Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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Every one of 5,185 lines we hold for Sir Stephen Timms, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 69 of 104.
“Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) and by the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) earlier in the debate. The Government therefore formally accepted the ombudsman’s recommendations, but instead implemented Sir John Chadwick’s recommendation. We all hoped that the new scheme would administer payments effectively and efficiently. The Public Accounts Committee has been critical of the administration of the scheme, referring to a series of administrative failures, including delays in making payments to policy holders and poor customer service. Then in the March 2013 Budget the Chancellor announced some welcome limited compensation for those who bought their with-profits annuity before 1992. Many people have suffered, in some cases a great deal, as a result of the failure of Equitable Life.”
“Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) made the point—the ombudsman’s recommendation has not been delivered—so I am a little puzzled, if I can cavil, as to why the motion invites us to welcome the Government’s acceptance of the ombudsman’s findings in full, given that they certainly have not been implemented. Legislation was enacted in 2011 for a scheme. It is not an easy thing to fashion a scheme that is both fair to members and protects the public purse. The Government came up with a scheme that was reasonable, although it fell far short of what was hoped for. I am sure that other Members who have spoken have seen the film on the EMAG website, “Time for the Treasury to Settle its Debts”, which features quotes from both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos—commitments referred to by my hon.”
“That infuriated the ombudsman who argued that as the Government had accepted her recommendation, Sir John’s report was no longer relevant. It is worth looking again at what the ombudsman recommended. She wrote: “My second—and central—recommendation is that the Government should establish and fund a compensation scheme, with a view to assessing the individual cases of those who have been affected by the events covered in this report and providing appropriate compensation. The aim of such a scheme should be to put those people who have suffered a relative loss back into the position that they would have been in had maladministration not occurred.” No one would claim to the House that that is what has been done. The hon.”
“Not surprisingly, EMAG felt and still feels utterly let down by so many who signed that pledge in 2010 and did not deliver. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East referred to his amendment in the House in November 2010. I was just looking through the list of the 76 Members who voted for it, which includes the hon. Members for Harrow East and for Eastbourne, and of course my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East, but it was mostly Labour Members who voted for it. Hardly any of the 287 Conservative Members who signed that pledge voted for my hon. Friend’s amendment. The Government formally accepted the ombudsman’s recommendation, but described Sir John Chadwick’s recommendation as one of the building blocks for a solution.”
“Member for Harrow East was telling us that Conservative candidates were encouraged to sign this pledge. It said: “I pledge to the voters of this constituency that if I am elected to Parliament at the next general election, I will support and vote for proper compensation for victims of the Equitable Life scandal and I will support and vote to set up a swift, simple, transparent and fair payment scheme—independent of government—as recommended by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.” More than 90% of Conservative Members signed that pledge: the Prime Minister did, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did. Every Liberal Democrat MP signed it, including the Deputy Prime Minister, and Equitable Life members and EMAG expected that once the coalition took office it would be delivered, but it was not.”
“However, that announcement having been made by the new Government, the ombudsman then wrote to every Member of the House in July 2010, saying: “In the light of the new Government’s commitment to implement” my “recommendation in full, the approach embodied in the Chadwick report has thus been overtaken by events and cannot provide a basis for the implementation of the recommendation.” She said that her proposal and Chadwick were irreconcilable, but Chadwick, as we have heard in this debate—the hon. Member for Leeds North West mentioned this—was in fact what was done. During the election campaign in 2010, the then Opposition spokesman went around the country promising that, if elected, the Conservatives would deliver on the ombudsman’s recommendation. During the campaign, EMAG asked candidates to sign a pledge. The hon.”
“The ombudsman proposed a scheme entailing a case-by-case review, looking at 30 million investment decisions by 1.5 million people over 20 years. The ombudsman thought that would take two and a half years, but others thought it would be more. The previous Government asked Sir John Chadwick to advise on a simpler scheme. His report in July 2010, after the general election, referred to “the obvious impracticability—if not impossibility—of determining these questions on an individual basis”. The new Government, elected in 2010, explicitly accepted the ombudsman’s recommendation. Indeed, today’s motion, which I shall address in a moment, congratulates the Government on accepting the ombudsman’s recommendation in full.”
“The consistent argument of EMAG has always been that the losses incurred by Equitable Life members are due to maladministration, as opposed to the bad investments and rash actions undertaken by Equitable Life. As we have heard in the debate, EMAG felt vindicated by the ombudsman’s reports. The previous Government did not agree with that view—with the view of the ombudsman. Members of the current Government stated clearly during the election campaign —we have heard about the pledges that were widely signed by Government Members—that they did agree. In government, however, they have not delivered. The previous Government recognised that many policy- holders were disproportionately affected by the events at Equitable Life, and on that basis announced a commitment to a payments scheme to help.”
“Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) rightly pointed out that the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) seemed to be a little unsure of the history of this case. The problems at Equitable Life occurred between 1990 and 2001, so almost all occurred under the regulatory arrangements in place before the creation of the Financial Services Authority. The previous Government, of whom I was a member, issued an apology in January 2009 to policyholders, on behalf of the public bodies and the successive Governments responsible for the regulation of Equitable Life between 1990 and 2001 and for the maladministration that took place.”
“I wish to acknowledge, again, as has been done throughout this good debate, the extent of the hardship and anxiety that all too many people have endured as a result of the failure of Equitable Life. I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Members for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) who have led the all-party group, spoken in the debate and championed the cause of the victims of the Equitable Life collapse over the years, and to others like them. Like the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), I also want to pay tribute to EMAG for its tireless campaigning on behalf of so many people who have lost so much. Its campaign has won real sympathy and support in Parliament and among the wider public. My hon.”
“Many of the points that my hon. Friend is making will be welcomed by the large number of my constituents who have contacted me about the matter. In the discussions that she has had, have any concerns been expressed about the pretty horrific things that appear to be going on under the label of mis-stunning? In theory, that is supposed to protect animal welfare, but the reality seems to be very different.”
“This is a debate about the kind of recovery our country needs to see, about who is being left behind, about the kind of future we are building for the next generation and about whether this Government are using more than just warm words when they talk about full employment, as the Prime Minister has done recently. Our challenge to Ministers today is to put a strict time limit on the period for which someone can be left on jobseeker’s allowance before they are offered, and required to take, proper paid work. The compulsory jobs guarantee, funded by a tax on bankers’ bonuses and restrictions to pensions tax relief on incomes over £150,000 a year, would mean a new start and new hope for the more than 29,000 young people who have been out of work for over a year, and for the 130,000 over-25s who have been out of work for more than two years.”
“I beg to move, That this House calls on the Government to put a strict limit on the amount of time that people can be left on jobseeker’s allowance without being offered, and required to take up, paid work, by introducing a compulsory jobs guarantee that would ensure that anyone under 25 who has been receiving jobseeker’s allowance for a year, and anyone over 25 who has been receiving jobseeker’s allowance for two years, would be offered a paid job, with training, that they must take up or face losing benefits; and further calls on the Government to ensure this compulsory jobs guarantee be fully funded by a one-off repeat of the tax on bankers’ bonuses and restricting pension tax relief on incomes over £150,000.”
“We had a bankers’ bonus tax in the past, but this will be the sole purpose for the new bankers’ bonus tax to be introduced after the next election. We will all be committed to the guarantee that I am setting out for the House this afternoon. Those people I have described are the ones this Government have left behind. They are the people whom Labour Members are not going to forget, not only because we owe them a fair chance to escape long-term unemployment but because we cannot afford, as a country, to leave them on benefits for years on end. Nor can we afford the consequences of the low wages that they are likely to earn if they do find work after such a long period of unemployment.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the ambition, and of course this scheme will be an enormous step towards tackling the scourge of long-term unemployment. To build a strong and stable recovery, and a fairer and more united country, we need to make sure, as he says, that everyone gets to play their part, that we harness its talents and fulfil the potential of all, and that everybody knows they have a stake in our country’s future. We have seen some welcome recent falls in the headline rate of unemployment, from the peaks reached after this Government choked off the recovery they had inherited in 2010. More people in work is always good news, which is why we repeatedly urged the Government to do more to stop the soaring unemployment they presided over after the general election.”
“But long-term unemployment is higher in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency now than it was at the time of the last election. That is the legacy of the three years of almost no growth in the economy following the general election, which we now need to address. Let me say to him and to other Government Members that self-congratulation on what has happened in recent months is dangerously complacent about underlying problems in the labour market and utterly out of touch with the impact such problems have on people who are desperate to work and to earn their way out of the cost of living crisis they are facing. People are deeply concerned about the prospects for their children and the grandchildren. Those are the points we now need to address.”
