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Unemployment in the UK

In the first 10 years of this Labour Government, unemployment in my constituency came down by 50 per cent., youth unemployment came down by 80 per cent. and long-term unemployment came down by 90 per cent. Those are statistics of which the Government and I can be proud, and they represent one of the best things that this Government have done. However, we have to recognise that the economy is on the turn. Male unemployment in my constituency has gone up to 10 per cent. We clearly face a problem with the hard-core unemployed, and I very much regret that we missed an excellent opportunity when the economy was booming to move many of those people into employment. We should have allowed the market to pull them into jobs, but instead we acquiesced in a policy of unlimited immigration. The colleague who has just spoken, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), was undoubtedly right to say that many of the jobs that the market would have filled with people who were otherwise difficult to employ have been filled instead by eastern European migrants. As he said, an employer might have to choose between a person from eastern Europe who is highly skilled, motivated and educated and someone who has not worked for 10 years, who has a problem with drink or drugs or who has difficulties with attendance. Who will that employer select? The answer is a no-brainer. In my constituency, vacancies were not made available to people who would have benefited very much—given the right supervision and support—from those opportunities. None the less, we have to recognise that what the Government are proposing is absolutely necessary. In the main, the proposals are excellent but, for constituencies such as mine, they are not sufficient. There are three areas in which I think that the Government must take some action. The first relates to what I said in an earlier intervention on the Secretary of State, when I spoke about the old community programme. The private sector and the normal routes to employment are not going to cope with the hard-to-place individuals to whom I have referred. If we are going to get them into the habit of work and attendance, so that they experience the pride that comes from making a contribution, we will have to create an agency similar to the old community programme. Perhaps it could be called the new community programme, but we need something that will allow the voluntary sector or local government to offer such people employment opportunities. In the present competitive environment, it would be unfair to expect the private sector to carry people who undoubtedly will be less productive than other workers in the same circumstances. Something needs to be done in that regard. Although much is already being done, it is not sufficient. The second issue that we need to address is how the benefits system interacts with getting people into work. People are not always convinced that they will be better off in employment. I believe in incentives in those circumstances. It is not clear to me or to people in my constituency that they are genuinely always better off in work. The complexity of the benefits system cannot be explained to people who have some difficulty with literacy or numeracy; indeed, it cannot be explained to many people who have no difficulty with literacy or numeracy. It is unclear whether people will be better off. There is a loss of benefits for many people who get employment. They lose council tax and rent benefits, and they lose in a number of other ways. That interaction means either that people are being invited to go into employment for almost nothing or that, as shown by the evidence given to me by local citizens advice and information centres, they are actually worse off. In those circumstances, it is entirely comprehensible and rational on economic grounds that people do not seek employment. That is why we need to decomplexify, if such a word exists—