Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Helen Jones

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

On youth unemployment, has my right hon. Friend noticed the total absence of Liberal Democrat Members from this debate? Does she believe that they are unwilling to come to the House to defend their complicity in scrapping the future jobs fund?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In fact, the welfare spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said that his party had no plans to cut the future jobs fund and, indeed, that it supported help to get young people into work. He is not here either, despite the fact that he is a Minister in the Department that is responding to the debate.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the then Conservative Government turned their back on the unemployed, particularly the young unemployed, and unemployment rose for years as a result. But unemployment scars. Unemployment causes people problems for years to come. If people lose their jobs and cannot get back to work quickly, they can find it much harder to get back into jobs, even when the economy is growing again. That is what happened in the 1980s. It took a long time to get new job growth in many communities across the country, and by the time that we did, many people had been scarred for life and some have never worked again.