Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Kanishka Narayan and Liz Kendall(2 days, 10 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Liz Kendall)
Our ambition is an 80% employment rate over a decade of national renewal. We will get Britain working by creating a new jobs and careers service in our overhaul of jobcentres. We will bring forward a new youth guarantee, so that every young person is earning or learning, and will give local areas the power to join up work, health and skills support to help the 2.8 million people who are out of work due to long-term health conditions.
Kanishka Narayan
I thank my right hon. Friend for her response, not least given the dire inheritance from the previous Government: the worst performance of an employment rate in the G7 since the pandemic. I see that inheritance in my community, in Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, where individuals carry not the indulgence, and not the offence, but the misfortune of ill health. What is the Secretary of State doing to tackle economic inactivity, so that we give hope again, not just to those individuals, but to my community?
Liz Kendall
In the Vale of Glamorgan, the economic inactivity rate is almost one in four people. That is higher than the rate for Wales as a whole, and certainly higher than the UK average. From spring next year, we will launch eight trailblazers to support more people with long-term health conditions into work, including in Wales. That is backed by £125 million of additional funding. We will design the programme jointly with the Welsh Government, and we aim to launch it in the spring. We are determined to boost jobs and growth in every corner of this great country.