John McDonnell
MP for Hayes and Harlington · Labour · United Kingdom
“It is not a laughing matter—I am sorry for interrupting the flow of the discussion. It would be useful if the review looked at NATS’s long-term investment plans, particularly since its partial privatisation in 2001, which I opposed. I thank the Minister for meeting Unite this morning and thanking the workers, who have worked so hard.”
“On a number of occasions, I have raised the case of Lee Cheuk-yan, who many Labour Members will remember was the general secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions and founder of the Labour party in Hong Kong. He was detained during the democracy movement five years ago.”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. NATS used to be in my constituency and then moved down to Swanwick. Of course, with Heathrow in my constituency, I receive—as I mentioned yesterday—a large amount of correspondence from a whole range of other MPs’ constituents, who think I am responsible for Heathrow airport.”
“I fully agree, and let me also say that wheelchair compensation is significant in this legislation. Most of us have dealt with cases like that. Going back to accountability in the process, a number of different organisations have provided us with notes on the legislation.”
“I apologise to my right hon. Friend; I should have checked this before the debate. The proposed new section 61G refers to priorities and objectives of the Secretary of State, which include a requirement for the Secretary of State to issue a document setting out those priorities and objectives for the CAA.”
“At the moment, when people in my constituency are faced with these problems, they do not know where to go; it is as simple as that. Finally, the debate that we will have on Heathrow expansion and the new policy statement will be interesting, given that we do not know what the flight paths will be. If I was a constituent of my hon.”
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“I have been chairing meetings of unpaid carers or informal carers, as they describe themselves, over the past 18 months, and I just want to get the stats on this out there. I pay tribute to what the hon. Member for North East Fife has done with her legislation and the campaign she has waged. Some 8% to 10% of the adult population are informal carers; two thirds of carers are in employment—that is the whole point here; six in 10 of those who are caring for 35 hours a week or more are workless, which is three times the rate of those caring for less than 20 hours a week; and about 25% of informal carers are living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest figures.”
“I think the triple lock should apply to all benefits, and I hope the Select Committee will have that debate. I asked the House of Commons Library to give me the figures on what would have happened to carer’s allowance if the link had been kept since the 1980s. It is now at £76.75 but it would have been £146.42. Invalidity benefit is now £130.20, but it would have been £233.55. If we look at unemployment, we see that jobseeker’s allowance is now £84.80 but it would have been £185.49. There is a moral argument for maintaining the protection of benefits over time and trying to build consensus across the House on that, in the same way in which it was eventually built on the triple lock for pensions. Finally, let me touch on carer’s allowance.”
“When we look at the figures, we see that one in five pensioners is in poverty; 2.1 million older people are in poverty; they get £40 a week less than the Government’s own poverty threshold; 1.3 million older people are now categorised as suffering forms of malnutrition; and we have always had a high level of excess deaths in winter among older people, with on average between 25,000 and 30,000 dying unnecessarily. I looked at the figures showing what has happened since the break with earnings. The proportion of those people living in severe poverty is five times higher than it was in 1986—we have had the largest increase in western European countries. So I make an appeal to Members from across the House. The triple lock was a major reform, and I thought we had built consensus on it. It should not be in any way undermined in the future.”
“I campaigned against the breaking of the link between pensions and earnings when Mrs Thatcher introduced it, so I wholeheartedly welcomed the triple lock when it was introduced by a Conservative Government and I made that point in this House. I regretted bitterly, however, that the Government broke their pledge last year, because once the link was broken, a debate was opened up among some Members about the triple lock being no longer necessary. I am hoping that the statement about social security and pensions today reaffirms the message across the House that the triple lock is here to stay.”
“I was looking at the figures and they show that the average capped household with two children is now £150 a week below the Government’s own poverty line. Scrapping the cap would increase benefits to them by an average of £65 a week; the cost would be £500 million, which is 0.2% of the total spending on social security. A marginal increase in the efficiency of tackling tax avoidance, an increase in national insurance beyond getting rid of some of the limits at the higher levels—that would easily pay for this marginal improvement but would have a dramatic effect on the living standards of so many people.”
