Category Archives: Young people

Youth Contract shrouded in mystery as Minister refuses to publish data

Ministers are refusing to publish any data for the Youth Contract more than one year after the flagship scheme began. In a response to a Parliamentary Question Ministers pushed back the date for release data again amidst growing rumours that the scheme is failing.

 

Three years after this government came to power youth unemployment is still hovering around the million mark – and still higher than it was at in May 2010.

 

The Youth Contract began in April 2012. The main part of the scheme is a wage subsidy of £2,275 to employers if they employ a young person who has been unemployed for nine months. In the 2011 Autumn Statement the Government boasted that the Youth Contract would offer 160,000 wage incentives to employers.

 

Ministers originally promised to release data in “early 2013”, yet in response to my parliamentary question last month asking when the statistics for the wage subsidy will be released, ministers could not give us a date.

 

Almost a million young people are locked out of work but the government’s flagship Youth Contract is nowhere to be seen. Ministers are hiding the scheme in the very same way they hid the Work Programme, and that turned out to be performing worse than doing nothing.

 

Britain is in the middle of a youth jobs crisis that shows no sign of ending – we simply cannot allow government schemes to continue to fail. Ministers must now come clean, publish the results they have been hiding and bring forward a real plans to get our young people back to work, starting with Labour’s Real Jobs Guarantee.

 

You can read the FT’s report here .

 

Labour councils are helping young people into work

Labour councils are helping young people into work

By Liam Byrne

The Guardian, Thursday 31 January

Government programmes are failing young people, with almost one in five unemployed. Our youth jobs taskforce is fighting back.

As Britain’s youth jobs crisis deepens, it’s time for ministers to hand local council leaders the tools they need to make a difference.

Britain’s youth unemployment crisis remains stark. Nearly 40% of people out of work are under the age of 25. That’s one of the highest rates in the western world. In the last jobs stats, youth unemployment rose again. Nationally nearly one in five young people is out of work and this is costing us a fortune. Over a billion pounds a year in dole bills. And the cost isn’t just short term. Acevo (the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations) estimates that today’s rate of youth unemployment will cost us £6.3bn per annum in lost economic output.

But now it’s clear just who is leading the fightback. All over Britain it’s local Labour councils leading the way in building bridges for young people, from school or unemployment, into real local jobs.

Last year, as youth unemployment hit the million mark, I asked the leaders of 10 councils where youth unemployment is highest to come together, to share ideas, and to show Labour nationally what works to get young people into jobs. In the past 12 months, despite horrendous budget settlements, those leaders have begun to revolutionise the way we get our young people jobs in Britain’s 21st-century economy.

Cities such as Sheffield are transforming the way they identify young people at risk of graduating to a life of unemployment, so they can target special additional support. Bradford council is building “industrial centres of excellence”: small schools of 300 students aged 14-19 offering enterprise skills, paid work experience and business-led qualifications – all tailored to what’s actually available in the local jobs market.

Manchester is widening access to apprenticeships with its “apprentice ambassadors”, and a new Ucas-style clearing house to match students with apprenticeship offers well before they leave school, conditional on making the grades.

Wales, Glasgow and Birmingham are reinventing the highly successful future jobs fund to make sure that young people out of work are given paid opportunities as a springboard into local careers. Newham has even created Workplace, a one-stop job brokerage that places 5,000 local residents into jobs each year.

Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield have created “apprenticeship agencies”, organising training and work opportunities for thousands of apprentices with their cities’ diverse business base of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). Sandwell council in the West Midlands is guaranteeing three months’ work experience for every 16- to 24-year-old to ensure the borough’s young people are job ready.

Today, we publish these ideas and many more in the first report of Labour’s youth jobs taskforce, setting down just what can be done with a bit of can-do spirit.

But I can’t hide what disappointed me as I travelled round Britain listening to ideas that made a difference. The harsh reality is government programmes are failing. In fact, fewer than 6,000 young people have been helped into sustained jobs: that’s just 3.4% of young people on the Work Programme. The Youth Contract, launched with much fanfare by the deputy prime minister last year, is working so well that the government has decided to keep its results a secret.

