Unemployment

Debate between Liam Byrne and Steve Rotheram

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We were promised that this was going to be the greenest Government ever, but a wide group of green and conservation organisations now say that the Government are comprehensively failing to meet that commitment. We all know that one of the key growth sectors for the future has to be low-carbon industries. The Government should therefore be doing more to get people into work in these sectors, not least by providing some regulatory certainty about the future.

Let me finish my point about the collapse in the rate of people flowing off benefits and into work. There is a very basic test. The Minister’s plan is not working unless it is getting more people off benefits and into work, unless the unemployment bill is coming down, and unless it is really making a difference—and right now, he is failing on every single count.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the 227 additional people who have joined the dole queue in Liverpool, Walton may be seen by the Conservatives as just collateral damage from their failed economic policy, but for each of those individuals, although they are a statistic to the Government, theirs is a personal tragedy? Does he agree that they are still the same old Tories who believe that unemployment is a price worth paying?

[Mr Byrne]

Many will draw exactly that conclusion, not least because when they see a Secretary of State who is unable to come to this House and set out how many jobs his various initiatives are creating, they must conclude that he simply cannot be bothered to find out.

I want to spell out how two particular groups are being pretty badly hit by this Government’s policies. The human cost of the Government’s failure to get people back to work, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) alluded, will be on everybody’s minds this afternoon. When families get together this Christmas, there will be plenty of anxious talk about the year ahead. This House has debated many times before the dangers of creating a lost generation, and today that news got even worse. Youth unemployment is up by 54,000. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said earlier today, long-term youth unemployment is up this year by 93%. Two hundred and seventy of us now represent constituencies where long-term youth unemployment has risen by over 100%. That is simply not good enough.