“We were left with a legacy of a very large number of people who have been out of work for a long time. It is welcome that at long last the economy is growing and jobs are being created; the long-delayed recovery is now, finally, in place. The question is: are those who have been left out of employment by the events of the past few years going to get the opportunities that these new jobs will create? Addressing that is exactly the purpose of this afternoon’s debate and of the proposal I am commending to the House.”
“The number of long-term unemployed young people—those claiming for more than a year—is a lot higher now than it was at the time of the election. As we are talking about apologies, I would hope the Secretary of State would apologise to the House and to the country for the fact that the Government allowed unemployment to soar to 2.67 million after the general election, allowed youth unemployment to soar to more than 1 million and allowed long-term unemployment to hit historic highs at the end of 2013. Those are the failures and the legacy we must now address.”
“Young people want a job. That is what they are asking for and that is what we will provide under the jobs guarantee, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will support us.”
“I am glad to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Councillor Kieran Quinn and Tameside’s council on what they have achieved. We are seeing this idea being introduced by Labour councils. We heard earlier this afternoon about the Edinburgh guarantee, and these ideas are now taking their place around the country. We now need the Government to be putting a national guarantee in place. Unemployment is now, at long last, back on the downward path that the Labour Government set it on in 2010, although, of course, its level is yet to return to the lows under Labour before the global financial crash.”
“Strikingly, the relative position of young people has become steadily worse since 2010 The most recent figures show that the youth unemployment rate is almost three times the overall rate—it is 2.9 times that rate—and for the past three months, while overall unemployment has been falling, youth unemployment has been going up. The total is now back above three quarters of a million, and we just have to hope that that is not the new trend. Action needs to be taken now to make sure that it is not and that young people are able to share in the benefits of the recovery.”
“I will in a moment, but I wish to make a little more progress first. There are serious causes for concern in the labour market and much more needs to be done to build a recovery that works for everyone. Long-term unemployment remains much too high. The long period—three years—after the general election when there was almost no growth in the economy has left too many people locked out of employment and now left behind even as overall employment is rising. The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than two years is 224% of what it was in May 2010, and young people remain at high risk of unemployment.”
“Jobs are being created. The question is: who is going to get them? At the moment, the evidence clearly shows that young people disproportionately are not. We know that the future jobs fund worked—I will discuss that in a moment—and we are going to be repeating that approach with this jobs guarantee.”
“I shall be discussing Jobs Growth Wales. I believe the hon. Gentleman is commending it, and I agree with him; it has been a great success and there are certainly lessons to be learned by the rest of the UK from the great success of that programme.”
“Young men now unemployed will be earning £3,300 less a decade from now. Those effects worsen the longer that somebody is out of work. Work by Paul Gregg at the university of Bath and Emma Tommony at the university of York suggests that the 200,000 young people who have now been out of work for more than a year are, on average, likely to spend another two years either unemployed or economically inactive between the ages of 28 and 33, and that the men, by the age of 42, will be suffering a wage penalty of more than £7,000 a year. Those are big effects that need to be addressed.”
“It also imposes a cost we can never account for, through the strain it puts on individuals, families and communities. Those costs—in benefit spending, tax revenues, economic output, and individual and social well-being—can reach far into the future, as the scarring effects of unemployment build up. The Acevo commission on youth unemployment found that people who experienced unemployment in their younger years are more likely to suffer not only spells of unemployment in later life, but in work an average wage penalty of more than 15%. That is why it is so troubling that youth unemployment is going back up. It is back up today to more than three-quarters of a million. Young women now unemployed will, a decade from now, be earning on average £1,700 a year less as a result of being unemployed today.”
“My hon. Friend is right about that. I have spoken to a large number of people, including young people whose break came through the future jobs fund. They have said that having got six months’ work under their belts, thanks to that initiative, they were then able to look after themselves and apply for jobs, do well and build a career. As he rightly says, young people need that crucial first break and that is what this guarantee will provide. Every day of unemployment means hardship, worry and missed opportunity for someone who wants to be working and earning. But the full costs are borne more widely and last much longer. Every day of unemployment is a cost to the taxpayer in unemployment benefit and tax revenue forgone, and a cost to the economy in lost output.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was at an event yesterday with the Prince’s Trust where a young man was describing how he was about to be sectioned when, thanks to the Prince’s Trust, he was able to go into a job and his mental health problem was resolved. She is also right about the costs to the economy and the health service of long periods of unemployment early on.”
