Shades of the 1980s
It was déjà vu all over again as I waited for my interview on Radio 5 Live about the unemployment figures on Wednesday. Nigel Lawson was leading for the government – saying that people had to have ‘patience’. The government minister was talking about schemes that have not yet been launched (the Youth Contract which starts in April) and expecting people to be fooled. All I could do was think about trying to articulate the sense of futility and emptiness of the 550 young people long-term unemployed in my constituency, up from 150 a year ago. And the minister reduced the options to ‘so you want to spend more’. We have a lot of work to do to help these young people. Listening to the Tories is a good reminder of what a Labour government can do to make a difference. Youth unemployment did go up after 2004, but only after we had cut it massively and moved on to helping lone parents and those on incapacity benefit (The youth labour market also deteriorated and there was a youth population bulge). I keep saying the new government did not invent the youth unemployment problem, but it has made it worse.
Posted by David Miliband MP on 17 February 2012
Lost generation
With youth unemployment set to cost the Treasury £28bn over the next 10 years – £4.8bn for the exchequer this year with an opportunity cost to the economy of £10.7bn – the sooner we act, the sooner we can reap the rewards of investing in our young people and our country’s future. The imperative is as much economic as it is moral … ‘Wage scarring’, where young people out of work for extended periods earlier in their careers never reach the earnings of their always-in-work peers, combined with a greater prevalence of ill health and dissociation with employment, threatens the creation of a ‘lost generation’, their communities and their families.
Posted by Kezia Dugdale MSP on 7 February 2012
The ongoing fight against another ‘lost generation’ was absolutely central to Welsh Labour’s campaign in the 2011 Welsh general election, one in which the party had its best ever showing since devolution. Not only did we promise to go a different way on tuition fees by offering to subsidise our students wherever they choose to study in the UK, we also made headline pledges on the skills and employment agenda. In April this year, we will launch the full rollout of the £75m-a-year Jobs Growth Wales programme, which will provide 4,000 young people with meaningful work and training placements. If that has echoes of the Future Jobs Fund, then it is with good reason – as a party in Wales, we committed to filling the void left behind when the Tories and Liberal Democrats broke their promise by axing that scheme. Jobs Growth Wales will build on both the successes and the lessons learned from the Future Jobs Fund and it will give hope – and new skills – to thousands of youngsters the Tories would have abandoned.
Posted by Leighton Andrews AM on 16 February 2012
Cosmopolitan to the rescue
Having been an MP for nearly 15 years, I’ve forged contacts with hundreds of local businesses and charities. So I thought: why not ask each of them if they would give an unemployed young person a few months’ work experience? They wouldn’t necessarily be paid, but they’d all learn new skills, and both sides could walk away at a day’s notice if they weren’t happy. My biggest worry was that the job centre would interfere. Many employers are put off official schemes because of bureaucracy, forms, health and safety and so on. But my local centre was great. As long as everyone was still looking for paid work they would play along. They wouldn’t trouble the provider or stop the young person’s benefits – better still, they’d pay any travel costs. So I wrote to every organisation I knew, inviting them to a breakfast meeting. And much to my delight, dozens of organisations signed up, from B&Q to the local Chinese restaurant – including my favourite, Cosmopolitan magazine!
Posted by Siobhain McDonagh MP on 9 February 2012
Labour’s town halls respond
In Haringey we have long worried about the impact the coalition would have on unemployment levels, particularly given our high dependence on public sector jobs. This is why very early on in the term, even when the size of our cuts became clear, we pursued a fiscal strategy that would free up resources to tackle the crisis head on. I was pleased to see that strategy come to fruition when the cabinet passed our annual budget with a £3.5m allocation for our own locally led job-creation programme. The money will be used for direct intervention to create an intermediate labour market. While the details are to be finalised over the coming weeks, at its core the fund will provide a direct subsidy to businesses who take on young unemployed people from Haringey.
Posted by Joe Goldberg on 8 February 2012
In Southwark we are creating a £3m Youth Fund to help young people stay in education and get a job – helping around 6,000 young people over three years. We’re doing this in three strands: giving financial support for young people staying on in sixth form and further education college; paying some students’ university tuition fees for the duration of their degrees; and creating opportunities to help people into work.
We have already agreed to pay the full university tuition fees of six talented Southwark students from low-income backgrounds who started their degrees last autumn. One successful applicant told me: ‘I live in one of the poorest parts of the country, but from my flat I can see the City. I want to go to university and study finance, so I can be a part of that.’ We will be awarding more tuition fee scholarships this summer, and are seeking to increase the funding pot with contributions from local organisations. And we are creating around 1,500 work experience and training opportunities for young people with over 70 local employers and training providers.
Posted by Catherine McDonald on 10 February 2012