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Work Programme

My hon. Friend is right to make that point. I make two points in response. First, listening to the Opposition, one would believe that youth unemployment was the creation of the present Government, and has come about in the past 18 months. One would not believe that it had been rising steadily since the early part of the previous decade, under the previous Government, and that it was already at a worryingly high level even before the recession started. The second issue, to come back to the point about incapacity benefit, is that among the ranks of people on that benefit there are many who, had they had the right help years ago, could have returned to the workplace. They were abandoned year after year, many of them for 10 years or more. I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House share the same ambitions, but the Opposition should not forget that even in the good times, economically, they failed to tackle the problems.