Unemployment in Scotland

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Gemma Doyle]

As the hon. Gentleman has just come into the Chamber, I will make a wee bit of progress.

The UK Government did have a plan to help people back into jobs, but the Work programme is not working. In the great fanfare around its launch, we were promised a revolution in getting people back to work that would transform the way people were supported, reducing the benefits bill and getting people into jobs, while ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. What a joke—instead it has been a comprehensive failure. The 3.8% success rate in Scotland—I am looking at the success rate over 14 months—falls some way behind the Government’s minimum target. The success rate in West Dunbartonshire is 1.7%, which means that less than two of every 100 people on the programme get a job. That is a shocking statistic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gemma Doyle]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point, and we have seen exactly those problems in my constituency as well.

We have been told that things will get better, but we have heard that one before, and we are already £400 million into this failing project. People do not want to hear that things will get better eventually. They want and need proper help and support now. The truth is that the Government scrapped a successful job creation scheme. Labour’s future jobs fund had real success in helping people off benefits and back into the workplace. It created 10,000 jobs in Scotland and was a proven success, but only weeks after the general election, one of the first things that the Government did was scrap it. Why was it scrapped? Just because the Labour party had set it up—how spiteful.

The report by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion on the future jobs fund clearly set out the scheme’s benefits: raising aspirations for work; moving people off long-term benefits; and helping people into jobs. Some 101,000 Scottish young people are out of work and the Government should be investing in programmes that work, not pumping money into programmes that do not.

It was around this time last year that plans for the Youth Contract were first announced. Last month I asked the Employment Minister, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), if the rumours are true that millions of pounds are sitting unallocated and helping no one because the Government cannot get employers on board with the Youth Contract. It is worth bearing in mind that almost 1,000 young people are out of work in West Dunbartonshire. What was the Minister’s response to me? He dismissed my concern and told me that 20 young people in my constituency have had work experience through the Youth Contract. That was 20 out of 1,000, and it was work experience, not a job. The only place that those young people can see employment is in the Minister’s job title, and he should hang his head in shame.

However, it does not matter how many schemes and programmes there are; if there are no jobs for people to go into, it does not make a blind bit of difference. In recent months, as many as 36 people have been chasing every vacancy in West Dunbartonshire. In my constituency, as in many others, the challenge is not getting people ready for work; it is making sure that there are jobs for them to go into. That is why one of the first things that the newly elected Labour council in West Dunbartonshire did earlier this year was to launch an ambitious programme to create 1,000 new jobs and apprenticeships in our area. However, we also need a larger, more robust private sector in West Dunbartonshire. Public service has always been valued in Scotland. We do not subscribe to the Tories’ fixation on “Public, bad; private, good.”, nor do we accept their attempts to divide public and private sector workers by placing a higher value on one group.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady is right that there are plenty of complaints about the Conservative Government in Westminster, but will she put her ambitions in London aside and do what is needed, as she said earlier—and so that the Scottish Government would be less hamstrung by Westminster—and support moves to give more powers to Scotland, and also crucially, support the Scottish National party’s call for funding support for shovel-ready projects?

[Gemma Doyle]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, he will hear that I do not believe that the Scottish Government are using the levers that they already have. If he is patient, I will come on to those issues. West Dunbartonshire was named as the area of the UK least able to weather the Government’s cuts, partly because of our high reliance on public sector jobs. When 40 people are chasing every vacancy in my constituency, as there have been at times during the past two and a half years, we have a responsibility to do everything possible to grow the existing businesses and to attract new ones.

In Aggreko and Polaroid, we have world-leading companies in West Dunbartonshire. We distil and bottle some of the finest whiskies in the world. We have diverse manufacturing companies. Our tourism product is second to none. The Clyde shipyards are a stone’s throw away, and the Clyde naval base is on our doorstop. All of that is sandwiched between the fabulous city of Glasgow and the beautiful Loch Lomond. West Dunbartonshire is a great place to do business, and there are real opportunities to be had, but we need the Government to change course.

There is an alternative to the Government’s cuts agenda. There has to be, because we must jump-start growth, get the economy moving again and create jobs. The real jobs guarantee, which we have proposed and which would be funded by a tax on bankers’ bonuses, would guarantee a job to 110,000 young people. We also want investment in infrastructure projects, a cut in VAT, a one-year national insurance tax break for every small firm that takes on extra workers, a one-year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements and a properly resourced British investment bank to boost lending to small and medium-sized enterprises.