Worse, I’ve heard loud and clear that the Department for Work and Pensions is now too often a handbrake on progress. Most council leaders I speak to have good things to say about their local jobcentre team – but Stalin-esque ministers are stopping people on the frontline getting on with what works best. “They’re good people, trying to do the right thing,” said one. “but they’re trapped in some very bad systems.” “DWP has been unwilling to engage locally,” said another. I heard the same story wherever I went.

The best thing we can give our young people is a chance. Labour councils are now showing day in and day out, that where there’s a will, there’s a way. With councils blazing ahead, and the national Work Programme in chaos, it’s time DWP ministers got behind local council leaders and took down the roadblocks to reform.

The first report of Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce, Our youth employment emergency: Labour fights back, can be downloaded here.

 

Give us the tools to tackle youth jobs crisis, say councils

Give us the tools to tackle youth jobs crisis, say councils

 

Labour councils demand new freedoms to fight for youth jobs as Work Programme fails young people

 Labour today called for new freedoms for councils to tackle the youth jobs crisis as analysis of the government’s Work Programme showed the programme found jobs for just 3.3% of young people.

Labour’s call came at the first summit of its Youth Jobs Taskforce, chaired by Ed Miliband in Birmingham. The Taskforce brings together the leaders of the 10 councils where youth unemployment is highest.

The summit will review a report from Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liam Byrne showing how Labour councils are beginning to revolutionise the bridge from school to work for young people in areas where youth unemployment is worst.

The report shows:

  • There are still almost a million young people out of work – yet the flagship Work Programme has a success rate of just 3.35% for young people.
  • Labour Councils are taking radical steps to build a new bridge from school to local jobs, reinventing the Future Jobs Fund, establishing UCAS style clearing houses for apprenticeships offers to young people, and creating Apprenticeship Agencies that place young people into new opportunities with local SMEs.
  • Council leaders widely feel held back by a ‘statist’ Department for Work & Pensons which is unable to innovate locally.
  • Council leaders now want new freedoms to develop plan that fit for purpose for their local economies; a simpler funding regime that joins up skills and jobs support for unemployed young people, and more opportunities to involve employers and colleges in schools advice and guidance provision

 Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne said,

“As Government schemes fail, Labour’s local councils are beginning to commandeer the task of getting our young people into work.

“All over Britain, Labour’s council leaders are refusing to stand by and watch young people join the dole queues. They’re taking charge and building a completely new bridge from the class-room to a job.

“Labour will not stand by and watch this government abandon a generation to the scrap heap. Just because we’re not in government doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. All over Britain its now Labour councils leading the fight to give our young people the chance to work.”

Notes: 

  1. 1.     This government is failing Britain’s young people

There are almost a million young people out of work, but this government’s welfare to work schemes are failing. New figures published today by Labour shows that Ministers flagship Work Programme has got just 3.35% of 18-24 year olds on the scheme into a sustained job.

Only 5,920 young people have achieved a job outcome under the Work Programme so far, of the 177,000 who participated in the programme. http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/work_programme/wp_release_nov12.pdf

  1. 2.     Labour Councils are building a new bridge for young people from schools to local jobs

 In five key ways Labour authorities are leading the way in the fight against youth unemployment:

  1. Stopping problems happening in the first place. Cities like Sheffield are transforming the way they identify young people at risk of graduating to a life of unemployment, so they can target special, additional support.
  2. Getting young people job ready. Councils like Bradford are building Industrial Centres of Excellence, small schools of 300 students aged 14-19 with enterprise skills, paid work experience and business-led qualifications – all tailored to what’s actually available in the local jobs market.
  3. Taking apprenticeships directly into schools. Manchester is revolutionising access to apprenticeships with its Apprentice Ambassadors and a new UCAS-style clearing house to match students with apprenticeship offers well before they leave school, conditional on making the grades. 
  4. Connecting SMEs to young people. Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield have created Apprenticeship Agencies, organising training and work opportunities for literally thousands of apprentices with their cities’ diverse business base of SMEs.
  5. Reinventing the Future Jobs Fund. Wales, Glasgow and Birmingham are reinventing the highly successful Future Jobs Fund to make sure that young people out of work are given paid opportunities as a spring-board into local careers.

