Employment: Job Creation

Debate between Lord Green of Deddington and Lord Freud

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am being bombarded with massive books of arguments about the economic effects, as are quite a lot of noble Lords, I imagine. I do not think there is time to go into the detail here.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that in the past five years only 37% of additional jobs—I choose my words carefully: “additional” jobs, not “new” jobs—have gone to the UK-born, while 39% went to EU-born people? At the same time, the youth unemployment rate in the UK has been stuck at 13%, twice the rate of that in Germany. There is no statistical correlation between those figures, but clearly there are jobs available. Will the Government therefore take further measures to help our own unemployed get into those jobs?

[Lord Freud]

In the past five years, 57% of new jobs went to UK nationals compared with 50% under the previous Government. One of the most dramatic figures I want to boast about is what has happened to youth employment. I have quoted again and again in this House the figure about workless youngsters not in education: it is now a million below what it was in 1997. It went right up under the previous Labour Government and is now at a low of 14.2%.