No one claimed that the path to economic recovery was going to be easy after the collapse, but the Government know and I am sure that the Minister knows that at the time of the 2010 general election, our economy was recovering. Growth was up, and unemployment was going down. We were on the right track, and the worst of it should have been over. From 1997 to 2008, unemployment in West Dunbartonshire more than halved. Yes, the financial crisis meant that it started to go back up, but the action that the previous Labour Government were taking pushed it back into a downward trend.

That is where we were at the start of 2010, but when the current Government took over, they took the wrong path. Their austerity measures have sent our economy and the job prospects of thousands of Scots spiralling downwards. We have seen a double-dip recession and borrowing go up. Is it any wonder that people are wondering whether there is even still a plan to stick to or whether the Government are making it all up on the hoof, as they go along?

We can all hope that the Chancellor will change course later today, but I sincerely doubt that any of us should hold our breath on that. I want to know what the Scotland Office will do about it. It beggars belief that no Scotland Office Minister takes part in any of the key Cabinet Committees on the economy or on welfare reform. The Minister has a duty to ensure that he is at the table and to force his way into those discussions, because Scots expect him to be there and to be making our case.

In Scotland, we thought that we would be protected from the worst of the Tories’ cuts, because one of the Labour Government’s greatest achievements was to establish the Scottish Parliament. It should have protected us from the worst excesses of a Conservative Government, but instead, 15 years on, we have a Scottish Government plagued by inaction, standing by and letting the Tories do their worst.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Gemma Doyle]

I think that I shall make a bit of progress.

The truth is that for the past three months, unemployment in Scotland has continued to rise, while it has begun to fall, albeit very slowly and with no guarantees, across the rest of the UK. Unemployment rates in Scotland are up compared with the UK average. I want to know what the Scottish Government will do about that. Instead of using the powers that they have, the nationalist Government are sticking their heads in the sand, kidding themselves that it is all someone else’s fault and leaving the people of Scotland to suffer under the Tories once again.

[Mr MacNeil]

Would the hon. Lady like to tell us whether the former Labour Government introduced any cuts at all?

[Gemma Doyle]

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that we are discussing unemployment in Scotland. I am setting out very clearly what the Scottish Government whom he supports are failing to do. We need to get the economy back on track. There is no black-and-white answer, but the Scottish Government are failing desperately the people of Scotland. If more of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues were interested, perhaps they would have turned up this morning.

The hon. Gentleman does not have to listen just to me. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce is also very concerned and has called on the Scottish Government to use the levers at their disposal to stimulate business growth, because they clearly are not doing so at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cathy Jamieson]

I welcome what the Minister says. However, to pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire, for many people currently out of work, the issue is not employability, because they are employable and are desperate to be employed; the simple problem is that the jobs are not there.

To return to the figures, with some 366 people chasing every vacancy in East Ayrshire, one person gets the job, while the other 365 are employable, want to work and are desperate to get that start. They are desperate either to get their foot in the door by having a first job or to return to work to support their family. That has to be considered, and the question is how firms can be encouraged to take people on and to expand. There is still more that both the Scottish Government and the UK Government could do, and they should look to build on the successful companies that exist and, wherever possible, to maintain and save jobs. In that context, I hope that the Minister will offer his support for ways of helping to retain the jobs currently under threat in my constituency.

I have probably taken up my fair share of time. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I again make the plea that both Governments should recognise that this issue is about people’s real-life situations; it is not a political football to be battered back and forth.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cathy Jamieson]

That is probably exactly what the hon. Gentleman is about to do; I hope not.

[Mr MacNeil]

I, too, hope that we find some agreement. Does the hon. Lady agree that it might help if the Scottish Government had capital borrowing powers to enable them to stimulate the economy and create jobs in Scotland?

[Cathy Jamieson]

The hon. Gentleman always takes an opportunity to have a moan about what the Scottish Government do not have or cannot do, rather than to look at the levers and powers that they have. The important question is: what can the Scottish Government do? They have plenty of powers at their disposal, as do the UK Government. It is for both of them to work together, and that is what I hope comes out of this morning’s debate.