What discussions has the Cabinet Secretary held regarding job losses resulting from the confirmed closure of DWP offices in Llanelli and other parts of Wales? TAQ(5)0197(EI)

I’ve made repeated representations to the Minister for employment. I made clear my concerns when we spoke on 5 July. I’ll continue to seek assurances about the position of staff who are adversely affected by these changes. And, indeed, I’m meeting with the UK Minister tomorrow to discuss the matter further.

That’s excellent news. I’m sure the Minister will leave no stone unturned, as indeed will my colleague, Lee Waters, who’s the AM for Llanelli who is, as we speak, meeting for the second time with Damian Hinds from the Department for Work and Pensions, and Nia Griffiths MP, who are trying to gain a last minute reprieve for what I and they perceive to be a very misguided decision in relation in particular to the Llanelli situation, where we are foreseeing job losses of 146 people. Despite the fact that Carmarthenshire council has worked hard to secure the offer of alternative offices in Llanelli, and I know of the valiant efforts on behalf of the Welsh Government, who have offered free office space to keep these jobs locally, the Tory Government have once again turned their backs on west Wales. Does the Cabinet Secretary agree that moving these jobs from Llanelli flies in the face of the UK Government’s industrial strategy, which says that it wants to spread prosperity across the United Kingdom?

Absolutely. I’m very disappointed that the DWP announced last Wednesday the decision to close the Llanelli benefit office and the job centres in Mountain Ash, Pyle, and Tredegar. Relocating jobs will affect about 150 staff, we understand. I’m also very disappointed that they did not see fit to consult with the Welsh Government about alternative solutions prior to the final decision. I stated my profound concerns regarding this to Damian Hinds last week when I spoke with him on the telephone, and I’ve written several times, both before the general election and afterwards, about this.

We welcome the relocation of jobs of 93 staff based at the Porth debt centre, who will now go to the Tonypandy job centre as opposed to Caerphilly, as was announced earlier in the year. And, during our conversation, the Minister for employment also indicated to me that he’s opening what he described as a large modern building north of Cardiff to merge five small and nearby processing centres, but he didn’t give me any details of that, so I’ll be pressing him on that tomorrow. I did point out very fervently that we were not looking to consolidate jobs in areas of high employment, but actually we were looking to preserve jobs in areas of lower employment where the jobs were much more important and much needed. We had some discussion about the topography of Wales in that conversation, and about how perhaps lines on a map without the mountains in between weren’t awfully indicative of people’s ability to commute, and so on. I will be pursuing that with him tomorrow.

But the bottom line is this: we are very, very disappointed that we weren’t properly consulted, that our offers of help with keeping jobs in areas that badly need them were not taken up. I will be seeking constructively to work with him tomorrow about their plans for the future to see if we can influence them to make sure that existing jobs stay in Valleys communities and other communities where unemployment is a bit higher across Wales, and we will be reiterating our Better Jobs, Closer to Home policy, not consolidating people in big centres inevitably further away from where they live.

Of course, I hope that you will be successful in your meeting tomorrow and that, hopefully, you will use that opportunity to convince the DWP to overturn their decision, especially in the context of moving jobs from the centre of Llanelli, which is going to have a huge economic effect on a town that is fragile economically, as we all know.

I’m grateful that you responded to my written question this morning, and, specifically, I’d like to turn to the fact that the DWP says that nobody will be forced to lose their jobs as a result of this decision, but that they’ll be relocated. But you will know that they’re talking about relocation to places such as Pembroke Dock and Cardiff, and it’s impossible for so many women, those with caring responsibilities, those with young children, and those caring for elderly parents to consider moving jobs from the heart of Llanelli to such far-flung areas. So, specifically, when you meet Damian Hinds tomorrow, will you ask more specifically for a guarantee from him that if someone is not able to relocate because of the responsibilities they have in terms of childcare or because of their personal situation, they won’t face compulsory redundancy as a result of that? It’s fine if they want to do that voluntarily; that’s a matter for them. But could you ask for that guarantee that there won’t be compulsory redundancies so that people can keep their jobs?

Well, indeed, that’s very much part of the conversation. We had a conversation about possible relocation areas for people from Llanelli, and a diverse range of places were mentioned, moving me to ask whether he had a map with the mountains marked on it. One of the areas that was mentioned was a possible relocation to Swansea waterfront, for example. I was explaining the difficulty of commuting from Llanelli centre to Swansea. That might not look like that much distance in the south-east, but here in Wales it is really quite a distance, and anyway the staff are likely to be coming from west of Llanelli.

So, I’ve made all of those points. We have made the point that we’re very unhappy about any kind of compulsory redundancy scheme. I will be reiterating that. But I would also like to say that, where people are affected by redundancy, if that’s what happens—and I am being assured at the moment that that will not happen—but if it does happen, then obviously we will work very hard to make sure that anybody affected gets the full benefit of our ReAct services and all the rest of it. So, we will want to be getting clarification from the work services director for Wales regarding the timing of the closures, the relocation plans and the likely effect on not only the staff but also the services offered to service users, and travel arrangements for them, and adjustment times and so on—really just getting as much detail as possible, (a) to continue the pressure on them not to make decisions that don’t make any sense in the context of Wales, and (b) where they do make those decisions, to make sure we line up our services to fill in the gaps, really.