 DWP is getting in the way

Many of the Councils we met with reported poor and deteriorating relationships with the DWP nationally, though relationships with local jobcentres were often strong. It was felt that there was too little consultation by the DWP before nationally mandated programmes were stream-rollered through.

The DWP was often seen to be setting policy and commissioning contracts without regard to local needs. The result was that Councils’ employment programmes were often left to fill in important gaps. DWP was also considered to be too inflexible when it came to issues surrounding data sharing, which prevented local public services from being joined up.

Councils’ views on DWP

“DWP has been unwilling to engage locally, often embarking on nationally mandated initiatives with little or no consultation locally.”

“It seems that DWP is increasingly delivering an agenda determined in Whitehall with little or no regard to local circumstances.”

“Provision designed at the national level often makes incorrect assumptions about a given shape and size of local infrastructure.”

“A nationally driven process and inability to share data [have] meant that we couldn’t join up local public services to support people to achieve a better outcome.”

Councils call for more powers to tackle Britain’s youth job crisis

  • The freedom to deliver a plan that is fit for purpose in their areas. Different places have different economics. Businesses need different things. And the precise causes of youth unemployment vary. Skills needs may differ. The size of the challenge varies. Councils therefore need the freedom to tailor action – like job readiness training – to what’s needed in the local economy.
  • A simpler funding regime that joins up skills and jobs support for unemployed young people.  The current system is too complicated, and does not align the provision of skills with local employers’ needs.
  • The opportunity to involve employers and colleges in schools advice and guidance provision. This means that students can learn much earlier about the full range of local opportunities and what employers need.

A copy of the report Labour Fights Back can be downloaded here.

 

Strivers Tax pushes 200,000 children into poverty

Cuts to tax credits and benefits will push 200,000 children into poverty, Ministers admit

200,000 children will be pushed into poverty as a result of David Cameron and George Osborne’s real terms cuts to tax credits and other working-age benefits, according to official government figures.

In an answer to a parliamentary question, work and pensions minister has Esther McVey admits that the Tory-led Government has estimated that “the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI”.

Ministers are trying to push through the measures with just one day of debate for the committee stage and third reading of the Welfare benefits Uprating Bill in the House of Commons next Monday.

Ed Balls MP, Labour’s shadow chancellor, said:

“The true character of this Conservative-led government has now been exposed. While they give the richest two per cent of earners a £3 billion tax cut, 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty and millions of working families made worse off.

“Ministers have spent weeks refusing to admit what the impact of their policies would be on child poverty and now we know why. Children are paying the price for David Cameron and George Osborne’s economic failure and the political games they have decided to play.

“We need action to kickstart the economy and help people into work with a compulsory jobs guarantee, not this unfair and divisive attack on working families and children.”

Liam Byrne, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said:

“We already knew the Strivers’ Tax will hit millions of hardworking families but now we know that 200,000 children will pay the price for the mess David Cameron and George Osborne have made of our economy, whilst 8,000 millionaires get a tax cut.

“George Osborne is playing politics with his Strivers’ Tax Bill because he desperately needs a distraction from his own failure. But the Chancellor’s pathetic little games have real consequences for millions of families struggling to make ends meet.

“10 years of Tory Party detoxification has been destroyed because the Chancellor needed a new year dividing line and Britain’s poorest children are paying the price. The nasty party is well and truly back.”

The government argues it is “misleading” to consider the impacts of uprating tax credits and benefits in isolation and claims that it is “investing in tackling the root causes of child poverty through making work pay”.  However, changes to tax credits that came into force in April last year mean that thousands of parents in part-time employment are now better off on benefits than in work.

