Margaret Moran MP
Labour MP for Luton South

Margaret Moran MP today welcomed the launch of a new national helpline to protect vulnerable workers.

The new Pay and Work Rights helpline is part of a wider campaign to raise awareness of workplace rights introduced by the Government. It will provide a unified point of contact for both employers and workers.

Margaret Moran said:
“This new hotline makes it easier than ever for vulnerable workers and employers to ask questions about the rules we have brought in and to report bad or illegal practice whenever it occurs. The Government has an excellent record on promoting and legislating for workplace rights and has gone one step further with this new initiative.”

Business Minister, Pat McFadden said:

“By consolidating the current complex system of different helplines for different issues into one single number we are making it easier for workers to report abuses and for Government to respond. This is a simple system for reporting abuses and giving advice and information to employers and workers.
“We are determined that the recession does not become an excuse to deny people their basic rights at work”.

The hotline number is 0800 917 2368 and comes on line today.

In the 80s and 90s, long term youth unemployment went up and up. During these tough times Margaret Moran MP is determined that we don’t lose a generation of our young people to unemployment or lost opportunity because of the global recession.

Margaret Moran MP is calling on business, charities, community groups and councils to support young people during these tough times.

Margaret said

“I support investing £5 billion to help people get back into work quickly. This is paying for more jobcentre plus staff here in Luton, more opportunities for people of every age and real help now, right when people need it.

“I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement to the TUC this week that we will provide 21,000 additional apprenticeships in the public sector this year.

“But I know young people in Luton leaving school or university will be concerned about the state of the jobs market and what they do next. So I’m calling on business, charities, community groups and councils to support young people during these tough times.

“The Future Jobs Fund is a billion pound fund aimed at creating jobs for unemployed young people. I want local organisations to get their bids in for the 100,000 jobs available.

“Abandoning a generation would cost us all more in the long run, and devastate entire communities.”

Luton South MP Margaret Moran has welcomed the local government ombudsman decision to find in favour of a Luton woman and her daughter appealing against a decision to evict them. It has emerged that Luton Council failed to correctly calculate her benefits entitlement thus compelling her to pay back benefits that she was entitled to. As a result her rent payments went in arrears and she was eventually evicted.

The Luton woman and her daughter were made homeless and forced to stay at friends, sleep in a car and briefly return to a violent ex-partner. Had the council properly recorded that was a housing benefit review for the case, the eviction would not have happened.

The ombudsman states that the woman’s “depression, and her experiences as a victim of domestic violence, mean that she is a vulnerable woman whose housing circumstances are vitally important to her own welfare and that of her child.”
He goes on to say that the council could have taken reasonable steps to assist her with her debt problems and that there was a service failure by the council.

Margaret Moran says: “I have been warning the council for some time about the lack of joined up thinking between housing benefit and the housing department and that they have not been dealing properly with domestic violence cases. In this case I very much welcome the ombudsman’s conclusions and believe the council should now get its act together and make sure that this never happens again.”

The ombudsman recommends that the council apologises and awards a compensation figure of £5000.