Compulsory Jobs Guarantee — House of Commons, 2015-02-11
Topic: Labor
Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I do not think we should pretend today that tackling long-term unemployment is anything other than immensely challenging. Fluctuations in levels of employment and unemployment are largely driven by the state of the economy, but somewhere in today’s debate we have lost sight of the fact that, even allowing for economic cycles, most people claim jobseeker’s allowance for a very short time. Most people come off JSA in a matter of weeks or months. Only a small minority of claimants will experience long-term unemployment, and most of them are concentrated in geographic areas where work is hard to find. Inevitably, in a competitive labour market those with least experience and low skill levels find it hardest to find work, and many of those who struggle to sustain employment, and those most at risk of long-term unemployment, face additional hurdles In the short time I have today I want to talk about young jobseekers. Youth unemployment is unacceptably high and much more could be done to address it. Young people’s job prospects have been very adversely affected by the financial collapse and recession, but it is really important to emphasise that as the economy recovers youth unemployment has been falling—certainly in Scotland—and is now at its lowest level for five years. I welcome that, but there are still enormous challenges ahead The question today is whether the proposed compulsory jobs guarantee would tackle long-term unemployment effectively. I am not convinced by what I have heard from either Front Bench. I do not think the policy addresses the underlying causes of long-term unemployment. It is a blunt instrument that will not help those facing the biggest disadvantages, and it offers too little, too late. It is desperately important that we do not wait until somebody has been unemployed for a whole year before we intervene, because all the evidence suggests that earlier interventions with young people are much more effective. I also regret the lack of ambition from the Government to make the kind of early interventions that might tackle disadvantage In response to soaring youth unemployment in the wake of the financial crash, the Scottish Government introduced the Opportunities for All scheme, which offers every 16 to 19-year-old in Scotland a place in work, education or training. Take-up has been overwhelming: record levels of school leavers—more than 92%—now have a positive destination on leaving school, and more importantly, those positive destinations are being sustained for 90% of school leavers. The number of young people not in education, training or employment is now at its lowest level since before the financial crash and has decreased across every local authority area There is no room for complacency, however, and we need to talk about the minority still being left behind. In certain parts of the country, job opportunities are still very limited. The final report of the commission for developing Scotland’s young work force, chaired by Sir Ian Wood, was published in June last year. It set out recommendations to reduce youth unemployment by 40% by 2020 and proposed an ambitious transformation of the way in which employers, schools and colleges, and local authorities work with young people to fulfil their potential. However, it also highlighted the extent to which inequalities were compounding disadvantage in the labour market. For example, although disabled young people often have positive destinations when they leave school, a few years on they are four times more likely to be unemployed than their non-disabled peers.