The parliamentary answer also claims that “looking at relative income in isolation is not a helpful measure to track progress towards our target of eradicating child poverty.”  But in Opposition, David Cameron, and the current Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, repeatedly argued that relative poverty was important and that the Conservative Party would measure and act on it.

ENDS

Editor’s notes

1.        In a response to a Parliamentary Question published today, DWP Minister Esther McVey admits that “we estimate that the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI”. (Hansard, 15 January 2013, Column 715W-716W, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130115/text/130115w0003.htm#13011576000093)

2.        The Government has previously admitted that some families with children could be £728 per year better off out of work as a result of losing their working tax credits following new rules which came into force in April 2012. (Hansard, 29 February 2012,  Column 395W396W, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201212/cmhansrd/cm120229/text/120229w0004.htm#12022982001826

3.        David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith used to say that relative poverty was important, and that the Conservative Party would measure and act on it.

“I believe that poverty is an economic waste and a moral disgrace. In the past, we used to think of poverty only in absolute terms – meaning straightforward material deprivation. That’s not enough. We need to think of poverty in relative terms – the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted. So I want this message to go out loud and clear: the Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty.”
David Cameron, Scarman Lecture, 24 November 2006, http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2006/11/David_Cameron_Tackling_poverty_is_a_social_responsibility.aspx

“So poverty is relative – and those who pretend otherwise are wrong.”
David Cameron, Scarman Lecture, 24 November 2006, http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2006/11/David_Cameron_Tackling_poverty_is_a_social_responsibility.aspx

“The easiest way I think to define it is that relative poverty is that if some people don’t have what others take for granted and I think it is important not just to say poverty is destitution and there’s a safety net, but as a society grows richer, we want everyone to grow richer and I think relative poverty is important.”
David Cameron, BBC Breakfast, 24 November 2006

“I think the best way to define it is as the figures do, that if you have less than 60% of the average household income you are relatively poor, and I think that is the right measure and I think it’s right to look at relative poverty and that’s what a Conservative government would do. But what I think is really important is what our research has found in doing this policy work is if you look at people with 40% of household income, people who really are in you know, deep poverty, that the amount of people in deep poverty has actually gone up. It’s a staggering fact that in the last 10 years Labour have done…tried so hard and spent so much money on this issue and yet deep poverty in Britain has got worse. There are 750,000 more people with less than 40% of household income and they’re stuck in poverty for just as long and it seems to me that is a really important fact that we have to digest and act on and make sure we reduce poverty in this country.”
David Cameron, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 24 November 2006

“In modern times, poverty has been a difficult issue for the Conservative Party to deal with. However, as this Report makes clear, it is too important an issue to be left to the Labour Party. All forms of poverty – absolute and relative – must be dealt with. Unless all parts of society are connected, then we risk social dislocation and exclusion for millions of people.”
Iain Duncan Smith, foreword to Conservative Party Social Justice Policy Group report “Economic Dependency”, December 2006, p. 3, http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/client/downloads/BB_worklessness.pdf

 

Sheffield is an inspiration we are determind to learn from

Cllr Julie Dore and her team at Sheffield City Council have got some awful decisions to take over the weeks to come. Like all Labour councils they’re being hit disproportionately hard by the government’s cuts.  I was in town today with Labour’s Youth Jobs’ Taskforce research team to meet Angela Smith MP and hear how Labour’s leaders are fighting for Sheffield’s young people.

 

Amidst all the tough decisions, Julie and Cllr Leigh Bramall, Cabinet Member for business, skills and development, are putting in place a revolution in back to work services for young people.

 

At the heart of their work are new ways of identifying young people who might be at risk of becoming unemployed. A new partnership, Sheffield Futures is then tasked with the job of helping young people prepare for the future. But a second partnership, Opportunity Sheffield then kicks in.

 

Bringing together the council’s business support and engagement work, the team is also identifying where businesses might be interested in taking on new apprentices – and crucially a £1 million investment from the hard-pressed council is providing wage subsidies for 200 young people into apprenticeships for the future.

