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Work Programme (Wales)

I will start positively, from a local perspective, and discuss the successful back-to- work initiatives in my constituency. In 2002, I noticed that two of Denbighshire’s 34 wards had 50% of the unemployment. Along with the careers service, Denbighshire county council and the Welsh Assembly Government, we formed an unemployment working group. Over the five-year period to 2007, it morphed into the Rhyl city strategy, part of a national pilot of 15 cities and one seaside town, Rhyl. We co-operated and had consensual meetings; 180 people from 90 different organisations took part in the city strategy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who set up the city strategy, said that when she visited Glasgow, 200 organisations were trying— some in competition, some in co-operation, some in ignorance—to get people back to work. The city strategy was supposed to supply unity, and it has in the Vale of Clwyd. We have had excellent results. The usual pattern of employment in my county is that rural areas have the least unemployment and the urban area of Rhyl has the most. That has been reversed by our success. There are numerous reasons for that success. The Rhyl city strategy is led by the private sector. The manager, Barry Mellor, is general manager of Arriva Buses Wales. We set up lots of different initiatives, using novel ways to engage people at a grass-roots level, rather than just chasing them back to work with a stick or calling them scroungers or workshy. We engaged them on a positive level, using Rhyl football club to work with lads and dads or lasses and dads. We used football as a hook to bring them in, gave them confidence, training, skills and certificates that they could feel proud of and then put them into volunteering or back into work. We have used a Jamie Oliver-type restaurant called Taste Academy, teaching 22 young people at a time all aspects of restaurant work, including cooking, front and back of house and so on. They receive qualifications over a six-month period and then go into employment.