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Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford, South): It is interesting to hear the Minister recount those figures about how good everything is. Why is it that in Bradford, one third of the population is on some form of income benefit? The Government are doing nothing to solve the problem of long-term unemployment.
Mrs. Shephard: As I have just said, every region of Britain, including the north, has benefited from the fall in unemployment. The north of England and Northern Ireland have the highest unemployment, but it is still lower than average unemployment in the European Union as a whole.
In the 1970s--the last time that the stakeholders ran Britain--the north-south divide was a reality. There is now a smaller gap between the regions with the best employment and those with the worst unemployment in Britain than in any other European Union country. The north-south divide was a reality in the 1970s. Unemployment in Scotland, Wales and northern England was well above that of more prosperous regions. Now unemployment in Wales is at the Great Britain average and in Scotland it is below average.
It would be interesting for Opposition Members to compare our regions with those of our European partners: Calais, for example, has unemployment of 16 per cent.; in Mecklenburg, it is over 18 per cent.; in southern Spain, one person in three is unemployed.
It is against that background, that change in the labour market, that good news--which I can see that Labour Members are delighted to hear--and that fall in unemployment, that we should set our changed priorities in help for unemployed people.
Priorities have to change with changing times, but the fundamental aim remains the same: to offer individual people the help that they need to get back to work as quickly as possible. It is the task of a responsible Government to give unemployed people that help. As the economic background changes, so the programmes must change to give people the help that they need.
Today's labour market is buoyant. In November alone, in just one month, nearly 250,000 new vacancies were notified to jobcentres--the highest figure in any single month since records began. More than 7 million jobs become vacant every year. A quarter of people who become unemployed leave unemployment within a month, half within three months and about two thirds within six months. The Employment Service placed a record 2 million people into jobs in the past year. As jobs are more available, it makes sense to tilt the balance of our programmes increasingly towards helping people with job search.
The number of opportunities for unemployed people will remain the same--1.5 million--even though there are fewer people out of work. Community action is to end because help needs to be focused more precisely and its place is to be taken by around 240,000 places, double the current number, on 1-2-1 to provide intensive help and counselling to unemployed people. There will be more help with job search. Under the jobseeker's allowance,
every unemployed person will have a jobseeker's agreement that will set out the steps needed to help get them back to work.
Mr. Rowlands:
I have been following the right hon. Lady's speech closely. Will she confirm that the document from which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) quoted was not drafted by a Department, but offered the considered view of officials and Ministers about the community action programme?
Mrs. Shephard:
I make it a practice never to comment on stolen documents, which I have said before in the House.
The hon. Member for Brightside rightly mentioned that people with special needs require special help. I shall outline that help in a moment. The Employment Service will spend more time with jobseekers, reviewing their progress and giving help and advice.
In April 1996, we shall introduce new project work pilots for 6,000 people in two areas. In the pilot areas, people who have been unemployed for more than two years will be given 13 weeks of the most appropriate help that the Employment Service can offer, which will be followed by 13 weeks of work experience for those who remain unemployed. The aim is to concentrate work experience on those who most need it.
Around 21,800 severely disabled people will be helped in supported employment in 1995-96, at a cost of around
£153 million.
Mr. Ian McCartney:
Will the pilots operate in travel-to-work areas or in constituencies?
Mrs. Shephard:
That has been announced; the two areas are Medway and Hull. I should be happy to give the hon. Gentleman the details if he wishes, but I believe that his colleagues have the information already.
Placing, assessment and counselling teams, PACTS, will provide an integrated, flexible and local specialist service for more severely disabled people, and will include access to supported employment. PACTS will give advice and practical help to employers to assist, recruit, train and retain disabled people.
Training and re-skilling are also a key part of the strategy for improved economic performance--I think that we are all agreed on that at least. To compete successfully in world markets, clearly the United Kingdom and its companies must have a highly skilled, flexible and adaptable work force. We are committed to creating the conditions that will help to achieve that goal, which lies at the heart of the agenda for the new merged Department for Education and Employment. The merger has been welcomed by almost everyone, including some of the stakeholders--though not by the Labour party--so that we can bring together the workplace and the classroom to make what is done in schools, colleges and universities relevant to the workplace.