“I hope that Conservative Members and others who may not have had the experience of this recognise how it has affected our communities. I do not use the word lightly, but some of us have experienced what are almost forms of social “apartheid” within our communities, where certain sections of housing are no longer available to working-class people. In some instances, fenced communities have developed as a result. I highlight reports of what happened in my constituency as regards the Ballymore housing development. I come back to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham made, which is that the cap has had an impact on a large number of children, with the last calculation being 308,000; 70% of the people affected are single parents. As he said, this pushes people into deep poverty.”
“If we walk through this legislation and its eventual implementation, we see that it will result in either a worker being sacked or a worker being sacked and a trade union being fined. Can my right hon. Friend think of anything that could greater exacerbate the current industrial-relations climate than those sorts of threats?”
“I think the Conservative party has been contemplating this since the Combination Acts of the 18th century. Anyway, strange alliances have been formed over the years on this issue. If the right hon. Gentleman recalls, an alliance was formed over the Civil Contingencies Bill, and we had a concession from the Government on some of the legislation regarding at least a super-affirmative mechanism that would give the House a bit more influence to amend statutory instruments. Would he be in favour of that?”
“I understand and completely follow the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument. I agree with it. However, he is shirking the responsibility of this House by simply passing it to the Lords. In recent months, we have seen the Government withdraw a Bill for further consideration until they got it right. Surely that is the mechanism to get the Bill right; otherwise, we are shirking our responsibility.”
“The practical reality is that for some workers this takes away the whole right to strike. An example in my constituency is air traffic control. There is no such thing as a minimum service guarantee in air traffic control, and the same can be said for rail signalmen. This process will extend the denial of the right to strike to whole batches of workers, and we need to acknowledge that in this debate.”
“When we legislate in Parliament, we do not legislate for the good; we legislate for the bad. We have to interpret how this legislation could be used by a bad employer, and one way it could be used by bad employers is specifying individual workers who we know are trade union activists to be forced to break the strike. The Government will say that there is a responsibility and that the employer had no regard to whether someone was a union member. We had 20 years of blacklisting taking place with Governments refusing to acknowledge it. We know what bad employers will do: they will target trade unionists and ensure they are sacked, and when the union defends the trade unionists, they will come for the trade union itself.”
“Many have commented on the almost ludicrous nature of how we are legislating today. We are about to legislate to penalise a union for not taking reasonable steps to ensure it instructs its members to break a strike, yet we do not know those sanctions, or what “reasonable steps” are. We do not know what the implications are for the union itself, yet we are legislating tonight to give a free hand to the Minister. That cannot be right in any democratic forum.”
“It is irresponsible for a Minister to come to this House, when there is a clear conflict in the law that needs to be interpreted, without that interpretation and just to say that he is going to write to us. That is irresponsible. Will he now define to us what reasonable steps he expects a union to take to comply with the legislation as it is and to instruct its members to go to work during a strike? What are those reasonable steps?”
“Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.”
“Briefly—I do not want to delay the House—I say to the Government that bringing forward this legislation during the current industrial relations climate demonstrates a lack of appreciation on their side for the strength of feeling of the nearly 1 million people who are taking industrial action and the millions who support them. The Bill is provocative: it will ensure that the current disputes are more bitter and last longer, and it will inspire other disputes. I hope that the other place brings forward amendments that will ameliorate it, but I warn the Government that, when the first trade unionist is sacked or fined, they will regret the reaction from the trade union movement, because it will damage our economy and our society as a result of their irresponsible and provocative actions tonight.”
“The appeal today is for openness, transparency and due process, and I think that would result in the release of Jagtar immediately.”
“Many of the representations I have received from constituents share my view, which is respect for India and its independent Government, respect for its constitution, and a natural concern about any form of terrorism in India or anywhere else, which has to be tackled. The concern that my constituents have expressed time and again—I have also related it in the Chamber before—is the lack of openness and transparency in the whole process. Just to add to what the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has said, from the earliest stage most were simply asking for adherence to due process. That clearly has not been the case, and that is why there is such concern around this case. The concern also relates to the openness and transparency of our own Government and their involvement in this case, too.”
“I fear that the parliamentary process will break down, poor decisions will be made and we will overburden an administration that already has enough on its plate.”
