Long-term Unemployment (Hansard, 2 February 1988)

§ 10. Mr. Kirkwood
To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what further steps he proposes to reduce the numbers of long-term unemployed.

§ 14. Dr. Godman
To ask the Secretary of State for Employment when he will next meet the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission to discuss programmes for the long-term unemployed.

§ Mr. Fowler
In the 12 months to October 1987 there was a fall in long-term unemployment of 169,000, the biggest fall of long-term unemployment on record. The Government will continue to give high priority to helping the long-term unemployed and I plan to meet the 844 chairman of the Manpower Services Commission later this month to discuss the new adult training programme which will offer improved training opportunities to some 600,000 unemployed people each year.

§ Mr. Kirkwood
Although these falls in unemployment are welcome, does the Secretary of State accept that the proportion of unemployed who have been unemployed for a long period is increasing and that something must be done about this in the longer term? Will his Department consider targeting long-term unemployment black spots, even on a pilot basis, by reducing national insurance contributions?

§ Mr. Fowler
We have reduced national insurance contributions for the lower paid, but this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I accept the hon. Gentleman's concern about the long-term unemployed. I hope that he and his party will hack the new adult training programme, which aims to get the long-term unemployed back into work.

§ Dr. Godman
At his proposed meeting with the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission later this month, will the Secretary of State discuss the case made by many community programme providers that there should be an increase in the average wage for those on community programme schemes? Is it not the case that, if these wages had risen at the rate of inflation, those on such schemes would be earning an average weekly wage of approximately £85, instead of the current wage of approximately £67?

§ Mr. Fowler
The hon. Gentleman will understand that we are moving to a new system of payment in the adult training programme, which will come into being in the autumn. People will be paid a premium over and above their benefit entitlement, and for the first time, therefore, there will be an incentive to family men with children to come into the adult training programme.

§ Mr. John Marshall
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the main hope for the long-term unemployed is an increase in job opportunities? Will he tell the House the increase in the number of people employed since 1983, and does he agree that one of the biggest menaces for job opportunities is unnecessary strikes in British industry?

§ Mr. Fowler
Almost 1.5 million new jobs have been created. The House will agree with my hon. Friend's second point. A formidable industrial recovery has taken place in this country, but such advances will be put at risk if we go back to the appalling days of the 1970s when industrial strife reached its culmination in the winter of discontent of 1978–79.

§ Mr. Boswell
Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will continue to refine the mechanisms for sorting out those who have genuine difficulty in finding work from those who are less intimately motivated to look for it?

§ Mr. Fowler
As I said in reply to an earlier question, certainly in regard to availability for work, such checks will continue, but the purpose of the adult training programme is to provide good training opportunities for long-term unemployed people who, in many cases, have been out of work for many months and whom we want to bring back into work.

§ Mr. Leighton
Has the Secretary of State yet had a chance to read the report of the Select Committee on Employment in the previous Parliament, which made recommendations which would have guaranteed a job to all long-term unemployed people?

§ Mr. Fowler
I must confess that I have not gone through it in the detail that I would have liked, but, as I spent two hours with the Select Committee on Employment last week, I think that I am aware of the proposals that the Select Committee made then. I do not think that that particular proposal is practical. What is practical are the kind of opportunities that we shall be able to offer under the adult training programme. I hope that the Select Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is Chairman, will give our adult training programme unanimous backing, just as the Manpower Services Commission did.

§ Mr. Harry Greenway
How many of the long-term unemployed does my hon. Friend estimate to be virtually unemployable? Does he share my sense of congratulation that more of those eligible for employment are employed in Britain than in any other EEC country–66 per cent.?

§ Mr. Fowler
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make such an estimate, but, as my hon. Friend points out, it is certainly the case that in Britain a high percentage of the population are in work and that that bears good comparison with virtually all our European partners.

§ Mr. Meacher
Is the Secretary of State aware that, contrary to the complacent assurances that he has given the House, the hard core of long-term unemployed who have been out of a job for over five years has trebled in the past three years and there are now well over 250,000 of them? Is he also aware that in the past year, when the number of short-term unemployed was falling, the number of long-term unemployed increased by over 20 per cent.? In view of that, since all else has failed, are the Government now proposing to use compulsion to take those people off the unemployment register?

§ Mr. Fowler
We have already replied to the hon. Gentleman's point about compulsion, and we have emphasised that we have accepted the Manpower Services Commission's report on that. The number of those who have been unemployed for over five years has increased, and it is because of such developments that the new adult training programme is being put forward. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that unemployment in Britain has now come down dramatically, and it has come down in each of the past 18 months. The hon. Gentleman and the Opposition should acknowledge and praise that progress.