We have national targets for education and training, which I certainly accept are ambitious and challenging. They are aimed at fitting Britain's economy and people for the 21st century. The two competitiveness White Papers lay out the strategy for achieving those targets, and we have backed it with £300 million.
Britain, uniquely, has a national network of training and enterprise councils, which are committed to achieving the targets. The TECs are creating better local training provision, helping local people and helping to regenerate local economies.
National vocational qualifications are increasingly being used, and more than 80 per cent. of the working population is covered by them. I had the pleasure of awarding the millionth just before Christmas. More young people are learning about the world of work through work experience, and we are supporting arrangements to make it available to pupils in their last year of compulsory schooling.
People are increasingly taking up or continuing education and training, and 84 per cent. of the work force has a qualification. TEC expenditure, contrary to the remarks made by the hon. Member for Brightside, is set to rise, up 5 per cent., to £1.4 billion, above the expected expenditure in this financial year. The budget for youth programmes will rise by more than £100 million against forecast expenditure next year.
Modern apprenticeships are a serious and major reform of our training system. More than 50 sectors now have training frameworks, and recruitment has started in all English TEC areas. The training for work budget is being scaled down precisely because there has been the fall in unemployment that I have described, but the provision for people with special needs will be retained at existing levels.
Training for work remains a major programme, and quality will be improved to increase the emphasis on improved job outcomes.
Mr. Blunkett:
Can the right hon. Lady tell me why the budget of the access to work project has been frozen? Why are the Government proposing to reduce drastically availability of that key bridge between training and equipping for work and the opportunity for disabled people to get work?
Mrs. Shephard:
The budget of the access to work programme has already been exceeded during this year by some £6 million, so we are having to put a ceiling on expenditure this year. Meanwhile, we are consulting on the way forward for next year.
Unemployed people are not a single lump; they are individuals--people of all ages, all backgrounds and with very different hopes and aspirations. No single programme is right for them all--some need re-skilling; some need work experience; and others need help with job search. Individuals differ, and their needs differ, which is why we have a mix of programmes and the flexibility to adapt them to suit individual needs.
We shall continue to pay particular attention to those with special needs. The Government are committed to maintain the current volume of trainees with special needs, which includes those with disabilities, on the training for work programme, despite a reduction in the size of that programme. Disabled people will remain eligible for that programme without having to satisfy the six-month unemployment criterion.
We believe in giving opportunities and rights to individual people, to real people of flesh and blood--not stakeholders. We want a society in which people are in charge of their own destinies; a society where people have rights, opportunities and choices.
Since 1979, we have given the people a real stake in society. We have handed the trade unions to their members; we have given parents the right to choose schools for their children and given people ownership of industry in a share-owning democracy. That is a society of opportunity and choice, with real participation in the choices that all of us face in everyday life.
The people welcome those opportunities, and will not accept a return to the bad old days when the stakeholders ran Britain, and ran it into the ground. They will not accept more regulation or more taxation. They will not accept more bureaucrats telling them how to run their businesses and how to run their lives.
On Sunday, the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) let the cat out of the bag--a Labour Government, he said,
I agree. No Labour Government have ever governed without the support of the trade unions because no Labour Government can afford to ignore their paymasters. Unlike the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), the hon. Member for Brent, East at least had the honesty to admit that, and to admit it publicly.
But I have news for Opposition Members: now that the truth is out, the people can make a real decision about what is on offer. In the 1970s--the days of the stakeholder society--Government, big business and the trade union barons took decisions on people's behalf. Of course, we are told that under new Labour there will be no return to beer and sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms. Of course not, because under new Labour it would be deals over smoked salmon and dry white wine in a smoke-free zone. It is a case of new packaging and old ideas.
"cannot govern without the support of the unions".
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