Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Debate between Derek Twigg and Stephen Timms

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

I shall be discussing Jobs Growth Wales. I believe the hon. Gentleman is commending it, and I agree with him; it has been a great success and there are certainly lessons to be learned by the rest of the UK from the great success of that programme.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend rightly says that young people, in particular, have been suffering and continue to suffer under this Government. Is not one of the important points about our jobs guarantee the fact that it will give young people experience in work? One of the biggest problems on getting into work is that lack of experience because these people cannot get a job.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right about that. I have spoken to a large number of people, including young people whose break came through the future jobs fund. They have said that having got six months’ work under their belts, thanks to that initiative, they were then able to look after themselves and apply for jobs, do well and build a career. As he rightly says, young people need that crucial first break and that is what this guarantee will provide.

Every day of unemployment means hardship, worry and missed opportunity for someone who wants to be working and earning. But the full costs are borne more widely and last much longer. Every day of unemployment is a cost to the taxpayer in unemployment benefit and tax revenue forgone, and a cost to the economy in lost output. It also imposes a cost we can never account for, through the strain it puts on individuals, families and communities. Those costs—in benefit spending, tax revenues, economic output, and individual and social well-being—can reach far into the future, as the scarring effects of unemployment build up.

The Acevo commission on youth unemployment found that people who experienced unemployment in their younger years are more likely to suffer not only spells of unemployment in later life, but in work an average wage penalty of more than 15%. That is why it is so troubling that youth unemployment is going back up. It is back up today to more than three-quarters of a million. Young women now unemployed will, a decade from now, be earning on average £1,700 a year less as a result of being unemployed today. Young men now unemployed will be earning £3,300 less a decade from now. Those effects worsen the longer that somebody is out of work.

Work by Paul Gregg at the university of Bath and Emma Tommony at the university of York suggests that the 200,000 young people who have now been out of work for more than a year are, on average, likely to spend another two years either unemployed or economically inactive between the ages of 28 and 33, and that the men, by the age of 42, will be suffering a wage penalty of more than £7,000 a year. Those are big effects that need to be addressed.