“There is a huge point of principle here, but there are also issues around pragmatic logistics. I can understand some of the frustrations of Conservative Members about delays in implementation since the referendum, but I must remind them that they have been in Government. Privately, I know of no civil servant who has any confidence that the deadline will be met. We now face a strike by 100,000 civil servants. Even the FDA has gone for strike action. The world may have changed since this legislation was first prepared. May I suggest to my Front-Bench colleagues that we assure the Government that there will be an open door for discussion throughout this process when they want to talk about extending the deadline to ensure proper scrutiny of this legislation?”
“The real opposition will not come in here; it will be out there. It will be from working people—trade unionists. When the first trade unionist is sacked and the first trade union is fined, the Government will foul the industrial relations of the country for a generation, and the people will be out there. I will be out there with them.”
“In the past, when Tory Governments were failing, they would usually create a war and send a gunboat. Mrs Thatcher then decided that the real enemy was within. We have heard that same language today of trade union “barons” holding the country to ransom—all of that. That is distraction. The real motivation is the one that they have had since the 1980s, which is to shift the balance of power from labour to capital and from workers to employers. That strategy has worked. It has worked so well that it has impoverished working-class people, and that is why they are coming out on strike. They cannot survive on the wages that they have got. Labour Members will oppose the Bill in this House. There will be opposition in the other place as well. Labour will scrap the Bill as soon as we get into power. But I warn the Conservatives of this.”
“I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I would be worried if I did not—that would show that my constituency Labour party fundraising strategy had failed. It is important that the Conservatives know this. We know what the motivation for the Bill is. Do not insult the intelligence of this House or the British people by saying that it has anything whatsoever to do with emergency measures. We have all negotiated those over the years—they have been in existence for decades, since the beginning of the trade union movement. The motivations are these. First, the Bill is an attempt to try to threaten those in negotiations at the moment. Well, that has really worked: today, nine out of 10 teachers voted for industrial action. The second was the usual distraction.”
“Yes, these are expressions of solidarity, but possibly using the international organisations of the trade union movement to express that solidarity more effectively. That committee is now linking up with trade unionists across Europe in particular, and in America, to see what joint actions can be taken. I simply and briefly ask the House to welcome the formation of that committee for workers’ solidarity, to support the work it will be doing to expose what is going on, to support those expressions of support for workers taking action in Iran, and to consider what other practical actions could be taken. I believe that could be one element of supporting the significant breakthrough that is potentially available to Iranians at the moment.”
“This is more than just an uprising; this goes way across society, with workers and others coming together in all the social forums they can to demand change. We in this House have a role in making noise, exposing what is taking place and expressing our condemnation, but we also have a responsibility to show solidarity. In December, a group of Iranian men and women who have a history of trade union and other struggles in Iran, and who currently live in this country as refugees, came together with trade unionists in this country and formed the committee of solidarity with the workers’ movement of Iran. The intention of that committee is to engage with trade unions in this country, and with the TUC, to see what solidarity work can be undertaken for the workers’ struggles in Iran.”
“What has been interesting about the recent uprisings is the engagement across all social classes, and also the courage demonstrated in the strikes now being organised. In December before Christmas, there was a three-day strike during which the shops, markets and businesses were closed down in opposition to what was happening under the existing regime. In addition, oil workers demonstrated outside their employers’ headquarters, thanks to a combination of support for the struggles that have taken place for democracy and a reaction to what is happening to the living standards of workers under the regime, with high inflation, wages suppressed and the inability even to represent each other in negotiations with employers.”
“In addition, they introduced policies of privatisation—almost the creation of a gig economy—to prevent workers from working together in an organised movement. Those who were in the House way back in 2004 will recall that Members across the House—I believe across all parties—strongly supported the heroic struggle of the Tehran bus workers’ union when it came out on strike. That was met with repression and the imprisonment of many of those trade unionists, some of whom disappeared. Nevertheless, the heroic struggle of workers in Iran continued. Some Members will remember that in 2015, we raised what was happening with the teachers’ union in Iran, and at that time the general secretary of the trade union, Esmail Abdi was arrested. There was a hunger strike, and the House—again on a cross-party basis—supported that workers’ struggle.”
