§ 9. Mr. Michael BrownTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment what measures he has announced in the last six months to improve the provision of services to the long-term unemployed.
§ Mr. HowardOn 8 November I announced that next year my Department will provide up to 100,000 additional opportunities for long-term unemployed people through programmes such as job club and the job interview guarantee scheme. I also announced new flexibilities for training and enterprise councils to make employment training more responsive to individual and labour market needs. These are in addition to the five-point plan that I 805 announced in April, which ensures that the employment service's advice and guidance services are better able to help unemployed people back to work.
§ Mr. BrownAlthough what my right hon. and learned Friend has announced is welcome, is not the most important point that the number of long-term unemployed has been reduced by 850,000 over the past four and a half years?
§ Mr. HowardMy hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is certainly an extremely important point. It is also important to remember that more than half the people who are currently losing their jobs get back into work within three months. That is a measure of the help that we can give such people and we hope in future to be able to give them even more.
§ Mr. CryerDoes the Minister agree that the creation of long-term unemployed people by child labour, lack of health and safety standards and lack of trade union rights in other countries would be quite wrong? Does he further agree that the Government should be concerned that textile jobs that are facing such competition should be preserved through the general agreement on tariffs and trade? If those talks collapse the jobs should be protected by the preservation of the multi-fibre arrangement. If not, we cannot use the usual platitude, "a level playing field" because it is savagely unfair competition. Our workers deserve the chance of a decent wage and a decent job.
§ Mr. HowardMy hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State dealt with that matter a few moments ago in answer to the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden). We do not raise our people's living standards by engaging in protectionism. The free exchange of goods and services is most likely to increase the British people's standard of living in future.
§ Mr. RoweDoes my right hon. and learned Friend agree that too high a proportion of the long-term unemployed are over 50 and will he reconfirm that his Department is making every effort to ensure that employers do not just leap to the assumption that older workers are somehow finished?
§ Mr. HowardMy hon. Friend is right. I assure him that we do whatever we can to achieve the objective that he described. In particular, the employment service always queries any such arbitrary restriction imposed as a condition on a job when that is drawn to its attention.
§ Mr. FatchettNow that the Secretary of State has acknowledged that unemployment will increase during the next few months, will he acknowledge that the number of long-term unemployed will also increase during the same period? Is not that trend of increasing unemployment likely to continue while the Government have only one weapon against inflation—the use of unemployment, with the economic and personal waste that that entails, to fight their own economic failures?
§ Mr. HowardThe hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. There is no question of using unemployment as a means of dealing with inflation. If the Opposition have any credible policy to bring down inflation, the Government look forward to hearing of it.