sectors in welfare-to-work provisions; and calls on the Department for Work and Pensions to expand the use of an ‘invest to save’ approach to welfare-to-work services, allowing the full potential of the expertise in these sectors to be realised.

I am sure that no one in this Chamber needs reminding of the unemployment challenge that this country faces. Every day, Members of this House deal with letters and e-mails from constituents who have lost their jobs and are unable to find another. People feel helpless, frustrated, distressed and utterly let down. Who can blame them? The recession is having a devastating effect on employment around the country. No industry or geographical area remains immune from this downturn and the people of Britain are dealing with its harsh realities every day.

What has been the Government’s reaction to this crisis? Have they taken immediate action to help people now? Sadly not; unemployment has been rising constantly for more than a year, yet the Government closed an average of one jobcentre a week in 2008. As late as last July, Ministers were still issuing press releases patting themselves on the back for record levels of employment, and brushing the unemployment problem to one side. As Ministers were reminding us that we should see the rise in jobseeker’s allowance “in context”, perhaps I can provide a little context for the Government, in the hope that it will get them to face up to the problems that we face.

There are 1.97 million people unemployed. Youth unemployment is at its highest level since 1995. There are record redundancies, combined with the lowest level of vacancies since records began. Jobseeker’s allowance claims are up by 55 per cent. in one year, with the claimant count smashing through the 1 million mark, and there are more than 130,000 fewer jobs in the economy since June last year. The reality is that Britain now faces an unemployment crisis.

Yet there is still no real action from the Government. Instead, true to form, they have given us only empty promises. In October, the Government announced £50 million of help for people “currently facing redundancy”. Five months on, how many have received that help? None. Why? Because the projects will not start until April. In December, the Government announced £79 million of funding. Two months later, they reannounced that help. Only then was it revealed that no new employment programmes would be in place as a result of that money until the end of this year.

The golden hello scheme was announced in January. We welcomed that—the Government had finally taken up the proposal for tax breaks for new jobs that we announced in November, but again nothing will happen until April. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced in an interview with a newspaper that he was spending £40 million to provide extra support for white-collar workers with one-to-one interviews, which they are supposed to have anyway, and the creation of job clubs, which some job centres, such as the one in Maidenhead, already run.

We should pity the poor unemployed white-collar worker who heard that and logged on to the Department for Work and Pensions website to find out more, because there is no more information. Indeed, the announcement is not even on the DWP website. So what sort of commitment is it? Is it new money? How many job clubs will be created? Where will they be, and crucially, when will what has been announced happen? I cannot refer to job clubs without mentioning the excellent work that my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) has done in setting up a job club in his constituency, which I am looking forward to visiting this Friday. I am sure that many people will be helped by it.

If press releases created jobs, we could believe the Government’s proclamations that they are offering real help now. Unfortunately, far too many people who are struggling to find work each day know that that simply is not the case. One of the reasons why the Government have been so complacent about tackling the unemployment crisis is their complete inability to acknowledge what caused the problems that Britain now faces. This is a global recession, but Britain entered it worse prepared than almost any other developed economy. If it is all America’s fault, why has the value of the pound plummeted against that of the dollar? Why is the UK’s economy predicted to be worse hit than any other major economy, and why has the OECD predicted that unemployment will rise faster in the UK than in any other G7 country?

If the Prime Minister cannot admit the mistakes that he has made, he cannot help the British economy out of this recession, so perhaps this afternoon the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will follow the advice of the noble Lord Malloch-Brown and take this opportunity to apologise to the 1.97 million people in the UK today who cannot find a job.

As we are talking about apologies and unemployment, will the right hon. Lady take this opportunity to apologise, 25 years after the miners’ strike, for the time when a whole industry and thousands of people lost their jobs and their ability to participate in socially acceptable community life?

I say to the hon. Lady that when the Conservatives left government, unemployment was coming down. Crucially, youth unemployment was coming down. Under this Government, unemployment is going up, and is predicted to go through the 2 million mark. The Government have an abysmal record on employment. After 10 years of economic growth, almost 5 million people are on out-of-work benefits. The Government boast of creating 3 million new jobs, but up to 80 per cent. of them went to foreign-born workers. There are pockets of deprivation where well over half the people are claiming out-of-work benefits, and we have the highest proportion of children growing up in workless households in the whole European Union. The challenge of dealing with rising unemployment is deepened by the huge figures for those already claiming out-of-work benefit. That is how prepared the UK was for the downturn under this Government.

