§ 13. Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West)What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the new deal programme. [127932]
§ The Minister for Employment, Welfare to Work and Equal Opportunities (Ms Tessa Jowell)The new deal is one of the most comprehensively evaluated programmes ever. We have used the evidence to help us develop our strategy for continuously improving the new deal, and to build on its success still further. I announced further measures to achieve that earlier this week.
§ Mr. BradyI thank the Minister for her reply, light on detail though it was. She will recall that she told the Select Committee on Education and Employment on 17 May that the new deal for young people had so far cost the taxpayer £611 million. She said that that equated to a cost of just under £4,000 per job created. Will she confirm that she arrived at that figure only by including some jobs that lasted for less than a day, and others that lasted for less than 13 weeks? Did she not also include jobs that are subsidised, and choose to disregard the Government's own estimate that 60 per cent. of people going into jobs through the new deal would have got those jobs in any case?
Taking all those matters into account, will she confirm that the true figure is closer to £11,000 per sustained, unsubsidised job? Will she at least accept that the true cost is much higher than £4,000 per job, if the 60 per cent. dead weight is taken into account?
§ Ms JowellI would like to offer the hon. Gentleman one of the numeracy classes that we announced this week would be available for young people entering the new deal. The Tories seem to have taken an incomplete lesson from Mark Twain, who said:
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as you please.418 What are the facts about the new deal? It is a fact that by any measure, unemployment has fallen among young people and older people, with the greatest fall among the new deal client group. It is a fact that the independent National Institute of Economic and Social Research showed that the new deal has had a significant and positive impact on youth unemployment, and is close to being self-financing. It is a fact that the new deal would not exist under a Tory Government. The Tories do not want a better new deal—they want no new deal for young people.