Job Creation (Hansard, 27 March 1986)

§ Mr. Lang

Our Department is responsible for a wide range of measures designed to generate employment and enterprise, support youth and adult training and provide help to long-term unemployed people.

The main measures aimed at providing additional employment are:

1. The enterprise allowance scheme which helps unemployed people who want to start up in business. Participants are paid a flat-rate taxable allowance of £40 a week for a maximum of 52 weeks. The scheme will be expanded to 100,000 places in 1986–87.
2. The small firms loan guarantee scheme which assists new or existing small businesses to raise loan finance. The scheme was extended in the Budget for a further three years and it is expected that up to 7,000 small firms will be helped over the next two years.
3. The community programme which provides jobs of up to a year's duration for longer-term unemployed adults on projects of benefit to the community. Those eligible are benefit recipients aged 18 to 24 who have been unemployed for at least six in the past nine months, and those aged 25 and over who have been unemployed for at least 12 in the past 15 months. Participants receive a wage, subject to an overall average for a project or group of projects of £67 per week from 1 April. An expansion of the programme, to 255,000 places was announced by the chancellor in his Budget statement.
4. The new workers scheme announced by the Chancellor in his budget statement, will, from 1 April subject to parliamentary approval, provide help in getting jobs to under 21 year olds who have just left YTS or who are too old for it; this will involve a payment of £15 per week for up to 52 weeks to employers who recruit people aged 20 and under in their first year of employment at wages of £55 a week or below and 20 year olds at £65 per week or below.
5. The job release scheme which makes it easier for older workers to give up work early and to release their jobs to unemployed people. It offers a range of weekly allowances from the date the applicant leaves work until the state pension age, provided the applicant's employer agrees to replace him or her by an unemployed person. The scheme is at present open to men aged 64, women aged 59, and disabled men aged 60 to 63.
6. The job splitting scheme is designed to encourage employers to provide more job opportunities by splitting an existing full-time job, or by combining regular overtime hours into a part-time job or by creating two new part-time jobs for people leaving particular Government schemes. For part-time jobs created and maintained for a period of at least 12 months a grant of £840 is paid to an employer in three equal instalments of £280.

I shall write to the hon. Member with details of the full range of assistance available.