In the past few weeks, I have spoken to jobcentre staff and unemployed people, spent time with providers of welfare to work services and listened to the experiences of my constituents. When someone becomes unemployed, they understandably often turn to the state for help, and usually they go to their local jobcentre for that help. What they badly need is support, advice, knowledge and reassurance, but the question that the Government must ask themselves is whether the Jobcentre Plus network can provide all those things. Despite grand announcements of billions of pounds of funding and thousands more staff, the reality is that the Government are just reversing previous cuts, not providing additional help.

Will the right hon. Lady confirm that she still opposes the Government’s fiscal stimulus, announced in the pre-Budget report?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. As he knows, we believe that parts of that fiscal stimulus have not had the effect that the Government said they would—notably the VAT cut, which cost £12.4 billion that will have to be paid off through future tax rises. As he knows, the Government were intending to put VAT back up not just to 17.5 per cent., but to 20 per cent. That will hit everybody in this country.

As the right hon. Lady continues to oppose the stimulus, will she confirm that she opposes the extra £2 billion that we put into Jobcentre Plus?

I have just made the point to the Secretary of State that the money that he has put into Jobcentre Plus merely reverses previous cuts that were made by his Government. His Government have closed 500 jobcentres.

rose—

Just wait. The right hon. Gentleman’s Government closed almost a jobcentre a week at a time when unemployment was already going up. The Government set their face against the reality of what was happening to the economy in this country. That is why any measures that they claim to have taken have not worked.

If the measure is making the system more efficient, the right hon. Lady should support that. Will she confirm, therefore, that she is opposing the £2 billion extra—yes or no?

I have said to the right hon. Gentleman that all he has done is reinstate money that was previously cut from the Government’s budget for Jobcentre Plus. If he is so pleased with himself, he might ask himself why the Government in the face of rising unemployment were cutting Jobcentre Plus offices and reducing the service to people who would become unemployed.

The truth of the matter is that Jobcentre Plus staff are doing an incredibly good job in incredibly stressed conditions, but most of the time they just about manage to get on top of new applications for jobseeker’s allowance. The Secretary of State needs to address his mind and his Department to dealing with the ever-increasing number of people who are out of work and want to get back into work as quickly as possible. Jobcentre Plus is not addressing their needs. It is not rocket science. None of the £2 billion is coming through for that group. I would welcome his coming to my constituency and meeting young automotive engineers who have been made unemployed and who desperately want to get back into the world of work as speedily as possible. Jobcentre Plus at present does not meet their needs.

My hon. Friend is right. I was going on to make exactly that point. The problem that Jobcentre Plus faces—

rose—

I will make a little more progress, then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The problem that Jobcentre Plus has is that it is expected to support people in going back into work for the first 18 months of their jobseeker’s claim, but it is finding it desperately difficult just to be able to process the claims as people initially come in, because of the numbers that it is dealing with, as there has been a threefold rise in benefit claims.

rose—

rose—

I will continue to make another point on Jobcentre Plus. There will still be an opportunity for the hon. Gentlemen to intervene.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury that Jobcentre Plus staff do an incredibly difficult and important job, but they are also frustrated by a system that hampers their best efforts and often causes hardship for claimants. Claims are taking so long to be processed that individuals are forced to apply for crisis loans. That cannot be right. There are people who have worked hard, often giving years in tax contributions, who find that the archaic system means that they have to apply for crisis loans to feed their families. We should be seeking to ease the pain and trauma of becoming unemployed, not adding to it.

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. She is ladling compliments with a trowel on to Jobcentre Plus staff. Why, then, in her motion does she call on the Government

“not to backtrack on the use of the private and voluntary sectors in welfare-to-work provisions”?