 

The directors of M+G Olympic Products, where I started the day with two new apprentices, are very clear about just how successful the scheme has become: ‘Frankly this is a model for how every council should do it. Without it, we’d have not taken on new young people’.

 

The city has put the fight for jobs at the heart of its City Deal negotiations with government – and has bold plans for the future. Its yet another inspiring story of how Labour councils and leaders all over Britain are leading the fight for youth jobs. Its an inspiration we’re determined to learn from.

 
 

Only two in every hundred people getting a job through Work Programme – Ed Miliband

Figures released today show that the Tory-led Government’s Work Programme has got only 2.3 per cent, or two in every hundred, applicants into jobs.

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, said:

“Today we’ve learnt that the Work Programme turns out to be a miserable failure. It’s just not working.

“It’s not working because over the first year of the Work Programme just over two in every hundred people have been getting a job.

“And estimates are that if the Work Programme didn’t exist five in every hundred would be getting a job.

“Why isn’t the Work Programme working? Because to reform welfare, which is what everyone wants to see, you’ve got to have government and people playing their respective roles, shouldering their responsibilities. A One Nation approach.

“We’ve said in relation to young people, we shouldn’t be letting then languish out of work, we should be getting them jobs.

“We should be working with employers and saying government will pay the wages, if you pay the training and mobilise business across this country to get our young people working again.

“That’s the way we can really reform welfare, pulling together as One Nation and each taking and delivering on our responsibilities.

“What we’ve seen from this Government today is a failure to reform welfare. Welfare bills are going up not down, not because of generosity in relation to welfare from this Government, but because their plans aren’t working.”

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said:

“Today’s figures reveal the Work Programme is comprehensively failing. We were promised a welfare revolution and what we’ve got has been exposed as worse than doing nothing.

“Welfare bills are over £20 billion higher than expected because this Government has failed to get Britain back to work and now George Osborne has been forced to take £14 billion off tax credits to help foot the bill. Now we know why. The recovery has been throttled, the Government’s welfare revolution has failed and Britain’s strivers are being asked to foot the bill.

“This is deeply, deeply disappointing news. On the DWP’s own benchmarks, just 2.3 per cent have found a ‘job outcome’. That is under half the rate the DWP said could be achieved by doing nothing. Meanwhile long term unemployment has soared by over 200,000.

“George Osborne must now take the big steps we propose to drive down unemployment and start with a big plan to get our young people into work.”

 

Ends

 

 

Editor’s notes:
1) The Work Programme is getting only two in every hundred people into jobs – 2.3 per cent.

Today’s statistics are from the period from June 2011 to July 2012 – a period of 14 months. But according to the Government’s own Invitation to Tender for the Work Programme, performance levels should be assessed on a 12 month basis.

“The Key Performance Measure: 3.13 Performance will be measured by comparing job outcomes achieved in the previous 12 months to referrals in the same period. In years six and seven there are no referrals and performance will be measured by jobs outcomes achieved in the previous 12 months divided by year five referrals.”
Department for Work and Pensions, The Work Programme, Invitation to Tender, Specification and Supporting Information, p.13
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-prog-itt.pdf

In the first 12 months of the Work Programme, 785,360 have been referred to the Work Programme and only 18,270 thousand have found a job. This means that the Work Programme has managed to get 2.3 per cent of people referred to it into jobs.

2) The Work Programme is performing at half of its Government’s minimum performance level.

“Minimum performance standard will apply to payment groups 1, 2 and 6. It will be defined as non-intervention performance level plus 10 per cent.”

Given that the non-intervention performance level is 5 per cent, the minimum performance standard is 5.5 per cent. Groups 1, 2 and 6 are 18-24 year old JSA claimants, 25+ year old JSA claimants and new claimants ESA.

Department for Work and Pensions, The Work Programme, Invitation to Tender, Specification and Supporting Information, p.13 and p.14
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-prog-itt.pdf

In the first 12 months of the Work Programme, 554,290 of people in these groups have been referred to the Work Programme and only 11,640 have found a job. This means that the Work Programme is performing at 2.1 per cent for these groups – under half of the Government’s minimum performance level of 5.5 per cent.

