Alison McGovern MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I absolutely join the hon. Member in thanking all the organisations he mentions. If he could link them up with his local jobcentre, we can help make the connection between young people who have suffered disadvantage and that really positive community support that is available for them in his constituency. That would be very helpful.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  JobsPlus pilots were launched in July 2024 and are helping to address employment barriers for the residents of 10 social housing communities. We plan to publish our initial evaluation in the summer, which will help us to understand more about how this type of innovative community-led employment might support our vision to get Britain working. I look forward to working with all Members, especially my hon. Friend, on the next steps for this project.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Unemployment: Stoke-on-Trent · Hansard source

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  I would love to come to Stoke— [Interruption.] There are so many football-related jokes that I could make at this point, but I will not trouble the House. I would love to come to Stoke, and not just on a wet Tuesday night. My hon. Friend makes the case for exactly the strategy that underpins our reform, which is to join up health and work support. I have seen in my own constituency the power of peer mentors for mental health conditions, and I would love to come and see the brilliant work that my hon. Friend has described.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Unemployment: Stoke-on-Trent · Hansard source

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  In the year to September 2024, 4.7% of working-age people were unemployed in Stoke-on-Trent, but as I said earlier, that often masks bigger problems relating to economic inactivity, frequently caused by ill health. We propose to join up work, health and skills support, and to ensure that local areas throughout England have “Get Britain Working” plans so that every part of the country has a plan to grow.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Community and Third Sector Organisations: Employment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. When I was in Erdington, my Department for Work and Pensions colleagues and I met the college, Witton Lodge and other community partners. By bringing those people together around a common goal, we can change the fortunes of a place. As I will explain in a moment, that approach is knitted into what we set out in the White Paper in November. I want to mention my DWP colleague Lucy Divers, who has worked as part of the north Birmingham economic recovery board to bring DWP right to the heart of this local community approach. That is the right way to have a partnership where people can bring their different expertise to tackling the ingrained problems of economic disadvantage and unemployment. I met colleagues in Erdington, and we talked through the various challenges. I was struck by the importance of skills and the need to address the skills deficit, but we also need to ensure that young people—Birmingham is quite a young city—have access to the best possible jobs. I want to mention a few ways in which the Government have redesigned employment support to try to bring this new localised approach to enable us to work better with community and third sector partners. The last Parliament saw the biggest increase in economic inactivity in nearly 40 years. We remain the only G7 country with a higher rate of economic inactivity now than before the pandemic. We have a near-record 2.8 million people out of work due to long-term sickness, and, tragically, almost a million young people are not in education, employment or training and many more are stuck in low-paid work. This is an absolute crisis. It is the biggest unemployment crisis in our generation. We know that we have to learn the lessons of the failures of the past 14 years. We cannot keep going in the same direction; we needed to change course. For me, that means localising our services, so we pay attention to the specific features of each place that we are trying to help.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Community and Third Sector Organisations: Employment · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I think he has described the approach that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has recommended to us all: testing and trialling things quickly and reviewing what works and what does not work, and trying to respond swiftly and change quickly, rather than setting out a huge great plan that takes years to develop. That is an approach that the DWP is trying to model now. Only this morning, I was in Bolton with some work coaches who have developed a jobcentre on wheels—a van that we can take out to communities. They have done that pretty swiftly, and as my hon. Friend has described, they are trying to work out what works on the ground there so that they can feed back to us. I will conclude now, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I fear that collectively, all of us in the Chamber could probably speak about this topic for about three hours uninterrupted. We had better not do that, but I want to finish by saying how important it is that we have had this debate this evening. The “Get Britain Working” plan sets out the requirement for all places to have such a plan for themselves, so that they can work out where their employment challenges are and work collectively to address them. Everywhere in our country must have a plan for growth, and our reforms nationally are in the spirit of the local action that we have seen in the north Birmingham area. Economic growth needs us all to pull together, and we know that when we do so, the benefits will be widely spread. Question put and agreed to.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Community and Third Sector Organisations: Employment · Hansard source

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  I thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), who brought the debate to the House this evening. All hon. Members will agree that her passion and commitment to her constituency and this subject shine through. I can only say what an absolute honour it was to visit her constituency to discuss the work of the north Birmingham economic recovery board. I will come shortly to the situation in Birmingham and the approach that my hon. Friend recommends that the Government take. I hope that her remarks at the end of her speech on the purpose of politics and the role we all must play in giving everybody a chance and an opportunity in our society would be supported across the House, but she makes the case well for that approach. And so to Birmingham. This debate is important for many reasons, not least because some parts of our country suffer much worse than others with poor employment outcomes. The Government are committed to our ambition of moving towards a goal of an 80% employment rate, though some places in our country are already there. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Birmingham where the employment rate is around just 66%. That is not acceptable because when some parts of our country fall behind economically, it is bad for those places and bad for all of us, because it means that some people in our country cannot play their full role in our economic growth. Economic inactivity is also higher than the average, and that is why our reform plans take a different approach. We are no longer doing the same thing everywhere, but trying to tailor and personalise our employment support to where people are and what they need.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Community and Third Sector Organisations: Employment · Hansard source