“For those who were engaged at the time, it is worth recalling that when the Shah fell in 1979, it was largely as a result of mass strikes throughout 1978. The workers’ movement became the tipping point for the removal of the Shah. It is also important to note that no Iranian I have spoken to so far is calling for the return of a monarchist Government. They are calling for a democratic Government, even though the Iranian regime is seeking to promote the myth of some form of retrieval of a Shah-type regime. That is not what this is; it is a democratic struggle. The mass strikes that took place in 1978 toppled the Shah. The ayatollahs learned from that and sought to eradicate the trade union movement in Iran. Instead, they imposed state sanctioned organisations, supposedly to represent the workers, although they never did.”
“I am surprised—well, shocked really—about the threats to the BBC Persian service, and I agree with other Members about the need to continue its funding. We in this House are committed to diplomacy as much as we possibly can be, but there does come a time when diplomacy is no longer working and when, in some ways, the diplomats who are located here are working against the best interests of our country and our citizens, as well as of their own. I therefore agree with the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of the diplomats. I believe that is now overdue. To move on to the workers’ movement in Iran, the interesting thing about this uprising, or potential revolution, is that it cuts across all social and economic classes and has brought people together.”
“I wish to say a few brief words about the workers’ movement in Iran. I was particularly moved, as were others, by the description by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) of the plight of the family she is dealing with. I have 2,000 asylum seekers in hotels in my constituency, and several are from Iran. Listening to their stories is equally moving. When we have debates about asylum seekers in this House, it is sometimes worth recording where those people have come from, and what they endured before they—hopefully—reached safety in this country. I fully agree with the proscription of the revolutionary guard, which is long overdue, and with the implementation of Magnitsky sanctions.”
“The Bill does not solve the problem of fire and rehire. I was with the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) in Dover. I think she has misunderstood what was going on in the RMT office. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) was receiving a briefing from the RMT that was offered to the Prime Minister and the leaders of other parties as well. I was in the room at the time, and there was no plotting or anything like that. It was about trying to ensure that points were raised in this House so that the Government could act more effectively.”
“That is what has happened year after year. I have had 20 years of this, so Members will understand my sense of frustration that leads to anger. That is why I think this Bill is a mouse. We will work together to improve it—that is what we will do. We will try to eradicate the loopholes that have been set out by virtually every Member who has spoken so far, including on the number of times a port is used, the way in which measures are enforced and the way in which the surcharge is defined. The Government cannot leave the definition of the surcharge to the harbour authorities. There will be another race to the bottom because they will want to attract companies to use their harbour on the basis that their surcharge is so low. Let us work together as a House to resolve those issues with this mouse of a Bill.”
“I raised the issue of accommodation charges in 2014. Again, the argument was that the charges would be relatively limited and that there would be no major impact on the seafarers. The companies then started increasing the charges and they got to ludicrous levels. What could the seafarers do? They had no choice over where they were going to sleep at night. They could not hire a separate boat to sleep on. The companies were ripping them off. I can remember about 40 of us turning up to a Statutory Instrument Committee thinking that we had achieved a major victory—it was wonderful—whereby the minimum wage was going to apply to British waters. We all thought that meant territorial waters, but then there was a change of definition and we found that it applied only to internal waters—which just about applies to the Norfolk broads, to be honest.”
“As a result, it was able to exploit workers. We ran a campaign and the Government put their hands up and said, “We accept that there is a wrong here, so we will ensure reform.” That reform was that people could be discriminated against based not on their race but on their nationality. What is the difference? That was the change in legislation. From 2007 to 2009 we ran a campaign and I raised the issues in this House. When we sought to give some form of legal protection to people, we were told that they could have that legal protection only if they had employment links to this country—and that was ill defined. It just went on like that. I have example after example of us campaigning for reform and being met with obfuscation and the drafting of trench warfare, and the reform was largely frustrated. It just went on like that.”
