§ Mr. JenkinsTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is his Department's assessment of the measures required to tackle labour market access for the most disadvantaged groups; and what policies are in place to apply such measures. [127965]
§ Ms JowellThe Government's key economic aim is high and stable levels of employment so everyone can share in growing living standards and greater job opportunities. The ambition is that, by the end of the decade, there will be a higher percentage of people in employment than ever before.
An important element of the Government's approach is to address labour market disadvantage to achieve employment opportunities for all. Policies encourage employers to consider the widest range of people for their vacancies—including the long-term unemployed, the economically inactive, people with disabilities, people from ethnic minorities and older people.
To achieve these aims, the Government have put in place a national framework, supplemented by locally targeted policies:
a stable macroeconomic platform to promote steady, sustained growth in output and jobspolicies to promote competition, innovation and enterpriseinvesting in education and training so people have the skills they need to take up worka labour market policy with a strong work focus linking active and continuous jobsearch with payment of benefit. Through this, and the network of local Employment Service Jobcentres, all unemployed people have regular access to vacancies, advice and help with jobsearch throughout their period of unemploymenta range of New Deal programmes to help those without a job—especially the long-term unemployed and those on inactive benefits—back into the labour market and from there into workpolicies such as the National Minimum Wage and Working Families Tax Credit designed to make work paythe national childcare strategy to increase the range of jobs that are open to peopleEmployment Zones, regional policies such as Regional Selective Assistance, the Single Regeneration Budget and the New Deal for Communities, designed to boost the infrastructure and human capital of particularly disadvantaged localitiesSince spring 1997, the Labour Force Survey shows that the number of people in jobs has risen by 978,000. Three fifths of this increase (570,000) has come from people who were previously economically inactive and two fifths 194W (407,000) from a fall in unemployment. 85 per cent. of the fall in unemployment (353,000) has come from people who had been out of work for one year or more.
These figures are encouraging but there is still more to do.