3) The Work Programme is getting fewer people into jobs than if the Government did nothing at all.

“DWP will set a non-intervention performance for payment groups 1, 2 and 6 reflecting the number of job outcomes that would be expected to occur in the absence of the Work Programme. This is calculated by DWP based on analysis of historical job entry rates.”

The table on page 13 of the Invitation to Tender sets this out as being 5 per cent.

Department for Work and Pensions, The Work Programme, Invitation to Tender, Specification and Supporting Information, p.13
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-prog-itt.pdf

Given that it has managed to get 2.1 per cent of people in these groups into jobs, it is performing at less than half the level it would perform at if the Work Programme did not exist

 

Youth Jobs Taskforce calls on Government to follow Liverpool’s lead

Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce rolled into Liverpool today to witness first-hand the City’s fight against youth unemployment. The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne, visited Glendale Liverpool Ltd apprentices on site in St John’s Gardens and later met with Liverpool’s Deputy Mayor Paul Brant to discuss the city’s scheme.

 

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne visit to the city comes just two days after the latest figures showed long-term youth unemployment rocketing across the North-West, up 150% in Liverpool in the last 12 months.

 

Liam Byrne said,

 

“The Tory Lib Dem government in Westminster aren’t lifting a finger to fight Britain’s youth jobs crisis – and that’s causing youth unemployment to soar. So Labour won’t stand aside and wait for 2015 to make a difference. Leading councils like Liverpool are fighting back today and it’s about time Ministers followed their lead.

 

“Under Mayor Joe Anderson and his team, Liverpool’s apprenticeship scheme is leading the country. I’ve brought Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce here today to see what we can learn from Liverpool because I want to make sure that the best ideas anywhere become Labour’s approach everywhere.”

 

Liverpool’s Deputy Mayor Paul Brant said,

 

“Labour in Liverpool is proud to play its part in Youth Jobs Taskforce, and has an action plan to fight youth unemployment and create jobs for young people. At a time when David Cameron and Nick Clegg are turning their backs on young people, we’re sending a message loud and clear: Labour won’t leave you to fight on your own.”

“When we took control of Liverpool Council, Labour promised to create 100 new apprentices in our first year. We have beat that total, creating 650 apprenticeships in our first year, and we’ll be raising that figure to 1,300 over the next four years.”

 

“And we have made a pledge to reduce to zero the number of young people not in employment, education or training.”

 

“We are also routinely insisting that the Council’s partners prioritise local young people when they’re recruiting, and we urge them to take on apprentices so young people can gain skills and training needed to work.”

 

Background:

 

  • Long-term Youth Unemployment (Over 12 months) has risen 149% in Liverpool in the last year. (November Labour Market Statistics).

 

  • Liverpool’s Innovative Approach to Youth Unemployment will see every 16 or 17 year old NEET guaranteed either a training place or an apprenticeship, a move that will benefit 800 young people. The council has already created nearly 700 apprenticeship starts since Labour took control in May 2010.

 

  • Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce is a new alliance uniting the leaders of the top ten youth unemployment hotspots including Liverpool, with leaders and experts from business, enterprise, civil society, trade unions and academia.

 

The Taskforce

 

Liam Byrne MP – Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

 

Stephen Timms MP – Labour’s Shadow Employment Minister.

 

Alan Buckle – Global Deputy Chairman of KPMG with primary responsibilty for driving execution of KPMG’s global strategy.

 

Jamie Mitchell – Jamie is CEO of Daylesford Organic, the UK’s leading premium farm food retailer and café operator. Prior to Daylesford, Jamie was UK Managing Director of Innocent Drinks, where he grew the business from £25m to £100m in three years.

 

Kay Carberry – Assistant General Secretary, TUC. Kay was the first head of the TUC’s Equal Rights Department and is responsible for the TUC’s internal management and oversees work on pensions and equality.

