§ Mr. LevittTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will instigate schemes to recruit, train and employ unemployed people with computing skills to help tackle the Millennium Bug. [47700]
§ Dr. HowellsWe are already providing £26 million this financial year to help small to medium sized organisations to train at least 20,000 people to tackle the Millennium Bug. The training is intended to help small to medium sized employers. We are encouraging them to work
Participation and labour market status of 18 year olds, England, end 1992 to end 1996 Percentage end 1992 end 1993 end 1994 end 1995 end 1996 Full-time education1 33 37 38 39 38 Part-time education or training: excluding job related training 8 8 8 8 9 Job-related training2 14 14 13 13 13 of which full-time education3 0 0 1 1 0 of which part-time education 7 6 5 4 4 Employment without training or study 28 26 28 27 28 ILO unemployment without training or study 12 11 8 9 7 Economically inactive without training or study4 5 5 5 4 6 1Includes those in education who are also in job related training, unemployment or inactive. The size of the overlap between education and job related training is shown at footnote 3 2Includes all in government supported training and employer funded training; including the overlap with those in full-time education 3Also shown in the full-time education category 4Those not in employment nor seeking work on the ILO unemployment definition Sources:
Education Censuses, TECs' Management Information Database, the Trainee Databases and the Labour Force Survey
306Wtogether to deal with the bug problem and it is possible that groups of employers or individual firms may look to recruit and train new staff, including those currently unemployed, to take forward this work.