All the available recent evidence shows quite clearly that where outsourcing has taken place in recent years, it is less effective, more costly and unlikely to contribute towards the resolution of the problems that the nation’s economy is facing. Is it not the case that her friends in the private sector will be able to cherry-pick, at great cost to the taxpayer and little benefit to the unemployed?

The evidence is the opposite to that. I am sure that the Secretary of State was pleased to receive the hon. Gentleman’s warm welcome for the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, which is due to return to the House. If the hon. Gentleman comes along next Tuesday—17 March—for the final stages of the Bill, the Secretary of State will no doubt welcome his contributions to that debate.

What she just said seems to be contradicted by the evidence insofar as it relates to what is happening in Lancashire and Cumbria. On Friday I met Peter Chadwick, who is responsible for that area. I have a letter from him, in which he writes:

“Despite the increasing volumes, I am pleased to be able to say that our average actual clearance times for the main benefits are holding up well.”

He mentions jobseeker’s allowance being delivered in 10.1 days, compared to the 11.5-day target; incapacity benefit delivered in 13.1 days, against a 15-day target; and income support delivered in 8.5 days, against a 10-day target. So people are being dealt with more quickly than she would invite us to believe.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for referring to the experience that he quoted. Experience is patchy across the country and there are many areas where—[Interruption.] Ministers on the Front Bench sneer at that, but they should not do so. In some areas people have had to find charitable support because their claims are taking so long to get through Jobcentre Plus. What is happening is not something to be sneered at; it is seriously affecting people at some jobcentres. Such delays are one of the issues with Jobcentre Plus. Giving people the fast, targeted and relevant support that they need is vital, yet all too often the processes can be slow, cumbersome and generic. We should be able to provide a smarter and more efficient service.

As I said a few minutes ago, I am sure that everybody in the House will join me in saying that Jobcentre Plus staff are doing the best that they can in incredibly difficult circumstances; any steps that the Government take to streamline the processes that those staff deal with every day will be welcome. Creating a jobcentre system that is fit for purpose is an essential weapon in the battle to tackle unemployment.

What of the services that the Government offer the unemployed? They launched the new deal, their flagship programme, in a blaze of glory, but it can be described at best as a damp squib and at worst as a damning indictment of the Government’s failure properly to grasp the challenge of unemployment. In 2008, fewer than 30 per cent. of the new deal participants found a job. One third of participants on the new deal for young people had been on the programme at least once before, and that figure rises to 40 per cent. for the new deal 25-plus. There can be no denying that the new deal is an abject failure. Half of all young jobseekers who leave the new deal for young people end up back on benefits within the year. I hope that when he responds, the Secretary of State will accept the failings of the new deal system—

rose—

Wait—a little patience.

Those failings have been described by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the former Minister and undoubted expert on the matter, as “woeful” and a calamity. If the Secretary of State does not accept that, will he accept the findings of a report published by his own Department last September? It said that claimants

“were more or less unanimous in the view that the New Jobseeker Interview and the Jobseeker Agreement served administrative purposes only. It was seen by almost all as a form-filling exercise that offered no real help in getting back into work or training. Very few had read the Agreement in detail before signing it.”

The right hon. Lady asked me about the new deal. Does she agree with her new boss, the soon-to-be Lord Freud, that by any measure the new deals have been a great success? He also said that they had been enormously successful.

That intervention does not even merit a response.

I return to the words of the Department’s own report, which found that half those interviewed said that they never spoke to anyone at these interviews; instead, they just handed their forms to a receptionist for processing. The view of one claimant was:

“It’s just: ‘okay, sign it, there’s your money, go’.”

Jobseekers get to the new deal after 18 months on jobseeker’s allowance. One person said that he just

“sat there for six months”,

received no work experience or training and

“spent the majority of the time playing solitaire on the computer or listening to music.”

In the motion to which she is a signatory, the right hon. Lady has put forward some interesting ideas that are worth debating; I am thinking of the loan guarantee scheme, relaxing the rules on jobseeker’s allowance for training and cutting taxes for new employees. I see those as pump-priming measures. Will she say what her party would spend up front on those three measures in the financial year 2009-10?