“Every time we have debated the issue and the Chamber of Shipping has realised that the game is up and that change is necessary—largely through public opprobrium, as happened with P&O, though perhaps not on the same scale in the past—successive attempts at reform by this House have resulted in a standard strategy to be pursued, which is that the Chamber of Shipping, working with the Government, obfuscates, seeks to limit change and the effectiveness of that change, and drafts trench warfare in legislation. I will give a few examples. In 2002 I said that we should ensure that the minimum wage applied to seafarers in this country on the basis of the Race Relations Act 1976. When lobbying on the Race Relations Act, the shipping industry secured an exemption—the only sector that gained such an exemption.”
“I blame the Chamber of Shipping, which has been mentioned, and its influence on successive Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments. Time and again, we have pointed out what is technically, in employment terms, a feudal relationship with many seafarers and the way they are treated. It is also a neo-colonialist relationship, given the recruitment practices across the globe. It is a level of exploitation that we would not tolerate in any other sector. People are working long hours in unsafe conditions, on low pay and with limited training. When they complain, they are replaced by labour that is brought to this country from across the globe. They are severely exploited.”
“Most of the points of detail have been raised by other Members, so I will not focus on those. I will vote for the Bill, but—I am not being party political here, because when it comes to the treatment of seafarers, I have been critical of every party that has been in national Government—the Bill is a mouse, and I do not think that it is a mouse that is going to roar. That is my worry about it. I was pleased at the cross-party anger about P&O’s behaviour. I had expected that to result in a real opportunity to tackle the way in which seafarers are treated, and not just by P&O but historically. I have checked Hansard , and the first time I raised in the House the application of the minimum wage to seafarers was in the 2002-03 Session, which was 20 years ago.”
“I urge the Government to bring forward the whole programme of legislation that was promised as part of the development of the nine-point plan, as well as the seafarers’ charter, early in the new year. Unless we have that, there will be no secure employment and the long-term future of the sector will be at considerable risk.”
“I also throw in that it is not just about the wages earned week by week, month by month, but about pensions, which are another form of wages. Seafarers’ pensions have been eroded over the years and, as a result, it is difficult to attract people to the job because of low pay, lack of pensions, insecurity and, to be frank, unsafe working conditions. My final point comes back to the Chamber of Shipping. I am angry that, throughout the whole period that these activities have been taking place, when low pay has been inflicted on seafarers and their pensions have been under attack, shipping companies have taken £2 billion in tax relief from tonnage tax—in fact, they have laughed all the way to the bank. The tonnage tax has failed, and it has not produced the jobs that we were promised or encouraged the companies to behave as dutiful employers.”
“That is a division of responsibility and I do not think it will work. As other hon. Members raised earlier, the idea that a ship or company can simply be excluded from operating out of a particular harbour will not prove effective either. We must demonstrate seriousness of purpose, which is why the unions are arguing for detention of the ship when there is a refusal to abide by the measures that are going through in this Bill. I hope that we will rapidly hear a report on the progress of the seafarers’ charter, which I thought would be included in the first legislation that we saw to attack the issues around seafarers and P&O in particular. I would also like to have had some strong evidence of the agreements that are coming forward in the cross-country negotiations taking place on these issues; can we have that in the new year?”
“Time and again, evidence is emerging that the exploitation of seafarers is not just about wages, but about how few seafarers there are on any particular ship and how the training they receive does not guarantee safety. Therefore, we need legislation to be introduced rapidly to ensure that seafarers are not only properly paid but properly trained, and that any ship that sails around our ports has an adequate number of crew on board. At some stage—this applies to the overall debate as well as to this Bill—we will have to have another discussion about the regulation of the sector. This Bill relates to how it abides by payment of the minimum wage. I do not believe that the concept of harbours levelling the surcharge and then it being implemented or, I suppose, inspected by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is going to prove effective.”
“We were both in the same room, but I suppose that it is like people witnessing an accident, in that there will be different interpretations. By no means was I calling the leader of the Labour party’s conversation an accident—that would be grounds for expulsion. The Bill does not outlaw fire and rehire. That was used by P&O, whose example was followed very quickly by Heathrow airport in my constituency. If this Bill is the first stage of a reform package, we need to see the rest of it pretty promptly. That means not just introducing minimum wage legislation but looking at the wider exploitation of seafarers, including accommodation charges and safe crew levels. I am really worried. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) mentioned the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster.”
