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Dept for Education and Employment

Answer

Miss Begg: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what steps he is taking to promote innovative and flexible approaches to connecting the long-term unemployed to job vacancies. [138356] Ms Jowell: As a result of our economic and active labour market policies, the number of people aged 25 and over unemployed for 2 years or more has fallen by 63 per cent. since May 1997 and long-term unemployment among 18-24 year olds has fallen by 72 per cent. But there is still more to be done. The New Deals are a key part of our efforts to tackle long-term unemployment; innovation and flexibility are imbedded in them. From April 2001 we will be introducing an enhanced New Deal for those aged 25 and over, which will be much more flexible to ensure that we can address the barriers faced by each individual. Alongside this new programme, we are also testing further radical approaches, for example Employment Zones, with their personal job accounts, and Job Action Teams which provide very tightly focused extra help for the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We are also making a major investment to harness new technology to improve access to jobs information by all unemployed people. We have already introduced a new national telephone service, which enables people to access all the jobs on the Employment Service database, all for the price of a local call. We are introducing new touch screen terminals into Jobcentres. All Employment Service vacancies are already on the Internet, and early in 2001 we will be launching a new "Learning and Work Bank" Internet portal, which will link these vacancies to careers information and details of learning and training opportunities. At the same time we are setting up 700 UK online centres to bring internet access into disadvantaged communities.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

357 c311-2W; 138356

Session

1999-00

Subjects

Employment schemes Long term unemployed people Vacancies Unemployment

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk