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Unemployment

Like the hon. Gentleman, I met the local Jobcentre Plus manager to discuss that. To be fair, I know that there were some problems with the receivers in allowing Jobcentre Plus staff into Woolworths, but once those redundancies had happened, the help referred to in the motion tabled by the official Opposition and in our amendment to it was not available—it is not there at the moment. That is one of the main differences between the policies of the Opposition parties and Government policy. Many people who are currently not long-term unemployed have never been unemployed before. The lady I referred to worked at Woolworths for 35 years, but suddenly she finds herself redundant. Those people need advice not only on benefits and job seeking, but on debt counselling and mortgage advice, which my constituent referred to. If someone's weekly income suddenly drops from £500 a week to £60.50, radical lifestyle changes are needed, and people need support and help to make those changes. Those changes and that help are not available at the moment, but the Government amendment to the motion and Government policy reiterate support for the Government's welfare reform proposals and the flexible new deal. There is an almost daily drip of the announcement of new initiatives. Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced £45 million for white collar workers, but where is the coherent strategy? What help is coercion of the long-term unemployed when those newly unemployed have to wait 12 months before they can access the full range of services that Jobcentre Plus has to offer? How are young people such as those who started a new deal for young people programme after six months out of work helped by that period being changed to 12 months? Those policies were written for the labour market of two years ago and are totally inadequate for the current circumstances. The Work and Pensions Committee report "DWP's Commissioning Strategy and the Flexible New Deal", published last week, raised major concerns, including whether the £236 million budget for phase 1 is enough. The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion has estimated that to achieve the flexible new deal targets, an additional £1 billion would be needed in 2009-10. Can the 37.5 per cent. improvement in job outcome performance over what has been achieved by DWP contractors in the past be met in the context of a significant reduction in funding? What is the evidence base for the wholesale marketisation of welfare-to-work provision in the United Kingdom? The position has not been helped by reports in The Observer at the weekend suggesting that the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform had suppressed figures showing that private firms""placed just 6 per cent. of incapacity benefit claimants on their books into work, rather than the 26 per cent. they had claimed would be possible when they bid for contracts. This compared to 14 per cent. achieved by state job centres during the same period."" I note the Secretary of State's response, but perhaps he should remind the Prime Minister of the rules regarding the release of statistics. He certainly did not apply the same strictures when it came to the release of knife crime figures. Ideologically, as Liberal Democrats we are not opposed to marketisation, although we are concerned about the headlong rush into it with what appear to be inadequate resources. The DWP's own research, shown in the review of adviser discretion released on 16 February, showed that""advisers… believe they could get better results if they had discretion"." We agree with that, and would give people the help that they need from day one. Both the Government and the Conservative Opposition propose giving employers subsidies for taking on unemployed people. In January the Government proposed £2,500 golden hellos, while the Conservatives have proposed tax breaks for those taking on unemployed people which would cost £3 billion. Where is the evidence that that sort of generalised employment scheme works? Back in the 1980s and 1990s there were numerous employment schemes, including the national insurance contribution holiday, which ran from April 1996 until 1999. It was expected to attract 130,000 applicants, but there were only 2,718 applications. The work start scheme ran from July 1993 until April 1998. John Atkinson of the Institute of Employment Studies found that the""NIC Holiday appeared to be a bonus for recruiting a long-term unemployed person, rather than an incentive for so doing."" We fear that, regrettably, the Government's golden hello and the Conservatives' national insurance holiday are likely to have the same result. The real problem facing businesses and stopping them from recruiting is not just a lack of credit, but a real and prolonged lack of demand for their goods and services. That is why the Liberal Democrats' proposal to launch a "green road" out of the recession, using the £12.5 billion currently being used to fund the VAT reduction, is so important. It will fund insulation and energy efficiency schemes in 2 million homes, and will begin a five-year programme to insulate every school and hospital.