[Mr. Bill Olner in the Chair] — Incapacity Benefit (Nottingham)

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 10:05 am on 16 May 2006.

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Photo of Graham Allen Graham Allen Labour, Nottingham North 10:05, 16 May 2006

As we have a little time, perhaps the hon. Gentleman will indulge me. I should like to reinforce his point about educational attainment being one of the key factors that we need to bring to bear in our partnership work on this issue. The powers and extra assistance from the Government on IB claimants are extremely welcome, but locally we need—we are attempting it at One Nottingham—to seek a city strategy. That is one of our priorities; the second—there are three—is to teach social behaviour in all our primary schools so that youngsters can get the social toolkit to learn, so that they qualify better than youngsters have in the past, and go on to further education, training and employment, so there will be less of a pool from which those on incapacity benefit can be drawn. We need to tackle the issue on lots of different levels, and the hon. Gentleman was right to emphasise that.