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Employment

There was a similar scepticism when the then Chancellor, who is now the Prime Minister, announced local employment partnerships, yet they have helped 70,000 of the hardest to reach people into work. We are now saying that we want to ensure that that initiative is available to people who have recently been made redundant as well. We think that it is right to work with many of the larger organisations, such as Whitbread, Asda and Tesco, which have been very supportive of that, and have ensured that they offer people work trials and guaranteed training. If we can make our system as flexible as possible so that people are ready to go into work, and employers can play their part in saying that they will take people on as quickly as possible, we can help to fill those half million vacancies and reduce the effect of the downturn on our economy.