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Remploy

I start by thanking the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of the statement. Today's announcement will come as a massive disappointment for thousands of Remploy workers, some of whom are in my constituency at the factory in Leatherhead, which is to be closed as a result of today's news. I suspect that it is also a massive disappointment for hon. Members on both sides of the House who have campaigned in support of the factories threatened with closures. I do not imagine that many Labour Members entered Parliament expecting to be part of a Government who would take tough decisions such as this. We know and understand the nature of the challenge that Remploy faces, and I know that its staff do as well. I have visited several of the threatened factories, which have hard-working and committed work forces who are very anxious about the future. No one on either side of the House would disagree with the objective of helping as many people as possible with disabilities back into mainstream employment. We all want to live in a society where people with disabilities are not outsiders. If the proposals are about achieving that goal, then they are worthy of support. However, there is one huge proviso: they have to work. I understand the financial issues behind these changes and the importance of the Government offering a wide range of programmes to get people with disabilities into mainstream employment. However, we must not forget the interests of the people whose lives will be turned upside down by today's announcement. The terms on offer to Remploy staff may be generous—their pay and benefits are protected—but no one will benefit if some of them end up being paid to sit at home. I know that there are anxieties among the staff about whether the company can really deliver its promises on job placements. When I visited one factory, its workers had just been told by head office that there were nearly 100 vacancies open to them locally, but their local employment placement specialists in Remploy said that the actual number was only one third of that figure, so there is still some confusion. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what work he has done to reassure himself, and hon. Members, that Remploy is really capable of placing all the people who are being displaced by this announcement in proper mainstream jobs? At the time of the Labour party conference, on the day that the unions were threatening to embarrass Ministers about the proposed closures and to call strike action, the Secretary of State responded—arguably he bought them off—with the promise of a review. The Government are good at using reviews as a way of burying bad news these days, but they are not so good at doing the actual burying. Is it not true that precious little has changed since the announcement of that review? Is it not true that even the factories not in the immediate closure programme now face financial targets so stringent that in reality they have little prospect of meeting them? Why did it take the threat of strike action to get the Government to consider seriously the issue of public procurement? I appreciate that the Secretary of State is new to his job, so it may well be that that question should be directed at his predecessor. Why did it take so long, however, before the issue was addressed in detail? Will the Secretary of State say how much extra potential Remploy business he has identified since his announcement in September? What practical commitments have the Government made to the company to enable it to continue to identify potential additional business in future? What progress has he made in encouraging public bodies to adopt the permitted rules that would allow them to give Remploy and similar organisations a ring-fenced position in the procurement process? I agree with the Secretary of State that everyone now needs to work together to ensure that the remaining factories have a strong future. Let me assure Remploy and its employees that the next Conservative Government will continue the process of identifying additional potential procurement opportunities for them and the public sector work force. No one can have spoken to Remploy employees in the past few months without gaining the clear impression that from their perspective the whole process could and should have been handled more carefully and sensitively. If the process really works and all the employees are placed successfully in mainstream work, it will prove to be right and justified. The challenge now is for Remploy to prove that it can keep its promises to those employees.