Views
Response to Ministerial Statement on Full Employment
Danny Alexander: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance notice of his statement. Does he agree that, despite suggestions that all parties are interested in this agenda, it is astonishing that the official Opposition refused the opportunity to repeat the statement in the other place?
We share the Secretary of State's objective of ending child poverty, but is he not aware that child poverty has gone up in the past year, not down? Is he not aware that the employment rate has gone down in the past year, not up, and that it is no higher now than it was at the peak of the last economic cycle? Is he not aware that inequality is rising, not falling?
We welcome David Freud's proposals to move the benefit rules for lone parents closer to those in the rest of the European Union, but does the Secretary of State agree that he must address, too, the huge problem of child care availability which is the major barrier to work for that group? Is it not very hasty indeed to go further to the age of seven without addressing those child care issues and without allowing time for a proper evaluation of the reduction to the age of 12?
The Government must tackle the shameful fact that after 10 years in office 2.7 million people on incapacity benefit have still not received the help that they need. We welcome the long-overdue focus on building relationships with employers, but David Freud's most significant contribution was on the funding of welfare support to the hardest-to-help groups through three-year contracts. Does the Secretary of State agree that such long-term funding is essential to enable the private and voluntary sectors, which he rightly praised, to deliver for those groups? Will he confirm that the Treasury objected to the long-term funding model proposed by Freud, and that without that funding it will be much harder to provide the personal support into work for those people who need and want that help most?
Freud made it clear in his review that the byzantine complexity of our benefits system is a major disincentive to work. He is right. Why will the Government not move faster towards his recommendation of a single system of working-age benefits? What steps has the Secretary of State taken to implement Freud's proposals that Jobcentre Plus should become a one-stop shop for all benefits and tax credits? Britain today is disfigured by inequality and by concentrations of worklessness. By watering down Freud's key recommendations in a Green Paper that took longer to write than Freud took to write his own report, today's statement misses a huge opportunity to deliver extra help to those people who need it most.
Read and comment on the full debate in the House of Commons
Posted on: 18/07/2007
