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Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

Let me start by making it absolutely clear that tackling unemployment and youth unemployment is right at the top of the Government's list of priorities. I share the frustration of my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) at some of the comments from Opposition Members. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, to whom I pay tribute, is firmly of the view that the decline in the teaching of history in this country is a lamentable failing in our education system, and we realise precisely why when we listen to the Opposition. They have forgotten the history not of 10 or 100 years ago, but of two years ago: the mess they left behind for us. Someone listening to Opposition Members tonight might think that youth unemployment had been created in the past 18 months, but the truth is that when Labour left office 18 months ago youth unemployment stood at 940,000. It has since risen by 100,000, which we wish had not happened. Half of that increase has come from students in full-time education looking for part-time work. The Opposition talk about surging youth unemployment, and I get increasingly frustrated by their use of figures, because they keep up the spurious claim that long-term youth unemployment under this Government has rocketed, but that is utterly untrue. A like-for-like comparison that removes all of the ways in which they massage the figures reveals that long-term youth unemployment today is actually lower than it was two years ago. There is one other fact that they do not mention: fewer people in this country are on out-of-work benefits today than were at the time of the general election. Let us hear nothing about the failures of the past 18 months, and let us never forget the failings of 13 years of Labour government. We have had a thoughtful debate and heard some sensible contributions, including those from my hon. Friends the Members for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), for Salisbury (John Glen), for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham). We have also had a snapshot of the past, present and future of the Labour party. On the future of the party, I must say that the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made some thoughtful contributions on things the Government might do, and I listened carefully to what she said. We also had a bit of a throwback from the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), who talked about bankers' bonuses while conveniently forgetting that the bankers' bonus pool in the City of London was twice as big under Labour as it is today. I was also struck by the lack of ambition among Labour Members. When they went through their plans yet again—we have to bear it in mind that the money from their proposed bankers' bonus tax has been announced for nine different things so far; another bit of history they have conveniently forgotten—we realised that the reality is that they are talking about creating 100,000 places in a replacement for the future jobs fund. I see that as rather unambitious, because the package of support we have put together will help, and is helping, far more young people into employment. We have a clear strategy to support the creation of jobs in the economy and provide help for those people, older and younger, who are looking for work. We have set out some of those measures. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury team set out in the autumn statement a range of proposals to do everything we can to stimulate and support the growth of business. I am particularly pleased that in the last quarter private sector employment in the economy increased at a time when we face huge economic challenges that were described recently by the Governor of the Bank of England as probably the most difficult in modern peace-time history, if not ever. Yet against that background we are determined to give business every opportunity to grow and develop through investment in infrastructure, measures in the tax system and the measures we are taking to deregulate—for example, in relation to health and safety—in order to support business growth. There is no other way of securing the future of our work force or job creation in the economy. We cannot go back to the uncertainty and instability under the previous Government and under the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who is chuntering away on the Front Bench and forgets the severe damage that he and his colleagues did to the economy when they were in office. Alongside the work that we will do and are doing to ensure that business has the best possible opportunity to grow and to create jobs, however, we have put in place a package of support for the unemployed that I believe is more ambitious and more successful than anything that the previous Government did. Let us start with our work experience scheme, which will double in size under the youth contract and is already helping large numbers of young people to move into work.