“There have been reports in a number of our constituencies of almost a dental health epidemic. Can the Minister explain whether there will be targeted resources for a number of our constituencies where there is such a high level of child dental ill health?”
“We have got to sort out a new deal on Brexit.”
“Let us put in context the argument that somehow Ukraine has caused this crisis. Ukraine produces 3% of the world’s wheat and 2.6% of the world’s corn—the basic food stuffs. This is about speculation and profiteering. It is not just me saying this about deregulation. The Governor of the Bank of England today stated his anxieties about the Government going too far on deregulation overall, and not learning the lessons of the banking crash. People will starve as a result of profiteering and speculation. That is why we need an excess profits tax and regulation of the food commodity market along with our partners globally. Finally, I know people do not want to talk about Brexit, but if we look at the London School of Economics analysis, we see that £6 billion has been put on our food bills over the last two years—that is 3% a year.”
“As I have said time and again on the Floor of the House, we saw this during the banking crash, when billions were moved from the sub-prime housing market into the food commodity market, creating a famine. As a result, we introduced regulation, MiFID II, which put position limits on how much of an individual food commodity could be held by speculators. However, the Government have now introduced the Financial Services and Markets Bill, and in Edinburgh last week the Chancellor announced further deregulation of the market system, meaning that that regulation will be lifted. Instead of regulation by Government or the Financial Conduct Authority, food commodity limits will be handed over to the traders themselves—the very people who are making profits out of this speculation.”
“It is important in these debates that we try to get to the roots of what the cause of this food crisis is. We will be told that it is largely to do with the crisis in Ukraine. I believe that it is actually to do with supermarkets profiteering and world global speculation on the food markets. With regards to supermarkets profiteering, as my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) said, Tesco has doubled its profits, while those of Associated British Foods have increased by 48% and those of Lidl by 319%. Now is the time for an excess profits tax to ensure that we prevent food speculation at the national level. In addition, there is speculation at the global level.”
“The monthly sanction rate on unemployed UC claimants in July 2022 was higher, at approximately 2.8%—or one in 36 claimants—for those in the planning for work category. The number of UC claimants who were serving a sanction in August was 115,274, after a peak of 117,999 in July. That is more than three times the pre-pandemic peak of 36,771 in October 2019. It just goes on like that. The figures on the scale of the sanctions being imposed at the moment are quite staggering. According to the report by Dr David Webster, which I believe was produced for the Work and Pensions Committee, the average sanction is about 11 weeks. For most of my constituents, surviving beyond 11 weeks becomes almost impossible—even just getting by.”
“They have difficulty complying with the various requirements that are made of them and, in some instances, actually even understanding the conditions that are attached to them. Living those chaotic lives means that they become intensely vulnerable. I will go through the figures again, so that I have this clear. The monthly universal credit sanctions reached a peak of 58,548 in March. They have now fallen back to an average of 45,100 in the last quarter—that is two and a half times the average in the three months before the pandemic, so there has been a 250% increase in that period. Sanctions as a percentage of UC claimants subject to conditionality are currently at 2.5% per month; in the three months before the pandemic it was 1.4% per month.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) on securing the debate. I concur with all that has been said about his past work, both on the Work and Pensions Committee and more generally on this issue. I have a simple question to ask the Minister. What is his understanding of the increase in this recent period? It is true that conditionality has always been an element of our social security system since the second world war, but there has been nothing on this scale. What worries me is the dramatic increase—comparing the figures now with the figures before the pandemic—and therefore the significant increase in the past year after the worst parts of the pandemic. Like others, my experience of conditionality and the use of sanctions has largely centred on the impact on constituents who live the most chaotic of lives.”
“My fear, which has consistently been identified as a problem, is that the system is not working; it is not dealing effectively with people who have chaotic lives. There are some conditions attached and criteria that work coaches take into account, but in no way do they embrace fully the nature of the individuals they are dealing with. The decision maker never actually gets to see the individual either to do a proper assessment. When the individual comes to me in my constituency surgery and I get a fuller understanding of their life, I can understand why they have slipped up at some stage and why the system is not working to give them the support they need to get back into work and earn a decent income.”