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Unemployment

I start by agreeing with the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) just made. There is a fear among people about unemployment, and it comes from the knowledge of what a searing experience it is to be unemployed, particularly for some time. I also agree with my hon. Friend's analysis of the new deal. In its early days, it had limited success at great cost. It did not do what the experience from America suggests such schemes need to do—that is, concentrate on providing a flexible, personalised package of help to an individual. The new deal was a more general form of help for large groups and classes of individuals. To a large extent, the new deal in its early days involved the Government's taking credit for the natural effect of economic improvement on employment, rather than their helping individuals who had barriers to work. One of the sad things about the past 10 years has been the number of people who desperately want to work but have barriers to employment, so they cannot do so. Some 2 million people face such barriers, particularly people with disabilities. Over the past few years, unemployment has fallen by about 300,000. While 2 million extra jobs have been there in the economy, they have gone not to those people but largely to young men from other parts of Europe and the world. Although one is in favour of the globalisation of labour markets, giving free access and so on, it was important that we should have given people with barriers to work a fair deal and a good chance to get a job.