The hon. Gentleman is quick to suggest that we have a debate on the motion, and that is exactly what we are doing. If he is lucky, he will be able to catch Mr. Speaker’s eye and make a fuller contribution to the debate later.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) mentioned pump-priming and the Secretary of State talked about fiscal stimulus. Treasury Committee members were in Leeds this morning and heard remarkable tales about the capital programme in further education. It was completely suspended in December, leaving construction companies, which are waiting for the work and desperately trying to keep people in employment, floundering and unable to know how to proceed. Is it not ironic to hear about fiscal stimulus from a Government who prevent their own projects from going forward?

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. There is, of course, a double-whammy: not only are jobs not being created because the work is not taking place, but there will not be the extra places that would have been available to people to retrain and reskill. At a recent forum on the new deal that I chaired in Maidstone, I heard from someone who had been on the new deal and from an employer, both of whom said that the right training was not being provided and that it did little to help people to get into work.

I am listening to my right hon. Friend with great interest and I support what she is saying; she is putting the real situation vividly before the House. Does she share my concern about the growing number of young people who are not in employment, education or training? Is not that another example of Labour failing in government?

I could not have put it better myself; my hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. [Interruption.] We hear laughter from those on the Government Front Bench—laughter about the fact that so many young people are not in education, employment or training, and that their life chances are being affected as a direct result of decisions taken by this Government. It does not look from the reaction that we have had so far as if this is going to be possible, but I had hoped that Ministers might want to accept that reform is desperately needed. [Interruption.] I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) for pointing out to me the increase in the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training. Over the period from 2007 to 2008, there was an increase from 655,000 to 857,000, so 200,000 more young people are in that position.

My right hon. Friend is talking about the new deal. Does she agree with the Select Committee on Work and Pensions that there must be great concern about the viability of the flexible new deal now that, on Government accounts, there will be some 300 per cent. more entrants to the scheme than was first thought? How can it be viable with the same amount of money and so many more people?

I am very conscious of what the Select Committee report said about this point. As my hon. Friend says, it raised some genuine questions about what the Government are doing. We need clarification from the Secretary of State as to where things stand on the flexible new deal, because the numbers have increased. I would have hoped that the scheme would resolve some of the problems that we have seen with the Government’s new deal programme, but not only have concerns been expressed in the Select Committee report, but there has been a lot of speculation in the press that there are considerable problems with the contracting process and that the October start date is in jeopardy. I hope that today the Secretary of State will be able to guarantee to the House that the flexible new deal will start in October, as promised.

However, that scheme represents only small steps towards the kind of welfare reform for which my party has been calling for years. I hope that the Government will be in a listening mood and that we can finally persuade them to take proper measures to tackle this recession and the unemployment crisis. First, we need a proper national loan guarantee scheme, because businesses need to get credit flowing again; then firms can keep people in their jobs and the unemployment rate can be checked. We urgently need to protect the jobs that exist. I hope that the Secretary of State will accept the need to introduce a proper scheme that covers all businesses of all sizes and in all industries.

Secondly, we need more support, and sooner, for everyone who is unemployed. The flexible new deal will bring the wait for support down from 18 months to 12, but that is still too long. Under Conservative welfare reform proposals, no one will have to wait more than six months for a personalised employment programme, and for those under 21 support will be available after three months. Youth unemployment is at its highest point since 1995, and it is essential that people just starting out in their working lives do not become detached from and disheartened about the whole process of trying to find work. For everybody who has been unemployed for three months or more, we are calling on the Government to provide employers tax cuts for new jobs. With a record low of vacancies in the economy, it is essential that people have the skills to allow them to compete for every job they want to, so we need to relax jobseeker’s allowance rules to allow everyone the opportunity to go on a full-time training course from day one of their claim. This is not the time for half measures and timid steps forward. I urge the Secretary of State to be brave and to take the proper action that these times call for.

In the past few weeks, the Secretary of State and the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform have been keen to reassure us that jobcentres are better because they no longer look like those seen in the film “The Full Monty”. I have been somewhat bemused by their preoccupation with that issue, for what matters is not what the job centre looks like, but the service that it can offer. Whether someone is blue collar or white collar, when they lose their job such distinctions seem immaterial—they just want help and they want it as soon as possible.

