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Youth Unemployment

Well, we are still waiting for an apology from the right hon. Gentleman for his Government's record. If he wants to quote colleagues, let me quote one of his, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field)—sadly no longer in his place—who is one of the wisest figures in the House. When the statistics were produced in the latter part of the past decade, he said of youth unemployment:"““We made huge gains at the expense of the Tories in 1997… and now we are not just back to where we started, but in a worse position.””" That is not from someone on the Government side of the House, but from one of the shadow Minister's right hon. Friends. That was not the half of it, because after that things got worse. More money was spent on more programmes to get more people into work, but youth unemployment continued to go up and up. If he wants to intervene, perhaps he can explain why that was.