Helen Goodman

Following a wide-ranging enquiry chaired by Helen into the proposed closure or merging of 53 Remploy factories including the Spennymoor plant, MPs have sent their views to Remploy management and are seeking a meeting with Peter Hain, the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

MPs found that Remploy’s draft proposals do not suggest a clear strategy or pattern: indeed the closures look haphazard. The inquiry therefore calls for proposed closures to be revised and subjected to the following transparent criteria:

i) long term business sustainability,
ii) level of subsidy required at each factory,
iii) location and local labour market considerations.

The Remploy MPs also called for a business plan which looks at new business opportunities. The report emphasises that Government should offer a mixture of support, encouragement, training and education for disabled people and urges the abandonment of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach that assumes all disabled workers can and should be included in mainstream employment.

Helen said: “People with disabilities have differing capabilities and needs – both as individuals and as groups. Furthermore, peoples’ capabilities and needs change and develop over time. We therefore believe that some ‘sheltered’ workplaces are likely to be required indefinitely, especially for people with complex needs”.

The report also recommends that the Government finances the £48m Remploy pension deficit outside the £555 million grant ceiling.

The inquiry concludes: “This is a real terms cut of £10 million in subsidy for Remploy factories. It does not seem right that the past pension deficit which has built up over many years should be repaid over this short period. This effectively burdens current employees with the consequences of financial decisions taken in the past over a long period of time and over which they had no control”.

The report makes the following recommendations:

● Revise the factory closure programme
● Produce a new business plan seeking to procure new contracts
● Explicitly acknowledge the differing needs of disabled workers
● Reconsider plans to fund pension short-fall from existing Remploy budget
● Set up a task force to encourage public procurement at Remploy plants
● Improve local and regional co-ordination between different Government bodies, Remploy and the voluntary sector.

The all-party backbench Remploy group took evidence from:

● A number of voluntary sector organisations including MIND, RADAR, RNIB and RNID
● Remploy management
● A consortium of trade unions including TGWU, GMB and Amicus.

MPs involved in the inquiry included:

Helen Goodman MP – Chair (Labour, Bishop Auckland)
Dai Davies MP (Ind, Blaenau Gwent)
Frank Doran MP (Labour, Aberdeen North)
Robert Flello MP (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South)
Dr. Ian Gibson MP (Labour, Norwich North)
Mark Hendrick MP (Labour, Preston)
George Howarth MP (Labour, Knowsley North & Sefton East)
James McGovern MP (Labour, Dundee West)
David Watts MP (Labour, St Helen’s North)
Ian Wright MP (Labour, Hartlepool)

Filed under: Uncategorized on July 2nd, 2007