“Eventually, the DWP published an evaluation of the future jobs fund and, to the surprise of nobody on the Opposition Benches, it was glowing. It found a net benefit to society—net of all the Exchequer costs—of £7,750 for every single young person who took part. It reckoned that, within three years, half the cost of that intervention came back to the Exchequer because participants stopped claiming benefits and started paying tax and national insurance. It was an exceptionally cost-effective policy. By late 2012, when the evaluation was published, it was too late. The future jobs fund had gone. In the time since its abolition, unemployment had risen to more than 2.5 million and youth unemployment had risen to more than 1 million.”
“I can assure my hon. Friend that these will be jobs for at least 25 hours a week and paid at least at the level of the national minimum wage. The persistent unemployment that we still see today could be contributing to a continued cost of living crisis tomorrow, weakening the productivity and the growth potential of our economy as well as undermining efforts to keep social spending under control and to bring down the deficit. We must take urgent and effective action now to tackle the problem. What action have we seen from the Government? One of their very first acts on entering office was to abolish the future jobs fund, breaking, incidentally, the promise that the current Home Secretary made during the election campaign.”
“The latest proposal from the Government is time-limiting support for young people without giving them the opportunity to train, after which they will simply be required to do community service. That is not an employment policy, but a policy for punishing the victims of the negligence and ineffectiveness of this Government.”
“He announced the Youth Contract, which the Government promised would lead to 160,000 work subsidies for young jobseekers. It started in April 2012 and it was an utter flop. It was not promoted. That was undoubtedly because DWP Ministers, with the possible exception of the Minister for Pensions, did not have their heart in it. Employers knew nothing about it. Those who did hear of it were confused by it and had nothing to do with it. The Government’s own advisers on poverty and social mobility said that it was not working, so last summer it was unceremoniously shut down early, after it had achieved fewer than 10% of the promised placements that were budgeted for. Ever since then, unemployment among young people has been going up.”
“If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the previous paragraph, he will see that the evaluation said that half the cost of an intervention came back to the Exchequer within a three-year period and that the wholly inadequate replacement for it was the Work programme, which sends more people straight back to the jobcentre after two years than it places in sustained work. It also performs shockingly badly not just in Edinburgh, as we were hearing earlier on, but for those in need of support, such as older workers and people with health problems for whom it has so far recorded failure rates of 87% and 93% respectively. The Work programme has been a failure and we must replace it with something that works better. On youth unemployment, the Deputy Prime Minister saw what was going on and had an attack of conscience.”
“Youth unemployment was affected by the worldwide economic crash. What is worrying—even the hon. Gentleman might, in the privacy of his own reflection, be worried about this—is that, at a time when overall unemployment is coming down, youth unemployment is going up. The rate of youth unemployment is nearly three times the overall rate of unemployment now, and that multiple has been going up progressively since the general election.”
“The hon. Gentleman just needs to look at the figures published in January, which show that youth unemployment has been going up for the past three months. The figures that we saw last month cover the period from September to November.”
“We will guarantee a job for every 18 to 24-year-old who has been looking for work and claiming jobseeker’s allowance for a year, and for every adult aged 25 and over who has been looking for work and claiming for two years.”
“Let me make a little more progress, then I will gladly give way again. Labour has a real plan to get young people into work and to end the scourge of long-term unemployment. It is a tough plan as we will hold people responsible for accepting work when it is offered, but it is also a fair plan as it gives a young person the opportunity to work, earn a wage and develop skills. Our compulsory jobs guarantee will guarantee a real, paid job, most likely in the private sector— [Interruption.] Members just need to look at what has happened with Jobs Growth Wales, which we heard about a few moments ago. About 80% of the jobs provided on the same wage subsidy model—5,000 companies have been hosting those jobs—are in the private sector.”
“I refer the hon. Gentleman to the national figures. Of course unemployment was hit hard by the worldwide economic crash, but over the past three months in particular there has been a steady, month-by-month increase in youth unemployment at a time when overall unemployment is coming down. I put it to him—I think many Government Members would sympathise with this view—that we need to ensure that young people have a fair chance in the recovery that is now under way of gaining the jobs that are being created. The measure that I am arguing for will allow that to happen.”
