Youth Unemployment

Jenny Willott Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) (LD)]

It is worrying how many young people are unemployed at the moment. We can bandy figures around all day, but the figure that sticks with me is that one in five young people between 16 and 24 is out of work. That is a worrying—indeed, horrifying—statistic, and is a tragedy for every one of them, and for their families and the communities around them too. However, when we look more deeply it becomes clear that this situation is, in part, the Labour legacy, as has been mentioned over and over today. The number of people who have been unemployed for more than 12 months has increased. This Government have not yet been in power for more than 12 months, so we are clearly dealing with a legacy left by the last Labour Government. As a result of Labour messing up the economy, the Government are having to deal with a serious financial mess and the unemployment that goes alongside that.

People have talked about complacency about the youth unemployment figures. I have not seen complacency on either side of the House today—clearly people are seriously concerned—but if Labour Members were that concerned, they could have done significantly more when they were in office, rather than leaving a lot of young people on the shelf. Labour could have done more in power to ensure that people had the opportunities that they needed.

[Mr Lammy]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jenny Willott]

I will not give way. Everyone will have the chance to speak later if they wish.

As has been mentioned, unemployment among young people has gradually increased since 2002, and that was during the good times, so clearly in the bad times it will not be easy to get people back into work. It is now even harder for the new Government to get them into work, as they have already been out of work for longer, and we know that the longer people have been out of work and the further they are from the jobs market, the more effort, money and time it takes to get them back into work. However, the problem is that the future jobs fund was not working. It was created to ease youth unemployment and make the figures look better; it was not established to create long-term sustainable jobs. Opposition Members have mentioned that many times, but it is not that public sector jobs are not real jobs—of course they are—but rather, that the jobs created for the future jobs fund were not real jobs. They were short-term, six-month placements created for the purpose of the fund; they were not jobs that were sustainable in the long run. That has been borne out by the initial information on what people have done after being placed by the future jobs fund. About 50% of people were back on working-age benefits after seven months—one month after finishing their placement. Of those in a comparable group who found work through other programmes or found work for themselves, only 35% were back on jobseeker’s allowance after seven months. Clearly, the future jobs fund has not been working. It is performing less well than the other programmes that the previous Government put in place.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jenny Willott]

No; I want to ensure that there is time for as many people as possible to speak.

The future jobs fund is not cost-effective. It costs a lot, and that money could be better spent. In theory, it was aimed at those who were furthest from the jobs market, but it seems that a large number of those people in placements were graduates. For example, about 20% of the people taken on by Birmingham city council had at least one degree.

[Mr Byrne]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jenny Willott]

I will not.

The future jobs fund was clearly not working in the way that it was supposed to. As with many of Labour’s programmes, the words and the theory were positive but the practice was poor. It was not properly designed or monitored. It simply was not thought through. It did not deliver sustainable employment for young people.

Instead, we need to create a skilled work force and generate jobs for those skilled young people. Apprenticeships make people more employable, potentially by the people by whom they have been trained, but also by similar businesses. CBI evidence shows that 90% of apprentices find employment or become self-employed immediately after their training ends, which means that apprenticeships are clearly far more successful than the future jobs fund.

The group that concern me the most are those who are furthest from the jobs market. For many of them, apprenticeships are inappropriate. They are a particularly vulnerable group, and in the past they have been particularly ill-served. We need to ensure that the Work programme will work, and that the Government learn the lessons from previous programmes to ensure that those vulnerable young people are helped back into work.

I am glad to see that, under the Work programme, young people will get help at a much earlier stage than they do under the future jobs fund. They will be referred to the Work programme when they have been on jobseeker’s allowance for nine months, rather than 12 months as happens under the FJF. More tailored support will be available for those with the most severe disadvantages, and they will be referred after three months if they are not in employment, education or training. All the evidence shows that we need to get in there as early as possible if we are to have an impact. Even with all that evidence, however, the previous Government did not quite achieve their aims, so we really need to ensure that we learn those lessons now.

In addition, under the Work programme, the fees will be structured so that providers will get more if they help those who are furthest from the jobs market and keep them in work for longer. We hope that that will make a real difference to that group of people. Again, that is something that the previous Government tried to do, but they did not go quite far enough. I hope that the coalition Government will learn the lessons from that and ensure that these measures are implemented.

Following the demise of the future jobs fund, we all want to see much better, tailored support aimed at the needs of young people. We cannot afford to damage the career prospects of another generation of young people, as happened in the 1980s and early ’90s. We have to learn the lessons, particularly the ones that the previous Government did not learn from the work that they were doing.

The numbers are bad, and the individual stories are heart-wrenching. I am sure that we have all had people coming to see us in our surgeries who are at their wits’ end and absolutely desperate to find work. We need to ensure that another generation is not left behind, but the Opposition’s proposals in the motion today are simply not the way to do it. The future jobs fund has not worked so far, and given that the number of young people unemployed for more than 12 months has been increasing, why on earth do they think it will start working now? It is time to adopt a new approach, to ensure that we do not leave hundreds of thousands of young people behind. Instead, we must give them the skills and the confidence that they need to build a future for themselves and our economy.