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  It is testament to the importance of this issue, and to how strongly Members feel about tackling unemployment in their constituencies and working across and in partnership with community groups, that so many have stayed for the Adjournment in order to make detailed points, as my hon. Friend has, on a matter that is the biggest challenge in some constituencies. I thank him for bringing that expertise and hope that we can continue this conversation as the DWP moves forward with our change programme. As I was saying, the challenge is great. We need a totally different approach and much more local collaboration. That is why our “Get Britain Working” plan sets out three major reforms. The first is creating a new jobs and careers service that will test, trial and develop different ways of working to get much closer to communities. We are already seeing work coaches take their role out into communities to connect with people where they are, using the expertise of local community groups. We have also set up a number of trailblazers, including in the west midlands, to collaborate with the NHS and other organisations to give young people and those who are out of work because of ill health the support they need to get back into work, develop their talents and take up the opportunities on offer. I know that we will not do that without better support for employers. That is one of the reasons I was so heartened to have a conversation in Erdington about the different employers and opportunities in Birmingham and across the midlands, and about ensuring that the DWP plays its role in serving employers better and getting the best-quality roles into jobcentres so that they are available to people who might otherwise be overlooked. That has been a crucial part of the north Birmingham economic recovery board, about which I learned, and it is a great example of how local leaders can take action, through work with employers, to get to the heart of unemployment and inequality. I will respond to one point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) about enabling community groups and third sector organisations to test the efficacy of their work. She comes from the great social research city of York, so there is nobody better to make that point. Organisations can use the DWP’s data lab to establish the effectiveness of their employment programme. I encourage third sector organisations, charities and beyond to work with us to get to the heart of how we can effectively support people into work and into better work.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Unemployment Rate · Hansard source

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  Thanks to the dreadful inheritance left to us by the Tory Government, we need to raise productivity, reduce economic inactivity, increase employment rates and drive up economic growth. Our “Get Britain Working” plan sets out how we will progress our ambition of an 80% employment rate, which would place the UK among the highest-performing countries in the world.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Unemployment Rate · Hansard source

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  I am glad the hon. Gentleman is bothered by the employment rate and I hope he is bothered by the record of his party, which saw employment fall off a cliff after the pandemic and never recover. We were an outlier in that; it did not happen anywhere else in the world. As it is, our jobcentres, which, as we have said, are full of brilliant staff, see just one in six employers ever consider using them to recruit. We will change that. We have a new strategy. The Secretary of State recently announced our plan to ensure that the Department of Work and Pensions serves businesses and that we get the best jobs into jobcentres so that people can take them up, improve their lives and grow our economy.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for meeting with Department for Work and Pensions colleagues in west Ealing and, through her, thank them for all the work they are doing. I know she will have been impressed by them, as I always am. Disabled people have a right to work like everyone else, and it is our job to see that right realised. Doing so will benefit everyone, as we all win when people’s talents and potential are maximised. It is good for business and strengthens our economy. We are doing great things to bring forward our plan for a new jobs and careers service, which will put disabled people at its heart.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  Increasing employment and helping people into good work is essential to growing our economy, which is why our “Get Britain Working” plan sets out our vision to reform jobcentres and build a new jobs and careers service that will meet the different needs of local labour markets, people and businesses.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  On that one, I certainly will agree. Our work coaches are absolutely brilliant, and they are leading the way in changing jobcentres.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I apologise to my hon. Friend; I could not quite hear which jobcentres he has visited. However, I thank him for doing so and for connecting with DWP colleagues in that way; it is really valuable. I ask him to take all our thanks back to them. As part of the new jobs and careers service, we will radically enhance our use of technology so that people can access support through the channels that best meet their needs. Assistive technology can aid the accessibility and inclusiveness of the new service that we are building, so we are listening to those who already use it. On 22 January, the Minister for disabled people, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), and I met colleagues from across Parliament on the all-party parliamentary group on eye health and visual impairment, where we had a great opportunity to listen to experts in this field.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I do not.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for coming along to our parliamentary engagement session last week, which I hope he agrees was a productive update for everybody. As I just mentioned, I watched from the Opposition Benches as various policies, including the one he mentions, were introduced. We can see their consequences all around us. We cannot promise to do anything that we cannot pay for, but we are determined to have a child poverty strategy that works.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  I regularly meet representatives of the Welsh Government because while we strongly believe in devolution, we know that a partnership between Governments is the best way to protect our children from the terrible consequences of the poverty that the Conservatives left them in.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  As I have said several times, we are working quickly to bring forward the detail of that plan. In fact, only last week we had a parliamentary engagement session so that colleagues across the House could be brought up to speed on the detail of that work. I sat on the Opposition Benches and watched for 14 years as the Conservatives put our children into poverty. We will waste no time in dealing with this problem.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is absolutely right: this issue is urgent. That was why in the Budget the Chancellor announced the fair repayment rate, which stops families having to deal with so much debt through the universal credit system, saving families over £400 a year, but we know we have to go further. That is why, as I mentioned, Ministers are working hard to bring forward our child poverty strategy.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  It is a terrible consequence of 14 years of Conservative misrule that around 4.3 million of our children are growing up in poverty. That is why the child poverty taskforce’s work to complete our strategy is urgent. Taskforce Ministers have met six times and have had extensive engagement with people across the country, including external experts, local leaders and children and their families living in poverty.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Child Poverty Strategy · Hansard source

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  I hope the hon. Lady will understand from the tone of what I said that this matter is urgent and that we are working quickly and will bring forward proposals as soon as we can.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I am so pleased to hear about that work in Bracknell Forest. That is why the fourth part of our child poverty strategy is about local support. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and his constituents to ensure that strategy is a success.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend eloquently makes the case for our “Make Work Pay” reforms. This is not just about helping our economy grow, it is also about protecting people from poverty. In all we do to change jobcentres, we want to support people into good, sustainable, well-paid work because that is the best way out of poverty.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Chair of the Treasury Committee for all her work on this issue. I will happily engage with her through correspondence on the matter.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I think it is fair to say that we have spent a great deal of time talking to people from all parts of the United Kingdom, and we will continue to do so, because only a strategy that covers all of the UK will be a success.