§ Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish in the Official Report a list of bodies—both official and non-official—to which he has the right to make unpaid appointments and indicate for each body the number of such appointments.
§ Mr. Harold Walker, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 15th October 1976; Vol. 917, c. 239], gave the following additional information:
The bodies to which my right hon. Friend makes unpaid appointments include the following:
716W
Name of Body No. of appointments Scottish Careers Service Advisory Council 20 Welsh Careers Service Advisory Council 13
§ Mr. Ovendenasked the Secretary of State for Employment what representations he has received in the past month from youth organisations concerning unemployment of young people; and what replies he has sent.
§ Mr. Golding, pursuant to his reply [Official Report, 17th November 1976], gave the following information:
A number of hon. Members referred to my right hon. Friend Questions concerning youth unemployment which had been put to them by youth and other organisations. The unacceptably high level of unemployment among young people over the past year has been a major concern of Government, and it has taken unprecedented action to alleviate the situation. This includes measures to provide unemployed young people with training, with permanent as well as temporary employment opportunities, and with temporary but purposeful work experience. Funds have been provided to maintain training opportunities in industry and to expand training by the Training Services Agency. The Careers Service has been strengthened by 230 posts specially to deal with the unemployed and a youth employment subsidy has recently been introduced to replace the recruitment subsidy for school leavers. The Job Creation and Work Experience Programmes provide valuable alternatives to periods of unemployment as well as the positive benefits which temporary work or work experience can give the young unemployed.
Both work experience and the youth employment subsidy are recent additions to the measures and it is early yet to judge their effectiveness. Nevertheless, indications are that both will make a valuable contribution to reducing youth unemployment and I hope employers and the unemployed young people will make full use of these and the other schemes.
The latest figures show that in October, 126,393 young people were registered as unemployed at careers offices, which is very much better than the peak of 244,464 in July. This is, of course, still too high a figure and we cannot be satisfied until it is much lower.
I shall write to my hon. Friend to set out at length our responses to the representations which have been made on this question.