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Employment

May I start by thanking the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement? I listened with astonishment as he kept on trotting out all the old, discredited claims about the Government's record on employment. Before the recession even started, their record was lamentable, despite all the boasts and all the misleading statements, such as the Secretary of State's claim that Britain has had record levels of employment. That is just not true. Britain had a higher proportion of people in work in both the 1970s and 1980s. The past decade has been one of wasted money and wasted opportunities. The vast majority of new jobs have been in the public sector, and not the private sector. Most new jobs have gone to migrant workers and not to British-born benefit claimants. The number of young people who are not in education or employment is 20 per cent. higher than a decade ago, despite the billions of pounds that have been spent on the Government's mostly ineffective new deal programmes, described recently as a ““calamity”” by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). Before the recession started, the number of British people in work had already fallen by more than 300,000 in three years, so things were already getting worse. The number of people claiming incapacity benefit has barely changed for a decade and tens of thousands of unemployed people were excluded from the statistics because of clever manipulation of the figures by Ministers. For 10 years, the Government did not fix the roof when the sun was shining. Ministers have left themselves to run a marathon with holes in their shoes before they have even crossed the starting line. We are now seeing jobs axed at a rate of more than 2,000 a day and we have the fastest rising unemployment since 1992. The OECD says that that will get worse and that unemployment will rise faster in Britain than in any other G7 country. Even the pre-Budget report yesterday forecast steeply rising unemployment—small wonder that the DWP needs more money to cope with the challenge. No doubt that will help with the moratorium on jobcentre closures—what a farcical announcement that was. The Government have closed 492 jobcentres since 2002, and since unemployment started to rise in January they have closed a jobcentre a week. Guess how many they were planning to close next year? Three. Some moratorium. They have already nearly finished the closure programme. With what else does the Secretary of State meet this tremendous challenge? Another committee, chaired by the Prime Minister. What a relief that will be to the thousands of people who are nervous about their jobs. There is no help for the large numbers of people in our smaller firms who face redundancy. The business tax cuts, designed to help smaller companies, are due to last for one year, even though the Government say that unemployment will continue to rise into 2010. The Secretary of State boasts about the flexible new deal without saying that it will not even start for another year. Will he confirm that under the flexible new deal young people will have to wait 12 months and not six before they are eligible for new deal help? He could have announced the suspension of the rules that stop people retraining. We asked for that two weeks ago, so will he now take up our proposal to allow all jobseekers to train immediately rather than having to wait to be referred to the new deal? Have the employers joining the national economic partnership specifically committed to creating new jobs? If so, how many have done so? How will the Government ensure that small businesses that are considering making redundancies are aware of the rapid response service and will make use of it? Why did yesterday's statement not contain a real employment programme with incentives to employers to take on new staff of the kind for which we have called? When we launched our proposals, the CBI described them as ““imaginative”” and said that they would help"““small businesses keep people in work””." The Secretary of State has announced today a sticking-plaster solution to the biggest challenge that we face as a nation. Unemployment is set to rise sharply and the Government have no idea of how to deal with it. They have wasted 10 years of opportunity and are now out of money and out of ideas. Ten years ago, the Government inherited an unemployment rate that was falling fast. It looks as if they will do just the opposite for their successor.