The three speeches/headings immediately before

1. 1 earlier: Jim Knight

   We are not in denial about the scale of the problems being faced. The hon. Gentleman is unusual in this House, in that he represents a constituency where unemployment has fallen, where youth unemployment has fallen, where long-term unemployment has fallen, where incapacity benefit claims have fallen, and where last month, the number claiming jobseeker's allowance fell. Does he celebrate all that?

2. 2 earlier: Stephen Crabb

   I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. In terms of welfare support—how we protect individuals and families and prevent them from slipping through the net during what I believe will be a long, slow slog back to the robust conditions that can create jobs in the private sector and sustain economic confidence—the recession is going to throw up major challenges for our country.

   I do not believe that this Government have much to offer the people who are currently hurting. Do not take my word for it, Mr. Deputy Speaker: I recall the words of the former Labour Minister, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), speaking in this House on 17 March during Third Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill. He said that the Bill

   "totally ignores the new poor: people who are already registering at jobcentres and who are desperate for work, scrambling for jobs, and willing to downsize in terms of the jobs and the wage packets that they accept because they think that work is so important. What does this Bill offer them? It offers them nothing."—[ Official Report, 17 March 2009; Vol. 489, c. 874.]

   This Government have little to offer those newly unemployed and newly hurting in this recession—those who know the value of work and who might never have had reason to go into a jobcentre in their lives before. What, too, about the millions of people living in households where there has been no history of work for perhaps two or three generations, or the people who come back in front of jobcentre staff time and again, caught in the revolving door of moving between work schemes and benefits, and back into temporary work and then to benefits once more?

   Even before this recession, the British economy was labouring under a truly massive welfare burden. In the past 10 years, the cost of welfare spending has spiralled upwards by close to £100 billion, with millions of people who could be working and creating wealth not doing so. We are talking about the millions of people often living on housing estates blighted by educational failure, worklessness, dependency on benefits, crime, and antisocial behaviour and substance misuse. In Britain today, more than 2 million children are being brought up in households in which no one works, and many of them when they reach 16 will join Britain's expanding pool of NEETs—those young people not in education, employment or training: the ones who slip through the net and are doing nothing constructive with their lives. This is Labour's lost generation of young people—nearly 1 million of them aged between 16 and 24.

   One of the fundamental reasons why I believe this Government have nothing to offer both those groups—the newly unemployed or "executive unemployed", as they were referred to in Work and Pensions questions earlier today, and the millions of people in communities of worklessness and long-term unemployment—is that they are in denial about the scale of the profound and deep-seated problems in our labour market.

3. 3 earlier: Sally Keeble

   I have just said that I would like UKFI to give a much clearer mandate on issues such as bonuses. However, I have defended to my constituents the fact that if the Government had not stepped in to support the banks when they did and the banks had collapsed—some people did say, "Let them go to the wall"—my constituents would now be in a much worse position. I am happy to argue that out, while also, of course, arguing about the need for tighter limits on bonuses and other action in that regard.

   The public debate on the current recession has been remarkably different from that on previous ones, such as in terms of the idea of unemployment being unacceptable. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso) said he thought this was a conversion on the part of the Conservative party. I think that that conversion was driven by the fact that it saw where public opinion had moved to, and decided it had better move there as well, and quickly. All of us saw in the recessions of both the 1980s and the 1990s people being shipped wholesale out of work and on to the dole and being told that that was a price worth paying, and the only debate was about how much they should receive in social security benefits. The welfare state became a sort of opium of the masses. Rightly, the debate is now about how we stop people becoming unemployed in the first place. I applaud the steps businesses in my constituency have taken to keep people in work, recognising that that is a national priority. Pressure is bound to come on the public sector, and I hope that when that happens public sector organisations and employers will be as creative and inventive in making sure that they keep people in work. They should look at shift patterns and different ways of flexible working to maintain employment in the public sector.

   The situation is the same in respect of housing. There are fewer repossessions now than there were in the 1990s recession for the same reason. Mortgage providers have been forbearing in taking action over arrears. The Government have also provided some support, and while there has not been huge take-up of some of their measures, the total effect has been to keep people in their homes, and there has been a recognition that that is where the national interest and priority lies.

   The situation is also the same in respect of training and what happens to young people. It is now accepted that we need a high-skill work force and that that involves young people staying on in education. We have the education maintenance allowance to support them in that. That has led to a quantum leap from what previously happened to young people.

   I want to talk about the future, and I shall do so by discussing the findings of a report entitled "Northampton families and the recession"—I shall give the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) a copy if he does not already have one. It picks up on some research that I and others did in my constituency and looks at what has been happening to families and at what kind of welfare state and welfare system we need as we move out of recession. I shall pick up on a few points from that. I also hope that I might have a meeting with Ministers to talk about them.

   The first point is that as a result of the recession more women are moving into full-time work while men are moving into part-time work. The women are saying they are the breadwinners, and men are becoming more involved in supporting families and child care. One of the consequences of that is a need for a different approach to flexible working so women can in some instances pursue their full-time careers while men are supported if they are more involved in child care at home. It must also be ensured that women being the breadwinners is a wholly good thing, rather than this really being a consequence of employers laying off expensive men and employing women at a lower rate. We need to understand what is happening and make sure women are getting paid at the right rate.

   Another factor the report brought out was that the fear of losing jobs and of unemployment is not the only big problem for families in the recession, but so too is losing working hours—losing shifts and overtime rates. The impact on family incomes is more substantial than the unemployment figures—tragic though they are—would lead us to believe.

   Another fact that came out of the report is just how many families are dependent on tax credits. The Conservative party position on this issue is completely wrong. Several hundred families took part in the survey, and 60 per cent. of them were dependent on tax credits. That is an astonishingly high proportion. As we move out of recession, we need to ensure that we have policies that support families in employment—in different patterns of employment—and that we can maintain living standards for families who are facing loss of work hours.

   The report also found that people were hugely concerned about what would happen to their pensions. As women move into full-time work and men into part-time work, their pension entitlements cross over, and people understandably therefore become concerned about their future security of income in retirement. I hope the Government might look at some way of allowing people to pool their pension entitlements in the way they can pool their working hours so they get their tax credit entitlements. This is a complex point, but perhaps I could discuss it with Ministers after the debate? It is about couples being able to save for their pensions together just as they might pool family incomes and working hours for tax credit purposes.

   Overall, the biggest concern that families had was about their children and specifically youth unemployment. Their worry is that, once the economy picks up, their children will be the last to get back on to the employment ladder. One issue that arose was children's ability to stay on at school, particularly when their parents are hit by unemployment. The education maintenance allowance, important though it is, is based on the parents' income over the last year. If their income has gone down in the last year because they have lost their jobs, such families cannot get EMA just when they most need it, to keep the children on at school. I hope that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will look at a way of ensuring that EMA can become a real-time benefit based on families' present, rather than past year, incomes, so that we can ensure that people do not feel anxious about whether they can afford to keep their kids on at school and whether they can get the qualifications they need and the jobs they want.

   The shape of the global economy and of the banks will of course change. I do not agree that we should break up the banks, but they will undoubtedly change. We also need to realise that as a result of this recession, just as happened with previous ones, the situation for our families will change and they will look for a very different kind of society. It is important that all our policies—not just economic, but welfare and education policies, for example—are changed to support families in what will be a very different society and economic age.

   I hope that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will deal with some of those points and look more closely at some of these suggestions. They came out of the direct experiences of families in my constituency, which were examined over a six-month period so that I could understand this issue and explain exactly what impact the recession has had on them.