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Mr. Paterson: Will Liberal Democrat Members read the treaty of Amsterdam? If the hon. Gentleman reads article 118 and paragraph 4 of article 123, he will find that we are bound by the treaty to enter at the basket rate--which means the median rate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) said--and any derogation from that must be passed unanimously by all other existing members. We are therefore bound, at present, to enter at a rate of DM2.95 to £1 sterling, which would be catastrophic for the potters in Staffordshire.
Mr. Keetch: I suppose that it is all my fault for mentioning the single European currency. I have now taken interventions from precisely half the Tory Back Benchers in the Chamber.
Mr. Keetch: Indeed, two thirds. I assure the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) that if he sends me those articles, I will read them.
I return now to the Conservative motion on youth unemployment and the new deal. According to the Conservatives, the new deal has failed to reduce unemployment. The charge in the motion repeats that made on the radio this morning by the Conservative employment spokesman. We commissioned research on youth unemployment from the Library.
Mr. McNulty:
Will the hon. Gentleman do a bit on the euro?
Mr. Keetch:
Yes, I shall do a bit on the euro.
In response to the Conservative spokesman's comments this morning, I have to say that the Tories have got it wrong. It is true that unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds who have been out of work for less than six months has risen by 10 per cent. since the general election. However, the new deal is for those who have been unemployed for longer than six months, and in that category, unemployment has fallen by over 58 per cent. since the general election.
Mr. Damian Green (Ashford):
The hon. Gentleman did not need to go to the Library; he could have read the unemployment figures when they came out last week. They reveal that the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who have been unemployed for between six and 12 months--they are pretty much the target for the new deal--has increased since the new deal was introduced last April. If the hon. Gentleman studies the figures and uses the Government's preferred unemployment rate, he will find that he is wrong in saying that the number of those unemployed for longer than six months has fallen.
Mr. Keetch:
Again, I refer to the Library's figures. I started by considering what had happened since the election. Before the hon. Gentleman intervened, I was about to say that between April 1998--when, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the new deal went national--and February 1999, the number of claimants aged between 18 and 24 halved. Youth unemployment is coming down.
Mr. Ian Bruce:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
There may be some anxiety over the definition of youth, but even in the number of claimants aged 16 and 17, there has been a 3 per cent. fall in unemployment, and in those aged between 25 and 29 there has been a 19 per cent. fall in unemployment.
On the radio this morning, responding to the shadow Employment Secretary's views, the Minister said that they were just plain wrong. For once, I agree with the Minister about the Conservatives' views.
However, we do not believe that all in the new deal garden is rosy, and we have tried to make some constructive changes. We believe that too many people are leaving the gateway. It was expected that 40 per cent. might leave, but 93 per cent. are leaving. We want to know what is happening to the 29 per cent. of those who leave new deal for destinations unknown. We want to know why, although the planners expected 20 per cent. of those involved in the new deal to take the education and training option, more than double that percentage--
49 per cent.--are doing so. We also want to know why ethnic minorities seem to be getting a poor deal. However, only slight alterations need to be made.
Many of the problems that we have suggested may be occurring, arise from the scheme's introduction. It is too early to say that the new deal is working, but it is also too early to say that it is a failure.
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead):
There is an air of unreality about the debate, arising as it does from an Opposition motion decrying job losses.
I represent an area that has still to recover from the haemorrhage of job losses in the early 1980s. Thanks to the entrepreneurial skills of British industry--rarely the abilities of British Governments--the country as a whole now has more jobs than it had in 1979; but in areas that still depend heavily on manufacturing industry, such as the area that I have the privilege to represent, a massive job deficit persists, thanks to the way in which the Tories behaved in government, especially in relation to the exchange rate. Therefore it ill behoves them, when they face a Labour Government who can report an overall increase in jobs during their stewardship, to try to pass motions of censure.
In Birkenhead, we are still 2,000 full-time-jobs short compared with when the Tories came to power in 1979. Whereas there has been a massive increase in part-time jobs in the rest of the country, there has actually been a slight fall in the number of such jobs in Birkenhead.
When we talk about the new deal, we are talking about a Government who are trying to help people throughout the country, but especially in areas where it is very difficult indeed to get jobs.
I congratulate the Government on the new deal, on four counts. First, long-term unemployment has been abolished among those under 25. It might mean nothing to Conservative Members, but it means a great deal to my constituents that the era when it was enough merely to pay benefits and forget about people is over. That era of long-term unemployment has drawn to a close; on those grounds, I thank the Government.
