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Jobcentre Plus

It is good to appear before you, Mr. Taylor; I am more comfortable when you chair proceedings than when you question me. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), who opened the debate in a way that characterises his role and the tone that he uses in his chairmanship of the Select Committee. He continues to earn great credit across the House for the exceptionally diligent manner in which he performs that role. I say again that I look forward to visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency on Monday next week to see how some of the issues and programme initiatives about which we have been speaking and which are a success in my constituency, have been working in Bradford. Despite some of the concerns raised, everybody substantially acknowledges the very high quality of service delivery and support for the majority of Jobcentre Plus customers. I have observations to make about the tone in which the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) started his comments, but I shall start where he left off. We all know, through personal or family experience, or our experience as Members of Parliament—although that is a little detached—how Jobcentre Plus has to work, and its predecessor agencies had to, to support the most vulnerable in our society and those who, often through no fault of their own, find themselves in a very difficult position. A period of unemployment is unsettling in so many different ways—reduced personal confidence and self-esteem, impact on family, uncertainty about the future, material uncertainty, family breakdown, child poverty and many others. We acknowledge that across the House. Staff in the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus know that as much, if not more, than we parliamentarians. I should like to put that on record; it should reflect how we conduct our debate and conversation, and how in the vast majority of cases we, as an organisation, support such folk in an effective way. However, on occasions, yes, people are let down. It is important to reflect on that when it happens and learn from it. That should be the tone of my comments today. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North paid tribute to Jobcentre Plus as an organisation and the staff individually and collectively. I have a sense that Jobcentre Plus, and the way in which it has been brought together from its predecessor organisations, is now genuinely remarkable. Since its creation in 2002, Jobcentre Plus has helped more than 850,000 people into work, including 100,000 lone parents. It has supported 60,000 people with health conditions or disabilities to get the chance to get back into the workplace. Despite recent trends in the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count, about which I shall speak later, that support has contributed significantly to the observation, made by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, that the UK has a combination of the best employment level and the healthiest position in respect of economic inactivity of any of the G7 countries. I shall fracture the consensus for a moment, because the hon. Member for Daventry was uncharacteristically harsh in his political observations about the impact of parts of the Select Committee report and the wider political ramifications. He overstated his case. I say that, having known him for a number of years. I remember visiting him when he was a Minister and I was president of the National Union of Students. I had great affection for the way in which he personally carried out that job. Of course, I disagreed with some of his policies, but the way in which he carried himself personally earned him great credit. During my conversations with him when he was Minister with responsibility for higher education, I always had the sense that I was playing the ball rather than the man—I was arguing with the policy, not the individual. So I thought his comments today uncharacteristically harsh.