 

Liz Snape – Assistant General Secretary, Unison.

 

Dr Peter Kyle – Deputy CEO, Acevo. Peter joined ACEVO in 2007, and helped coordinate the Youth Employment Commission chaired by David Miliband MP.

 

Cllr David Sparks OBE - Local Government Association. David is chair of the LGA’s Labour Group and Leader of Dudley Council. He previously chaired the Association’s Regeneration and Transport Board.

 

Prof Paul Gregg – University of Bath. Paul is a Professor of Economic and Social Policy, and Director of the Centre for Analysis and Social Policy at Bath and a former member of the CBI steering group on Getting Britain Working, and the Council of Economic Advisors at HM Treasury 1997-2006, where he worked on unemployment, welfare reform and child poverty.

 

Susan Nash – Chair of Young Labour.

 

Representing the nations:

Leighton Andrews AM – Welsh Assembly Member and Minister for Education Skills in the Welsh Government

Vernon Coaker MP – Labour’s Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary

Kezia Dugdale MSP – Scottish Labour’s Shadow Youth Unemployment Minister

 

The taskforce will be joined by Labour leaders from the following local authorities:

 

  • Birmingham – Cllr Sir Albert Bore
  • Sheffield – Cllr Julie Dore
  • Leeds – Cllr Keith Wakefield
  • Glasgow – Cllr Gordon Mattheson
  • Liverpool – Mayor Joe Anderson
  • Manchester – Cllr Sir Richard Leese
  • Bradford – Cllr David Green
  • Cardiff – Cllr Heather Joyce
  • Wakefield – Cllr Peter Box, CBE
  • Sandwell – Cllr Darren Cooper
  • Newham – Mayor Sir Robin Wales
 

Government can’t hide the fact they’re giving a £40,000 tax cut to millionaires yet wiping out a decade of progress tackling child poverty in one parliament

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to news that the Government are launching a consultation on measuring child poverty, said:

 

“It doesn’t matter what camouflage they wear, the Government can’t hide the fact they’re giving a £40,000 tax cut to millionaires yet wiping out a decade of progress tackling child poverty in just one parliament.

 

“If Ministers move an inch from the Child Poverty Act they supported in opposition, we will know they are about to abandon the fight against child poverty whilst giving an enormous tax cut to the richest in society.”

 

 

Interview on Sky News, Wednesday 14th November 2012

Sky News

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Speakers:        Liam Byrne and  Dermot Murnaghan

                       

 

DM:                 If you look at the picture over the last 4 or 5 years after two recessions these unemployment figures are quite encouraging aren’t they?

 

LB:                  Well the headline fall in unemployment today is welcome but what worries me is what is happening beneath the headlines and you just touched on one of the chief concerns, today’s figures show that there has been yet another sharp rise in long-term unemployment, it is now heading up towards the million mark, we also saw another rise in long-term youth unemployment and in half of England’s regions we saw unemployment go up not down. So I’m worried about what is going on beneath the headlines and I’m also concerned that the government’s Work Programme which was supposed to deal with long-term unemployment in particular is now clearly failing and failing badly. We saw figures out last week that showed that Job Centre staff have now lost all confidence in the programme, the number of referrals to the programme have halved, if you can believe it, over the last year despite this rise in long–term unemployment and some of the trends are also a matter of concern, I mean if we look at the trends for the last month as opposed to the last quarter we see a rise in youth unemployment, we see a rise in women’s unemployment and we also see that claimant count go up. Now the reason that that is serious is that this is helping push up the welfare bill over the course of the parliament by an incredible £24bn, that is money the taxpayers are going to have to find

 

DM:                 Ok, so you are encouraged but not encouraged then listening to your analysis of the figures, but it is that overall trend that I want to look at. The suggestion is here as we look at those demonstrations and strikes on continental Europe with double digit unemployment rates some of them, of course, as we know in Spain into the 20% and beyond. With us at 7.8%, high yes, and terrible problems there but after what we’ve been through does it tell you that the government’s current economy strategy is working and that you might have the wrong recipe?