Mr. Ian Bruce:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Field:
No. I think that there have been far too many interventions in the debate. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make his own speech.
Secondly, I congratulate the Government on transforming what has been primarily a reactive welfare system into a proactive one. When the welfare state was established, the vast majority of people claiming benefit were pensioners, and it was totally proper that we focused on delivering benefits effectively. Now the vast majority of people drawing benefit are below retirement age.
Merely paying benefit is simply not good enough.The new deal represents a significant shift from a reactive to a proactive welfare system. It is not good enough for the Opposition merely to talk about the number of people who have moved from the new deal into jobs, though that is significant. This programme is about changing the whole culture of welfare and people drawing welfare. I congratulate the Government on that count.
Thirdly, this Government--of any Government--have devised the most effective and humane way to counter benefit fraud. Previous Governments fired randomly at claimants. Some people were cheating and some were not. People were driven off and we did not know whether they should have been claiming benefit or not. We now have a system whereby people are offered a full-time option at the end of their gateway process. On average, about a third of claimants cease claiming when they have to take a full-time option.
It is clear that many of those claimants have jobs. In my constituency of Birkenhead, the figure rises to slightly more than 50 per cent. The Government have come up with what the electorate have been longing for: a system that genuinely tries to help those who want to work, but cannot, and, at the same time, deals effectively with those who are drawing benefit while working.
I congratulate the Government, fourthly, because, through new deal, genuine entrepreneurial skills are being developed by the benefit staff themselves. It is a real pleasure to talk to them about what they are doing, what they are achieving and how they are able to help. They take pride in the operation that they can now offer.
We have abolished long-term unemployment, as it was known, for the under-25s and we are moving from a passive to proactive welfare system. We are helping those who genuinely want work and the Government have devised the most effective way of countering fraud. Entrepreneurial skills are being developed in the public sector. On all those counts, I congratulate the Government.
In the few more minutes of the House's time that I want to take, I merely wish to make a plea about how I should like welfare-to-work mark 2 to develop. The Government are considering that issue and some announcements, which are seeing us into that second stage, have been made. These are my suggestions.
First, I am concerned, as we all are, about the number of people on welfare to work who move from the gateway into the subsidised job option. We know that making that move is the most effective way of getting a long-term job after the subsidised job is finished. The proportion of people on that option has fallen from about 50 per cent. to 15 per cent. Why is that? Have all the employers with jobs to offer already come forward, is there only a particular stock of jobs available under that option at any one time, and do we need to talk much more carefully to individual employers about why they do not want people from the dole queue or from welfare to work? I should like the Government to think seriously about that. I could develop some other ideas, but other hon. Members wish to speak.
Secondly, I want the Government to be much tougher on those who have already worked out how to get back on to benefit without taking the option. In the Wirral we know which doctors are signing people off sick for 13 weeks so that they can return to benefits afterwards.
Although it is difficult to do that at the moment, can we have an assurance that people who have been on welfare to work and leave when they are offered a full-time option will be immediately offered that option whenever they return to the welfare rolls--within a year, for example? Such people should have to make that choice. They should not have the choice of spending six months unemployed and four months in the gateway before having to choose whether to go for the full-time option.
Thirdly, I make a plea to Ministers to think about shortening the gateway. Most claimants have four hours of interviews during the gateway. Why does it have to last four months? It had to at the beginning, because we were trying something new, but we are offering only five hours of interviews during four months. Could not we shorten the gateway? That would make welfare to work much more effective.
Fourthly, may I make a plea for us simply to give the whole budget to offices that are clearly developing entrepreneurial skills--including the benefit budget--so enabling them to run welfare-to-work schemes? Let me give two examples relating to the Birkenhead office. It cannot allow people on training schemes to apply for driving licences. I understand why that is not done on a national basis, but in Birkenhead there are jobs waiting to be taken by people with driving licences. If local offices had real control over their budgets, they would arrange courses specifically for people who could apply for known jobs.
This is my second example. There are, thank God, some unskilled jobs waiting to be filled in north Wales, but there is no easy transport to north Wales. An entrepreneurial manager wants to lay on a bus, which would be taken up later by someone else who found that profit could be derived from it, and we would be able to fill the vacancies from Birkenhead. We should begin to trust staff who show that they have real entrepreneurial skills in mark 2 of our welfare-to-work scheme.
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