Compulsory Jobs Guarantee — House of Commons, 2015-02-11
Topic: Labor
George Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I say to colleagues that I will give way, but I am conscious also that, owing to all the pressures earlier on, Back Benchers will want to get their speeches in It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who took a good shot at making a good fist of a bad job. By my calculation, it is over a year since the Opposition initiated a debate on jobs. I wonder why. So much for their being the party of work, which is what they used to say The Opposition have repeatedly avoided talking about the labour market, although my colleagues have been dying to intervene. When the Opposition have spoken about the labour market, there has been nothing but talking the economy down and negativity. They have made gloomy forecasts—I recall the Leader of the Opposition talking about "the disappearance of...a million jobs" Then there was the misguided prophecy of "a long ‘lost decade’...of...high unemployment" The Opposition have opposed welfare reform, and most importantly work experience, at every turn. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is right: work experience is what young people want, so why have the Opposition opposed our work experience programme, which has been unbelievably successful Meanwhile, it is this Government who have delivered 2.2 million more private sector workers, 2 million apprenticeships starts, work experience and training for over a quarter of a million young people, 60,000 businesses through the new enterprise allowance, and the Work programme, helping 600,000 people to get a job—a sustained job that follows. With the election approaching, the Opposition desperately want to sound as though they have anything positive to say about any kind of jobs programme, now that this Government have turned the situation around. Whereas this Government have a record of success, the more one examines the Opposition’s flagship jobs guarantee, the clearer it becomes that that is little more than a no-jobs guarantee, and certainly a guarantee of no jobs in the private sector Let me go through the jobs guarantee, as it is the subject of the debate today. We first heard about it in 2011, when it was said to be for young people who had been unemployed for a year. It offered a guaranteed job for 12 months. In 2013, that seemed to morph into a compulsory jobs guarantee for those who had been unemployed for two years, so the objective had already slipped a bit. It guaranteed a job for only six months—half the time previously advertised by the original statement. Yet there remained complete confusion in the Opposition ranks about how long this programme was meant to last. When pressed, the shadow Chancellor said: "We would have a guarantee of one year for young people, two years for adults. Anybody who is out of work would be guaranteed a job." That is not quite what I heard from the Opposition today. How long will it last—one year, two years, six months? What exactly have they costed I can understand why the title of this debate was changed. One could almost hear what was going on behind closed doors between the shadow Chancellor and my opposite number, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), when they were hoping to announce all the details about how long the jobs guarantee would last. One could almost hear the shadow Chancellor saying, because it was in the speech from the right hon. Member for East Ham, "You’re not announcing anything that allows anybody to cost this properly, because that way they will tell us that this does not work." Even the motion carefully leaves those questions unanswered. Why would not the Opposition put in their motion all the details of this apparently wonderful plan? The answer is that no such wonderful plan exists. They allude to certain other plans out there, but they do not tell us what they mean What we heard today sounded rather familiar, so I looked it up. Back when Labour was last in government, there was a programme called StepUp. It was piloted by the previous Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, in 20 areas between 2002 and 2004. I shall not go over the names of the programme, but it was supposed to give paid employment to those failed by the new deal and out of work for two years. StepUp was never rolled out nationally by the previous Government because the evaluation from 2006 exposed its failings: for those nearest the labour market and those under 25, StepUp actually had a negative impact on work prospects, at a massive cost of £10,000 per place The right hon. Gentleman referred to the programme in Wales. The hon. Member for Leeds West has been even more explicit that the Opposition’s jobs programme is a rehash of Jobs Growth Wales. She said: "I went to see a scheme very similar to this in Wales last week and...that’s what we would aim to do across the UK" But that is not what was described from the Opposition Front Bench today. A closer look at what has been announced about Jobs Growth Wales reveals that in many senses it is an exercise in cherry-picking. The hardest to help are not eligible; no one on the Work programme, Work Choice or any similar programme is allowed to go for the new programme; and places are given to only one in three of those who have applied, so a place is far from being guaranteed for all. In any case, although Jobs Growth Wales has trumpeted a success rate of 80% of participants in work, an apprenticeship or learning after six months, already 90% of all—not some—young people in Wales move off jobseeker’s allowance within nine months. That has nothing to do with the programme and all to do with what is happening to them through the jobcentres and through the Work programme.