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Meeting of the Parliament 29 November 2012

29 Nov 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Remploy

Brodie, Chic SNP South Scotland Watch on SPTV

I welcome the debate not happily but angrily. It was Einstein who said:

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

If any event in our recent political lives crystallises current UK Government policy and human stupidity, it is the debacle that goes by the name of “Remploy closures”. I was one of those who sat through the meeting with the UK minister, Esther McVey, on 22 October, at which we called for a full independent review to be carried out of the stage 1 Remploy closures before the stage 2 closure plan was embarked on. That call was ignored; indeed, it was not even acknowledged. Therein lies not just the stupidity but the crassness of the UK Government. A duty of care has been abandoned, and there has been monumental business and governmental incompetence.

I will come on to the latter in a while. All that I will say for now is that anyone who makes an announcement in which she says that she does not intend to delay stage 2 as she feels that to do so may weaken the business does not understand business. I know from my business experience that such a statement weakens the business’s viability and would make any potential customer or buyer wonder, “Why the rush?”

This farce—this circus—has been a smokescreen to cover up the UK Government’s intention, come what may, to shut down our Remploy factories, which it says were losing £68 million a year, although that figure is disputable, and to throw disabled workers into unemployment, which will result in them costing as much, if not more, through unemployment and disability benefits and the need for treatment of hastened illnesses and anxiety.

This farce—this circus—became a totem for the UK Government when it put Liz Sayce, the chief executive officer of the disability rights group, Radar, in charge of the Remploy review. As someone said at the time, “It was like putting a vegetarian in charge of a review of a meat factory.” It was inevitable that a review by someone who is a mental health expert rather than a business expert would come up with the recommendation that UK Government funding should be directed at supporting more disabled people into mainstream employment. If the Government, through its access to work scheme, and Radar are so good at that, why is it the case that 85 per cent of the Remploy employees who were made redundant four to five years ago are still unemployed?

The present situation magnifies the UK Government’s manifest incompetence when it comes to understanding business and, in particular, small business entities such as Remploy. Everything that has happened has happened because the UK Government has starved Remploy companies of strong local sales and marketing resource, and has burdened them with huge central non-productive and sales overheads.

At stage 1 of the process, 36 out of 54 Remploy factories—four of which were in Scotland—were designated for closure unnecessarily, because of an inability to understand the structures of a business sale that led to the closing off of the bids involved in the process. That in itself requires serious investigation. Under stage 2, another 18 factories—five of which are in Scotland—will go through another spurious exercise, unless the lessons of stage 1 are thoroughly learned and accepted and lead to change.

However, all is not lost. I have had regular and constant contact with bidders and particularly with Redrock, which the minister mentioned, and I can advise members that one of the 36 factories escaped. The factory in Wigan escaped, months after closure. A phoenix has risen from the ashes there, and a former Remploy factory now employs 16 of the 18 disabled former Remploy employees. Who knows? The road to Wigan pier might carry on all the way up to Scotland. I am confident that the Scottish Government will work with associated bodies in Scotland to optimise the opportunities that will arise.

I return to Einstein, who said:

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Let us continue to challenge the nonsense that was the Remploy stage 1 exercise. We should delay, if not dismantle, the whole stage 2 exercise. Businesspeople in Scotland stand ready to help. We owe our disabled fellow citizens of Scotland no less.

16:21

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Meeting of the Parliament 29 November 2012

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