The last 12 years of Labour government have left us woefully ill-prepared to deal with this recession and its impact on employment, but I call on the Secretary of State to prove his progressive credentials and to adopt our proposed measures. That would offer immediate help to people worried about their jobs and to people waking up everyday without a job to go to, and it would make a real difference to the lives of millions of people.

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“notes that unemployment is rising in Britain and across the world; believes that unemployment is never a price worth paying and that as unemployment rises the amount of support that is offered should be increased; further notes that the Government is investing nearly £2 billion extra into giving additional assistance for the unemployed and that this will provide additional help to people losing their jobs, including a national rapid response service to react to redundancy situations, advice from day one of unemployment on skills and finding a job, assistance to pay mortgage bills to prevent people losing both their jobs and their homes, cash incentives for employers to recruit and train unemployed people, more training opportunities to help people back to work and more places on the New Deal employment programme; believes that it is preferable to invest millions into helping people now than to spend billions of pounds of public money on benefits in the future; further notes that in previous recessions the numbers on inactive benefits were allowed to increase dramatically; further believes that the mistakes of previous recessions must be avoided by investing now to prevent people becoming long-term unemployed today; and further believes that the Government should increase the support offered to people trapped on benefits by previous recessions.”

We are debating a serious issue today, and I expect that there will be some areas on which we agree. There is no disagreement in my party that this is a serious recession. We all recognise that unemployment is rising sharply. Although the Conservative motion does not refer to it, I think that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) will agree that rising unemployment is a global problem and that countries around the world are being affected by it. In the UK, for example, unemployment is 6.3 per cent. It is 6.9 per cent. in the United States, 8 per cent. in Germany and France and now nearly 14 per cent. in Spain. Industrialised countries are all trying to respond to the same challenge, and we are all trying to do two simple things: first, to prevent job losses wherever possible, and, secondly, to get people back into work as quickly as possible.

I am sure that the right hon. Lady agrees that those should be our aims, but there is a difference between us about how we should respond and, in particular, about how we should fund that response. In that respect, I thank the right hon. Lady for calling today’s debate to highlight the fact that she would cut £2 billion from the employment budget precisely when unemployment is rising.

indicated dissent.

The right hon. Lady says that she would not, but she confirmed it in answer to my question. She refused to say that she was in favour of the fiscal stimulus, so she would not put the £2 billion in. When my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) asked her where any of her policies were coming from, she refused to answer that question as well. She can intervene now if she wants to, and confirm that she would put that £2 billion in. Where would it come from? Exactly—she knows, and the whole House can see, that she would cut £2 billion from the budget precisely when unemployment is rising, repeating the mistakes of past recessions.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that an official Opposition whose motion proposes at least three plans to tackle the extreme difficulties facing our work force, but who refuse on the Floor of the House to put any figures on their plans, are merely full of hot air and are not a serious Opposition?

The first test of a serious Opposition is whether they are able to say how policies are funded, and they have completely failed that test today. As is so often the case when people try to divert attention from the fact that they are embarrassed about their policy, all the Opposition have succeeded in doing is draw attention to the fact that they would cut £2 billion from the budget. That is why, as my hon. Friend says, their motion is a mixture of straw men and fantasy policies. Their policy on national insurance is a fantasy policy; they have absolutely no way of funding it. They cannot say that they will cut tax on employers without saying where the money will come from. That is a fantasy policy—the sort of thing that the Liberal Democrats do most of the time. I would have thought that they at least aspired to meet the test of being more intellectually credible than the Liberal Democrats, but they have failed in that as well.

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead says that people should be able to train from day one. That is a straw man: they can train from day one, as long as they are looking for work. People are doing that all around the country. The Opposition want to say that they would increase the pace at which the invest-to-save policy is rolled out. That is our policy, so that is another straw man. If they are saying that that would fund the £2 billion hole in their spending plans, it is not just a straw man, but a fantasy policy as well.

I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman talk about cuts and straw men. Let us leave the straw men to one side. Will he answer this question, which no one else in his Government has: why are his Government cutting half a billion pounds for Scotland over the next two years?

