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Work and Skills

I apologise for not intervening on the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I felt for a while that that was obligatory, so I am sorry that I was not quick enough to do so. I thank the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) for welcoming me to my new position. I look forward to working with him and his team, in between being Minister for employment and Minister for London. I know him to be a gentleman and someone who is very studious in whatever brief he has. I also look forward to working with the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen). I would take three key words from this debate: practicability, simplicity and flexibility. Those three aspects underline much of what has been said in all the perfectly fair contributions. It is important to return to my little faux pas about my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett), because my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) is both right and wrong. Yes, of course, given the public funding and the need for money to go where we can exact the best return, we must concentrate on areas where the lack of skills is at its greatest. However, I do not accept that areas such as Henley, which we have just heard about, can almost be left alone. The regional contribution of each and every area, whatever its starting base, is hugely important for our economy. Wherever we are going in the current economic downturn, its impact could be desperately disparate and different in various areas, and the relativity of its impact could be very important. For example, on the latest figures, the most significant increases in the claimant count were in the south-east and south-west, albeit from a low base relative to other areas—but that does not mean that we should not be doing all that we can, as flexibly as we can, for the south-east and the south-west. The lowest increase was in London—5 per cent. as opposed to about 30 per cent. in the south-east and south-west—but we know that there is a huge quantum of unemployed in London because of the nature of its labour market. The National Economic Council, the regional economic structures and the Council of Regional Ministers should be pushing back up to the national level the immediate concerns and fine-grained nuances of each and every labour market in terms of jobs lost, vacancies and skills shortages. Those points were well made, and I will try to ensure that that occurs. As the hon. Member for Henley said, that granularity in getting closer to what is going on in localised labour markets will be one result of moving down from the Learning and Skills Council to local strategic partnerships. What local employment partnerships have done, where they have been successful—nearly 50,000 jobs have been secured through that process—is another aspect of his point about having fine-tuning and sensitivity to what is occurring in local labour markets. That needs to happen at any time, but in a period of downturn, significant or otherwise, it needs to happen all the more. I also take his points about practicality and about having greater flexibility in matters such as Train to Gain. In response to the hon. Member for Rochdale, I point out that the announcement on the £350 million was made yesterday, principally in the other place, but my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury spent an hour here elaborating on it. If the hon. Gentleman reads Hansard and still needs greater detail, I will happily provide it for him. This is partly to do with a sharper focus on getting from level 2 to level 3 as well as other refocusing in terms of Train to Gain. More details on how to achieve that will be elaborated on in the coming weeks. I do not take so seriously the comments that were rather cavalier with recent history. For the record, since 1997 long-term claimant unemployment has fallen by more than three quarters and is close to its lowest level for 30 years. Let us have the debate about nuances and trends, but not by undermining what has gone before. It is easy to assert that there are more unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds now than in 1997, but youth claimant unemployment has fallen by a quarter and long-term, and six-month-plus youth unemployment has fallen by over three quarters. I accept that what is very important, as the hon. Member for Hertsmere said, is not necessarily the claimant count, nor even the International Labour Organisation figures, but the number of people who remain in a workless state or entirely economically activity. We are trying to address those individuals, not least by introducing the employment and support allowance on Monday, enabling us to go through the various incapacity benefits available to individuals to replace them with one allowance, for precisely the reasons the hon. Gentleman suggests, so that no one is left behind. Those in that category who do want to work—I fully accept that there are plenty, some of whom we are not getting to as rigorously as we should—should be helped in that fashion. That will aid with regard to simplicity, as well.