“I will make a little more progress and then I will gladly give way again. The Government would cover the costs to employers of paying national minimum wage and national insurance for a 25-hour week plus £500 per employee to help businesses with training, admin and set-up costs. In return, employers would be expected to provide training and development for those taking part and show how the jobs were additional—not replacing existing jobs and not leading to somebody else losing their job or seeing a reduction in hours.”
“I can answer that very directly: 5,000 employers are taking part in the Jobs Growth Wales scheme. The Federation of Small Businesses in Wales is a champion. I simply contrast the quote given by the hon. Gentleman with the experience of those on the ground, including the FSB.”
“I have just mentioned the FSB. My hon. Friend will know how active it has been in demanding change of the kind he describes and makes a telling case for. I agree: more should be done to support small business in that way, and in other ways. We need to reform how the banks deal with their small-business customers too.”
“We will be delivering a guarantee, exactly as we did with the future jobs fund. Anyone can look back at the record of the future jobs fund, where a guarantee was delivered. It will be again. I shall say a little more about how the guarantee would work. Participants would be required, if their employer did not plan to keep them on when the subsidy ended, to pursue intensive job search for a permanent opportunity at the end of the six months. Any jobseeker who refused to take up a job offered under the guarantee would, in the normal way and in line with the long-standing conditions for benefit claims, lose their benefits. That is always the case.”
“Very few. There is the good example of Jaguar Land Rover taking on a group of young people under the future jobs fund, and my understanding is that every single one of those young people was kept on in their job when the wage subsidy ended. The future jobs fund was largely about the charity and public sectors; the guarantee is largely about the private sector, exactly as Jobs Growth Wales has been.”
“Those figures, in my constituency and in his, are far too high. A great deal more needs to be done to enable young people in particular, but long-term unemployed over-25s as well, to share in the benefit of the recovery that is, at last, under way.”
“In the first year, to provide for the large number of long-term claimants left by this Government’s policies, we would pay for the policy with a repeat of the successful bank bonus tax, which was levied in 2010. That could raise £2 billion. In future years, the costs would be covered by restricting pensions tax relief for the highest paid—those earning more than £150,000 a year—to 20%. The House of Commons Library has estimated that that could raise between £900 million and £1.3 billion a year. That is a fair and prudent way to fund jobs for young people and the long-term unemployed, and to fund the guarantee throughout the next Parliament.”
“My hon. Friend is right. I have spoken to many people, including those who went through the future jobs fund, who say exactly that: having the break of getting six months in a job, becoming familiar with the habits and routines of work, and putting that on their CV enabled them to thrive. This policy is not just an immediate intervention to limit youth and long-term unemployment; it is an investment in the skills and employability of the British work force, underpinning our productivity, growth potential and fiscal sustainability into the future, but we have been clear that there will be no commitments in our manifesto that require more borrowing. Therefore, we have set out clear plans to fund the policy fairly and prudently.”
“This Government will not deliver it. We can be thankful that the time is not far off when we can elect a Labour Government who will.”
“I will not give way again. Those measures have been opposed and rejected by Government Members, but we have seen where five years of their trickle-down philosophy has taken us—five years of protecting privileges for a few at the top while leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Our plan is to put working people first, ensuring that those who can and should work are in work, that we make the most of their talents and that hard work is always rewarded. That is the way to secure a recovery from which everybody can benefit and to get social security spending under control and our public finances on a sustainable footing. That is the way to secure a future in which prosperity and social justice go hand in hand and ensure that the next generation can look forward to a brighter future. That is the plan our country needs.”
“As the right hon. Gentleman knows—he has the evaluation in front of him—there was a net benefit to society of £7,500, net of all Exchequer costs, for each person who took part. Is he surprised that youth unemployment has been going up over the past three months, at a time when overall unemployment is coming down, or was that what he expected?”
“Premier tells me that it has been trying to initiate contract renewal since last summer, but it was made clear that it would have to come off the platform. On 10 December, Global—the media entertainment group—announced that further pop stations, including Heart Extra, would be introduced on Digital One early this year. The intention appears to be for Heart Extra—which is frankly rather similar to quite a few other stations on that multiplex—to take up the slot vacated by Premier. Premier has not been outbid; this appears to be a knock-on consequence of wider commercial manoeuvring. I welcome the fact that yesterday, Premier received an offer from Arqiva that could provide a basis for its continued presence on Digital One. I hope that the negotiations that follow will be successful, but we shall see.”