§ 13. Mr. Syd Rapson (Portsmouth, North)What plans he has to help unemployed people aged 25 years and over in employment zones to find employment.[75588]
§ The Minister for Employment, Welfare to Work and Equal Opportunities (Mr. Andrew Smith)We aim to have 15 employment zones throughout Britain up and running from April next year, with some 48,000 long-term unemployed people eligible for help. A key innovation in the zones will be personal job accounts, which will, for the first time, bring together funding from benefits, training and employment service programmes.
§ Mr. RapsonI thank the Minister for that answer. Could he explain to an old-fashioned sceptic such as me how the new personal job accounts will provide the flexible help needed by the unemployed?
§ Mr. SmithThe rules of past initiatives have been rigid and have required that money can be used only for a particular purpose, whereas, under this scheme, the personal adviser, working in conjunction with the long-term unemployed client, will be able to plan a programme of training, work experience, enterprise and self-employment. If people want to be self-employed, the personal adviser will help them to move forward. Pooling funds that have previously be available only in a fragmented way will make a much more coherent and effective programme.
§ Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath)Does the Minister recognise that, contrary to his boast about the Government's policies, especially the new deal, instead of tourism and leisure businesses recruiting many more young people, at a recent trade function for one of the main trade bodies for tourism and leisure, it was revealed that not one business has taken on anyone under the new deal? Does that not show the complete bankruptcy of the Government's policies and the accuracy of what my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) said a few moments ago?
§ Mr. SmithNo, it does not. It is more nonsense from a party that did next to nothing to help the long-term and young unemployed, and now cannot come to grips with the fact that the new deal has, according to independent evaluation, made an encouraging start. Tourism, leisure and catering are among those industries recruiting the most people from the new deal. From memory, I think that over a fifth of new deal recruits who are getting jobs are going into that sector.
The hon. Gentleman should examine the hard evidence. He should compare the performance of the young, unemployed people who went through the new deal programme when the pathfinder areas were up and running with the performance when the new deal was not up and running in the rest of the country. That comparison has been made, and it shows that youth unemployment fell by 18 more percentage points in areas where the new deal was operating. That is proof that this programme is working and helping young people forward. Conservative Members should, as some of them have, get behind the new deal and help to make it a success, instead of carping and trying to make it a failure.