We are increasing spending in Scotland. Indeed, the money we are spending here will be spent in Scotland as well. The £2 billion will be spent in the normal way through Barnett consequentials in Scotland.

rose—

I think the right hon. Lady wants to intervene to tell me where the £2 billion is coming from.

I did indeed want to intervene on points that the Secretary of State is making, particularly about invest to save. He is absolutely right—he has followed our policy on welfare reform and he is adopting our proposals on invest to save. However, he is being timid about it, which means that people will not get the help that they deserve as quickly as they should. Will he not now adopt our welfare reform proposals in full, rather than take the rather timid approach that he has taken hitherto?

The right hon. Lady’s new boss—I am sorry to mention him again—said clearly that it would

“take at least six years to roll out a full system of provider contracts”,

which is exactly what we are doing. She is obviously happy to have him as a Tory Front Bencher, but she cannot say that he is right and then suddenly say that he was talking nonsense when he said that we were proceeding at the right pace. I am glad that she agrees with our policy on introducing that system.

The Opposition’s motion is a do nothing motion. They are not prepared to spend the money, so it is a motion full of fantasy policies. This is not just a theoretical debate, it is about real people. Every time someone loses—[Interruption.] They might want to listen to this, because it is about real people. Every time someone loses their job it is a crisis, but the fundamental thing to do to prevent it from becoming a tragedy is to help people back into work as quickly as possible. The inability to do that was not a theoretical debate in the past; it was Government policy. In the 1990s’ recession, the number of people claiming incapacity benefit increased by half a million. The unspoken Government policy at the time was to shift people off the unemployment roll and classify them as sick and disabled. As if that were not a sick enough policy, the truly sick thing about it was that when people were put on to benefits, they were given no help to get better and no help to get back into work. It is because of this Government that people are getting that help.

The reason unemployment was considered a price worth paying under the Conservative Government was simple: they were not prepared to spend the necessary money on employment services. The people who paid the price for their policy were the long-term unemployed. We are determined to ensure that that does not happen again.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his generosity in giving way for a second time. If his Government’s policies on people on incapacity benefits were so great, why do we still have 2.5 million people on incapacity benefit?

The number tripled under the Conservative Government. It went from 700,000 to 2.6 million. It is only because of our policies that it is starting to fall. I am happy to deal with welfare reform at the end of my speech, but I shall go through it in the right order.

We know the history of previous Tory Governments and their mistakes, but the extraordinary thing is that the Opposition want to repeat those mistakes. It is as though they believed that the ’80s and ’90s were not mistakes, and that they followed exactly the right policy all along. They are not prepared to pay the cost of increasing borrowing, so they would not be prepared to help people back into work over the next two years. We would therefore pay the cost over the next two decades, as we have over the past two.

When it comes to the Tory response to unemployment, it is not about theories. It is about the history of our constituencies and of too many families that were abandoned by the Tories’ policies. The danger of the right hon. Lady’s policy is that that could be the situation in the present, too. It is important to ask ourselves what an employment policy without the extra £2 billion would look like. That is the question that she wants desperately to avoid.

In considering that question, let us start with the rapid response service. Today, if a company announces redundancies, it is helped by the rapid response service. We announced last November that we would double the funding for the service, and we will double it again next year. That is not fantasy policy but real delivery. The right hon. Lady said that we have announced policies but not actually delivered them. Through the rapid response service we have already helped more than 800 companies, and we will continue to help. That is not fantasy policy but real delivery that is helping people, through jobs fairs, advice on writing a CV, debt advice and reskilling. If the Tories had their way, of course, those things would not be funded and we would have to cut the rapid response service.

Woolworths closed with 30,000 redundancies. What has the Secretary of State’s rapid response service done for those people?

We have been working with Woolworths ever since it went into liquidation. [Interruption.] We have provided help for people in job searches, and we have provided jobs fairs and a wide range of help. Indeed, a large number of people who worked in Woolworths have found work through Jobcentre Plus. Clearly the situation is very worrying for anybody who has not yet found work, and it is our responsibility to continue to help them.

