Job Insecurity

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is right. Almost 1 million young people are still out of work and that is why we have said that we will introduce a compulsory job guarantee to ensure that young people who have been out of work for more than a year have a job.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to point out that in the past quarter manufacturing grew by 0.9% and in my constituency that translates into meaningful jobs. I took the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to Stroud last week to underline the value of apprenticeships at Delphi and so forth. Across my constituency overall employment in manufacturing has continued to rise and overall unemployment has continued to fall. Does the shadow Secretary of State recognise that that is a powerful statement of good government translating into economic success?

[Mr Umunna]

I think that I have had this discussion with the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) elsewhere. Some will say, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, in the context of falling unemployment, that the main thing is that people should have a job and that, unemployment having risen for much of this Parliament, they should be grateful to have a job at all. Of course we would all prefer to see our constituents in work rather than out of it, but we have to be more ambitious for the people we represent. We want them to achieve their dreams and aspirations. We want them not only to have a job, but to have decent work that pays a wage they can live on and offers a decent level of security. For the Opposition, any old job will not do, because we believe that we must do better for the people we represent, and for the people we hope to represent after the next general election—those in the constituencies of current Government Members.