Youth Unemployment (Hansard, 26 November 2001)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham)

Our policies, built on a foundation of a strong and stable economy, have helped to reduce long term youth unemployment by almost three-quarters since 1997.

The New Deal for Young People is continuing to play an active part in helping young people improve their job prospects and move into work. The programme has already helped 326,300 long-term unemployed young people move into work, over 25,000 of those between June and August 2001.

In our Green Paper, Towards Full Employment in a Modern Society, published in March, we outlined our strategy for building on the success of the New Deal for Young People and improving its performance even further. Since June we have introduced Recruit, a pilot initiative to help employers in deprived areas employ more people through the New Deal's employment option; broadened training within New Deal to allow training that leads to a certificate recognised by employers in their occupational areas; increased the permitted length of work experience placement for New Dealers to eight weeks to enhance their employability; and revised the entry conditions for the New Deal employment option so participants can enter the option from the day they enter the programme.

We also extended our action teams for jobs initiative to cover 53 areas by October 2001 and 63 areas by January 2002. Action teams provide locally tailored solutions to help people into work.