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Work Programme (Wales)

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. This debate is extremely important. The unemployment level and inactivity rate are difficulties that have dogged Wales for many years. Having heard the right hon. Member for Neath assess the situation earlier, I think it was somewhat rich of him to make such sweeping statements about the current state of the economy and the current state of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity. We need to consider the backdrop and the context; the difficulties that we face have not simply occurred in the past 18 months. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire mentioned that I had some statistics in front of me. They are the monthly economic statistics published by the Welsh Government, which include all key economic data on unemployment among men, women and the under-25s. They refer to inactivity rates and out-of-work benefit claimants. At every measure over the past 10 years, Wales has performed much worse than the rest of the United Kingdom, so I do not accept the claim made by the right hon. Member for Neath that such difficulties have happened over the past 18 months. The difficulties have arisen over a long period of time. If we look at the trends over the past decade, the situation has got even worse in Wales. That demonstrates the failure and underlines the lack of success, in spite of the spending of huge sums of public money.