Thank you, Minister, for the responses you’ve given so far. It’s an interesting comparison with what we were talking about with Tesco just a couple of weeks ago, where we were concerned that we couldn’t influence this large corporate, and now the Government, the UK Government, which can pay heed to our communities, is doing almost the same thing as Tesco did, which I find extraordinary.

The rumours, for example, are a huge issue. You mentioned the relocation from the DWP in Caerphilly to somewhere north of Cardiff—and other areas to the north of Cardiff. Well, I’ve heard possibly Treforest industrial estate. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I do know that the PCS union, who I’ve spoken to, have huge concerns about access, particularly, for workers in Caerphilly. Wayne David MP has expressed those concerns and I stand with him in expressing those concerns today.

This also, as you say, flies in the face of Welsh Government policy where we’re trying to bring jobs further north through the northern Valleys and the UK Government is moving things south. It just doesn’t make any sense. Therefore, will you further commit, when you speak to the UK Government, to encouraging them to keep the Caerphilly centre—to reconsider their plans for the Caerphilly centre and keep that open as well?

Yes, indeed, I’m happy to make that commitment to you. We will, I hope, be having a broad discussion about exactly what the plans are, why they’ve seen fit to do this, why they didn’t consult with us, and indeed what can be done now. It hasn’t actually happened yet. What can we do at this moment in time to assist and to make sure that we understand exactly what the proposals are so that we don’t have a rumour mill going on, which has been going on for some time, and that staff can be reassured, and indeed service users can be reassured, about where the offices will be located in the future?

So, as I said, we’ll be looking for clarification regarding the timing of the closures, relocation of staff, what’s happening to the services—the whole range of issues around the relocation of the offices. I will be reiterating that this is absolutely not at all what the UK Government has said in its industrial strategy about bringing employment to areas where there’s less employment than you might get in urban centres, and it absolutely cuts across our own Better Jobs, Closer to Home agenda.

When the Minister meets the UK Minister tomorrow, she’ll be able to say that she has the united support of all the Assembly Members for Mid and West Wales, and indeed from my party as well as Plaid Cymru, in what she says. She’s absolutely right, of course, in relation to west Wales—one of the poorest parts not just of the United Kingdom, but in fact western Europe. It’s quite wrong for Government to take what might be called a hard-nosed, commercial view of relocation simply to save a few bob here and there and to behave in a way that a company like Tesco has behaved, as Hefin David has just observed. And insofar as this goes quite contrary to the policy of the Welsh Government in this respect, this is the third time this afternoon we’ve heard that UK Government Ministers have had the lack of basic good manners to consult with or at least to speak with Welsh Government Ministers before decisions are taken that affect the vital interests of Wales. We heard this from the Counsel General, we’ve heard it also from the Cabinet Secretary for health, and now from the Minister for Skills and Science. UK Government Ministers need to learn that devolution is a reality and they need to respect the interests of Wales as represented in this Assembly.

Can I also say that this decision just shows that merely because jobs are public sector jobs they’re not necessarily safe and secure? What is vitally necessary is that we have greater diversification of the Welsh economy, because two thirds of our national income ultimately depends upon Government spending of one kind or another, and we desperately need to get more private sector investment and better paid jobs in Wales.

I’m very grateful for the cross-party support. It makes no sense to us to move jobs from areas that need them badly into areas where employment is much higher. I don’t have all the details of the plan for the big new office, nor of the closure of, I presume, some of the satellite offices around it, but I will be seeking clarification on that, and indeed we will be seeking to affect the location of that centre. I don’t have the detail of that yet, but we will be seeking to get it.

In terms of diversification, I don’t disagree with that, really, but also we want the UK Government to commit to keeping good public sector jobs in areas of Wales where that employment is needed. They’re often seed jobs, they often keep a small local economy afloat, all the cafes and little shops around these centres also struggle once they leave, and it is often the centre of a small little ecosystem. So, whilst I don’t disagree with the diversification point, I also want to underline that we want a commitment from the UK Government to use its money and employment wisely and well in order to support other industry and employment in those areas.

We know that the scope of the DWP changes also include closing their site in Sovereign House in Newport. This will mean relocating 249 jobs, which were in the heart of our city, to somewhere north of Cardiff. The loyal staff at Sovereign House deserve better and the DWP faces losing highly skilled and experienced workers because of unnecessary changes.

The lack of consultation, as other members have said, is absolutely deplorable and this goes against the Government’s policy for jobs closer to home. In fact, these plans seem to have been drawn up by the UK Government with no understanding of the staff they currently employ, commuting times, or indeed the geography of Wales.

My colleagues Paul Flynn and Jessica Morden MP are leading this in Parliament, but can you assure my constituents that, in your discussions with the UK Government and Minister tomorrow, you will do everything in your power to protect those jobs in Newport?

Absolutely. As I said, we’re trying to get a picture of the situation across Wales. We are not at all happy about the consolidation of jobs into one particular area. We haven’t been consulted about it. It appears to us to have been driven by estate matters, rather than jobs and employment matters, which is, in my opinion, not the right way round. We have offered to work with them, and indeed we are currently—and I extend the offer now—hoping to work with them about what their office requirements are, and that we haven’t been consulted. I have offered officials as contacts to have that discussion with them, and I will certainly be making the point about Newport, alongside all of the other offices that are faced with closure in this what I can only describe as ill-considered and ill-thought-out proposal.

I thank the Minister. The final question—Mohammad Asghar.