Employment Action (Hansard, 22 October 1991)

§ 6. Mr. Atkinson
To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what representations he has received about the employment action programme; and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Howard
I have received many favourable responses to this new programme from training and enterprise councils and others. The programme is now in operation. The first people joined it some three weeks ago. We are on course as planned to have 30,000 participants by March next year, with 60,000 helped in 1992–93.

§ Mr. Atkinson
Following yesterday's welcome announcement of a new allowance for disabled working people, can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that there will be opportunities under his proposals for disabled people—including the mentally ill and mentally handicapped—to gain work experience? Does he agree that the TUC's boycott of his excellent programme is utterly callous and irresponsible?

§ Mr. Howard
I can indeed confirm that people with disabilities will be given preferential access to the employment action programme, and that they will not need a qualifying period of unemployment. Indeed, people with disabilities have generally been given higher priority on the Government's training schemes for some months now and, for the first time, have been part of the aim group.
On the second point, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was disgraceful that the Trades Union Congress should boycott employment action and turn its back on those unemployed people to whom this Government are giving hope.

§ Mr. Leighton
Is the Secretary of State aware that the Employment Select Committee has placed in the Library copies of letters that it has received from 60 training and enterprise councils, which tell us that they are struggling and finding it virtually impossible to implement the employment training and youth training guarantees because of a shortage of cash? In view of those letters, will the Secretary of State resist Treasury attempts to make further cuts and obtain a substantial increase in his budget from the public expenditure round so that the TECs can do their jobs properly?

§ Mr. Howard
The question is about employment action. That is securely funded. Places will be provided in the way that I have suggested. We are committed to the guarantees on employment training and youth training. Those guarantees are being delivered. There can be no question other than that the TECs will have the resources that they need to deliver those guarantees in the next financial year, which is the subject of the current public expenditure survey.

§ Mr. John Marshall
Does my right hon. and learned Friend find it surprising that Opposition Members are opposed to employment action that would help the unemployed, while, at the same time, they want to create unemployment through a national minimum wage?

§ Mr. Howard
Very little surprises me about the Opposition, but it is noteworthy that, despite the fact that they claim to care for unemployed people, they resist almost every initiative that is designed to help unemployed people. Despite the fact that they purport to care about training, they resist almost every training initiative that this Government have introduced. Their words do not match up, nor do their words match the actions for which they were responsible when they were last in government.

§ Mr. Wallace
The 30,000 places referred to by the Secretary of State pale into insignificance when compared with the rise of 230,000 unemployed since he announced employment action. When the Under-Secretary of State gave a written answer to the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) in June highlighting the differences between employment action and the old community programme, he omitted two very important distinctions —the difference in funding and the difference in the number of places available. If the Secretary of State is unable substantially to expand his scheme, does it mean that he lacks confidence in his scheme or that he has lost the battle against the Chief Secretary to the Treasury?

§ Mr. Howard
The hon. Gentleman totally fails to take into account the range of opportunities that are now available to help unemployed people—opportunities that were not available when the community programme was in existence. There was no employment training then, nor the range of ways in which we now help unemployed people through the Employment Service. This year we shall be helping 840,000 unemployed people, over and above the help that we give to every unemployed person when he or she comes into the job centre to sign on. That is what the hon. Gentleman has to take into account if he is to make a fair comparison.