Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ann McKechin and Gemma Doyle

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

4. What assessment she has made of the recent public disorder in Northern Ireland; and if she will make a statement.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What assessment she has made of the recent public disorder in Northern Ireland; and if she will make a statement.

Unemployment in Scotland

Debate between Ann McKechin and Gemma Doyle

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Gemma Doyle]

We could have a debate about what outcomes mean, but for my constituents and people in Scotland, they mean getting a job and getting into work.

What is just as shocking is the Government’s estimate that if the Work programme did not even exist, five in every 100 people would be getting a job. In an astonishing act of irony, it is the first back-to-work programme where people are more likely to get a job if they are not on it.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has secured the debate this morning. Does she share my concern that the Scottish Government are refusing to provide training programmes for those who are currently on the Work programme, so people on the programme in Scotland are in a worse position than those south of the border? That is totally unacceptable.

[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.