Many constituents have come to see me not because they have lost their jobs but because their hours have been reduced—a lead indicator that businesses are in trouble and people are at risk of losing their jobs. Should not the Government pay more attention to supporting those businesses to ensure that redundancies are a last resort, and can be avoided when possible?

The hon. Lady is right—that is important. Losing overtime and hours is clearly a challenge. However, the right response is the tax credits policy, which we introduced. It will significantly cushion the reduction in people’s funds, but I believe that the Liberal Democrats oppose it. The right response to people who must reduce their hours is to say that the tax credits policy will help cushion that. She might like to discuss not opposing it with her colleagues.

Under the Conservatives, the rapid response service would be rolled back. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead nearly said some kind words about Jobcentre Plus. I agree with the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) that it has done an incredibly good job. Many people already recognise it as world class, but, in the past few months, it has really earned that reputation. For example, despite the doubling of the claims with which it deals, we are processing claims in 10 days, down from 13 days two years ago. The right hon. Lady said that it was wrong to close jobcentres, but I thought that Conservative party policy was to make public services more efficient. We have done exactly that. We have improved the service that people get and reduced the time that they have to wait to get their benefits, while decreasing spending on back-office processing and increasing front-line advisers. We have made the welfare state more active by making it more efficient. I would have thought that she supported that.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, when people lose their jobs, the rapid response team or those at Jobcentre Plus will inform them of all the benefits to which they may be entitled, and that the onus will not be only on the person to find out for what they are eligible? A constituent made that allegation to me last week, so I would welcome the Secretary of State’s confirmation that that is not the case.

The rapid response service cannot go into all companies—sometimes companies do not agree to that—but, wherever it goes in, benefits are clearly an important part of the information it gives people. I can therefore give my hon. Friend that assurance.

In November, we announced £680 million extra, which the right hon. Member for Maidenhead would oppose, for Jobcentre Plus. She claimed that we had announced but not delivered that, but we have already recruited 4,000 of the extra 6,000 staff that we said we would fund. Again, that is not fantasy policy, but genuine delivery. What would happen under Tory policy? Conservatives would cut all that help and revert to the position in the 1980s, when it was no longer necessary to sign on to receive benefit. Consequently, it is estimated that the claimant count in 1986 was around four percentage points higher than it otherwise would have been. That cost more than £4 billion in today’s money of extra benefit spending. Conservative Members would make exactly that mistake again today. They are not prepared to put the money in now to help people get back to work, and they would therefore increase the cost in future and the amount that taxpayers had to pay. The Conservatives thought that public spending was not a price worth paying; consequently, the long-term unemployed paid the price.

My right hon. Friend mentioned statistics. I know that he was in short trousers at the time, but I remind him that, when the Conservatives were in government, they changed the figures 18 times—an average of once a year. They cooked the books for what counted as unemployment and what did not. I pay tribute to the Government, who changed the figures once in 12 years to put them on the International Labour Organisation standard. The Government have kept the figures transparent. Does my right hon. Friend fear that, if the Conservatives got in, they would start cooking the books again on measuring unemployment?

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point in his usual way. He is right—the Conservatives were more interested in fiddling the figures than in helping people back to work. That was no accident; they were not prepared to increase spending to get people back to work. As I have said several times, they would repeat that mistake.

I thank the Secretary of State for his continuing generosity in giving way. Before the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) interrupted him, the right hon. Gentleman made a point about being prepared to put money in to provide a service to people. The Department’s budget will be lower in real terms in 2010-11. What changes will he make?

I will deal with that later in my speech. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I can do it now, if hon. Members want. We will continue to make efficiency savings because, like any industrial organisation—[Interruption.] It is extraordinary—the Conservatives claim that they can fill their spending black hole through efficiency savings in all Departments, without affecting front-line services, yet, when a Department achieves £1.5 billion of efficiency savings, they immediately say that they are cuts. We have been able to improve our services, reducing processing times from 13 to 10 days, precisely because we have achieved efficiency savings, but that has released money to go to the front line. We will continue to have those efficiency savings, by using automation, computerisation and better working practices, but we will also put in £2 billion of extra money. [Interruption.] The Opposition say that they would do that too, but they would not put in the extra £2 billion. They did not do that when they were in power, so why would they do it now?