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Newsroom & speeches
31 October 2008
I am delighted to be here – in particular to all those who have completed the training and are receiving certificates this afternoon; and to welcome this initiative for improving access to decent housing for refugees, and to welcome also the wider work of the Housing Associations Charitable Trust over the past twenty years.
Britain derives huge benefit from the diversity which now characterises our society. I’m a Minister currently at the Treasury, and economists working at the Treasury try and put numbers on these things. They estimate that migrants make up 8% of the workforce in the UK – but they contribute 10% of the nation’s income – so they contribute more. The think tank IPPR found that migrants contribute about ten per cent more to the exchequer than they consume – so the contributions to Britain help to support everybody else. The indigenous population is older – and it helps us that people coming into the UK tend to be younger – in Newham we have the youngest population of any community in Europe, and I always think it’s the liveliest too! And its been estimated that in 2006, recent migration added roughly £6 billion to economic growth – that is one sixth of total economic growth that year.
But it goes beyond those numbers. If you look at London, it has always based its success on being open to the world – open to people, open to businesses. Many people would say that, over the last few years, London has overtaken New York as the world’s leading financial centre. New York’s strength has always been based on the immense size of the American domestic economy. That opportunity has not been available to London – so London has to be open to the world for business.
And a lot of London’s strength is down to personal connections. I was at a finance conference this week where the speaker from one of Malaysia’s biggest banks talked about London as his second home. And a lot of people around the world think of London in that way. There are people whose home is in London – whose friends are in London, whose security is in London, whose heart is in London – but whose roots are in every part of the world. That is a great strength for London – its certainly one of the main reasons why the Olympic Games are coming across the road in four years time – and it’s a strength we want to build on in the future.
Of course, we don’t have an open door into the UK and we couldn’t. We have rules about immigration which have to be applied. One of London’s attractions is that we have a legal system which works and is fair – and people coming to the UK need to keep to the rules, to take responsibility for learning English and being in a position to make a contribution as everyone who has been through this course has done. And the benefits for our economy and our society are immense, and they are benefits which are going to be even more important in the future.
One of the projects which I am working on at the Treasury is on tackling child poverty – and it’s a project which has a particular focus on London. The most widely used definition of household poverty in Britain is of a household whose income is less than 60% of the median income for households of that size. And the Government committed almost ten years ago to work to eradicate child poverty in Britain by 2020 – with the aim of halving it by 2010.
We have made good progress. Child poverty rocketed in Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s. Since 1997 when the present Government was elected, the figure has come down. Its come down by 600,000 so far, from 3.4 million to 2.8 million. Getting it down the rest of the way to meet the halving target by 2010 is going to be tough, and in this year’s budget we committed a billion pounds to help us make further progress.
But in London, the figures have fallen by much less than elsewhere in Britain. Child poverty has proved stubbornly persistent in Britain. And so across the Government – and with local councils, employers, voluntary organisations – we are wanting to work together to make further progress.
The best way out of poverty is having a job. The number of jobs in London has rocketed in the past ten years – but the number people who live in London, as opposed to commuters, who are in work has not risen by anything like as much. And with the world credit crunch leading to rising unemployment in the last couple of months, we are going to have to work extra hard on this.
Jobcentre Plus has in place a range of support for those who’ve been granted leave to remain in the UK. A lot of migrants face a skills gap which can present a critical barrier to moving back into work, and JobCentre Plus can hel provide help with skills and information about finding work. We are developing a new Integrated Employment and Skills service, with the idea that, when you go to a jobcentre to get help with employment, you should be able to get help with skills as well. And we will be rolling that new service out across the country in the next couple of years. And because its been recognised that refugees can face significant barriers to work, they can where appropriate enter the Government New Deal welfare to work programme from day one of becoming unemployed, rather than having to wait a few months as others do.
And I particularly welcome the growing contribution that housing associations are making, to help support their tenants and others into work. I was with East Thames Housing last week over the road, hearing about their impressive ‘community champions’ programme which both helps improve the area for residents and to prepare people who are out of work for going into a job. And I welcome the wider focus of the Housing Associations Charitable Trust on how homes and communities fit together, and on how everyone can be made to feel welcome and included – where work has a very important part to play. I think we are going to see housing associations and the Government working more closely together on these issues – in fact we already are seeing that – and I welcome the fact that the Government has provided funding for HACT’s “Opening Doors” project, which has produced the Housing Rights website with important information for refugees and new migrants.
We are working hard on how we can link together housing advice with guidance on training and employment – and with other issues like financial management and access to benefits. Integrated services help us reach more people.
I’d like to mention in particular the Enhanced Housing Options Trailblazer Programmes that the Government is conducting with more than 30 English local authorities. They are developing and testing new ways to deliver housing advice and services to all kinds of social tenants, and the best ideas will then be spread nationwide.
The idea is that we want to extend support – not just to people whose needs are acute, because they are homeless or for some other reason – but also to people whose needs are not quite so acute. Because by reaching people before their problems become more serious, we can avoid them ever getting to the stage of really serious problems, and we think in that way do a better job for everybody.
The majority of migrants – more than 90% - stay in privately rented accommodation. The independent review of the private rented sector carried out for the Government by Julie Rugg was published recently. That recommends a new drive on quality in private rented housing, and makes a number of important recommendations for both tenants and landlords for improving the private rented sector.
A home and a job are the basic requirements for a positive and successful life. But they are just the start. The Government has a key role to play in helping people tackle the barriers that hold them back from achieving their full potential. That can mean:
As well as help with training, jobs and housing. And in Government we want to work with a variety of providers to deliver this help – we recognise that we need to work together with others to find solutions to the challenges.
Its very important to recognise that migrants – and refugees in particular – have often gone through extraordinary upheavals and hardship to arrive in the UK. Many have suffered injury and some torture. They have to live with the trauma of those experiences for the rest of their lives. Past support from family and friends and community may well have disintegrated altogether.
We know very well that migrants can contribute a vast amount to our society and to our economy. We want a strong economy and a strong society – a society which is prosperous and fair – both of those things at the same time, not one or the other. And the people who have been eligible for these HACT courses can help us with both of those goals.
Well done for embarking on the course, congratulations on what you have achieved and on being awarded these certificates today, and all good wishes for the future.
Thank you.