 

LB:                  Well if you take a step back and you look as you suggest at the last couple of years there is a very clear story that emerges, basically people and working families in Britain are busting a gut to do whatever it takes to get back into work, so getting on for half of the jobs that have been created since the election are part-time jobs, now that is not a recipe for a strong Britain roaring back to recovery, what it says is that the people who are in work are often insecure and the people who are out of work are increasingly locked out and that is why we are saying look, there is something the government should do extra because their programmes are now clearly failing and that is why we’ve said put a bank bonus tax to help get young people back to work and crucially gives the construction sector a big kick-start.

 

DM:                 Right we got the point but I mean doing extra you are saying increase debt to decrease debt I mean that is rather a dangerous strategy is it not?

 

LB:                  No if you take for example what Ed Balls said at Labour Party conference, he said that we should use the proceeds from any sales of 4G licences to put a big boost into our construction sector, get Britain building again and construction is one of the sectors that has taken an almighty hammering over the last couple of years and that has pushed up unemployment and that has pushed up the welfare bill. You can also I think do more to help the purchasing power of families, I mean, the government is talking about potentially freezing Tax Credits yes again in the Autumn statement, now that is a worry because today’s figures show us that prices are now rising by 60% faster than earnings. Now if you start taking away or freezing or cutting people’s Tax Credits as well, then that pushes working families much closer to the poverty line. That is not good for kick-starting our recovery over the next year either.

 

DM:                 Just let me ask you about that recovery because you used an interesting phrase in the answer before last, you talked about ‘Britain is not roaring back to recovery now’, kind of an implicating there that it would be if Labour was in power, how could it with the size of the debt you saddled this government with?

 

LB:                  Well look we’ve been very clear that when tax receipts fell of a cliff during the last recession there was going to be a big bill that we were going to have to pay back but we said look, the way that you pay that bill back is you make some sensible tax rises, you make sure those with the broadest shoulders carry the biggest load, so you don’t give a big £3bn tax giveaway to Britain’s richest citizens, you share the load of rising taxes more fairly, second you do make some cuts in public spending but you do that at a pace that doesn’t throttle our chances of recovery and crucially you get people back into work as fast as possible, and that is what this government is doing wrong. They promised us this big Work Programme that was going to be the biggest ever back to work programme ever and the truth is just a very long way away from that and last weeks figures as I mentioned showed that referrals to the programme have halved over the last year, despite the fact it was set up to tackle long-term unemployment and what do today’s figures show, is that long-term unemployment is spiralling upwards still so I’m sure the government is just in a degree of chaos and gridlock at DWP and that is why we are saying more needs to be done. 

 

 

 

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Fall in unemployment welcome but beneath the headlines worries are multiplying

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to today’s Labour Market Statistics, said:  

“Today’s fall in overall unemployment is welcome but beneath the headlines the worries are multiplying.

“There is now fresh evidence that Britain is becoming divided – long-term unemployment rose yet again, so did long-term youth unemployment and unemployment in two-thirds of England is higher than it was at time of the general election.

“Over a third of the unemployed have been out of work for over a year. These are precisely the people the Government’s flagship Work Programme were supposed to help. But the programme is in total gridlock because JobCentre staff have lost all faith in it. Now we’ve got long-term unemployment at nearly a million.

“I don’t think ministers should be complacent for a moment about the trend. There are real worries in the monthly figures. Youth unemployment and women’s unemployment are both higher than a month ago. That is why Labour called for a bank bonus tax to fund jobs for young people out of work.

“This failure is now becoming deep-set and it’s costing us a fortune. Long term unemployment and a rising claimant count is helping push up the welfare bill by an eye-watering £24 billion.

“Today’s figures also show Britain is simply not roaring back. Half of the jobs created since 2010 are part time and the squeeze on families is getting tighter and tighter. Prices are rising faster than earnings and yet the Government is cutting tax credits for working families while giving 8,000 millionaires a tax cut. That’s pushing thousands of hard-working people closer to the poverty line.”

Ends