New Deal labelled 'wasteful'
Kevin Davis (Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Yeovil) recently stated the following on his blog on Gordon Brown's plans to boost jobs :
'He now dreams of a job for every British worker. No problem with having dreams but surely the fact that this is a Prime Minister who has spent billions on the wasteful new deal means we cannot believe that this supposed announcement will lead to anything'
I don't know what you think but i find this horrifying. The New Deal has helped countless numbers of people back into work and has provided them with the support necessary to take charge of their lifes.Â
Let us not forget that the U.K. now has one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world and the healthiest economy in all of Europe. Is this not testament to the fact that our policy in this area is working?
Under Thatcher we had seen unemployment at 3.6 million, though many academics have estimated it to be as high as 5 million.
Yet Since Labour came to power in 1997 we have created around three million more jobs and unemployment has consistently fallen. I think that part of our success in this area is contributable to schemes such as New Deal. Instead of simply leaving people on benefit we are striving to work with them to help them realise and fulfill their own potential and to achieve all that they can achieve. Not only will we help them get work, but the New Deal helps people with training schemes so that they may increase their employment prospects.
We all benefit from a trained and skilled workforce.
The New Deal helps a strikingly large amount of people to find work; people we simply can't afford to leave out in the cold. Every member of society has something to contribute, be they disabled, a lone parent or long-term unemployed and the New Deal reflects that.
As a result we have less people claiming benefits and more people working; and a stronger economy which benefits us all.Â
'He now dreams of a job for every British worker. No problem with having dreams but surely the fact that this is a Prime Minister who has spent billions on the wasteful new deal means we cannot believe that this supposed announcement will lead to anything'
I don't know what you think but i find this horrifying. The New Deal has helped countless numbers of people back into work and has provided them with the support necessary to take charge of their lifes.Â
Let us not forget that the U.K. now has one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the world and the healthiest economy in all of Europe. Is this not testament to the fact that our policy in this area is working?
Under Thatcher we had seen unemployment at 3.6 million, though many academics have estimated it to be as high as 5 million.
Yet Since Labour came to power in 1997 we have created around three million more jobs and unemployment has consistently fallen. I think that part of our success in this area is contributable to schemes such as New Deal. Instead of simply leaving people on benefit we are striving to work with them to help them realise and fulfill their own potential and to achieve all that they can achieve. Not only will we help them get work, but the New Deal helps people with training schemes so that they may increase their employment prospects.
We all benefit from a trained and skilled workforce.
The New Deal helps a strikingly large amount of people to find work; people we simply can't afford to leave out in the cold. Every member of society has something to contribute, be they disabled, a lone parent or long-term unemployed and the New Deal reflects that.
As a result we have less people claiming benefits and more people working; and a stronger economy which benefits us all.Â
posted by Lee Skevington at
Monday, September 10, 2007
4 Comments:
The trouble with your post is that it is not me that deems the new deal to be a failure but your own MP's. This is taken from the BBC in May of this year.
A former government minister has made a stinging attack on the New Deal scheme to help young unemployed people - one of Gordon Brown's flagship policies.
In a report for think-tank Reform, former welfare reform minister Frank Field called its performance "woeful".
He said there were more young people out of work now than when the scheme began in 1998, despite £3.5bn funding.
His report for Reform rebuts government claims that youth unemployment has been "virtually abolished".
Mr Field suggests limits should be set for receiving benefits and that control of the New Deal should be devolved to local benefit offices.
Figures showed there were more than half a million 18 to 24-year-olds out of work - 70,000 more than in 1998, he said.
Greetings Kevin! I am glad you found this blog so that we may engage in meaningful debate on a range of issues.
Yet realistically i think we all know that any claim that youth unemployment has been "virtually abolished" is more than a slight exaggeration. But we must take into account the fact that we have more and more young people entering higher education today than there has ever been in the past. Essentially, more and more young people are being provided with an education which is fit for purpose in the work place and will have qualifications employers really need. I don't think anyone can argue that the UK workforce is less skilled and less qualified than it was before 1997.
This really is a "is the glass half full, or half empty?" situation. We're helping young people into work by not just acting as benefits-police but empowering them and providing them with the skills they need to excel. New Deal is helping with this. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research backs up this claim.
The fact that remains Kevin is this - unemployment is down from that 3 million in 1993 to around 1 million. We must be doing something right somewhere. And having more people off state benefits and working and paying tax into the system is going to be beneficial for us all. Though i am sure you've heard that argument before.
We should not be judging the effectiveness of New Deal by its cost, but by overall employment statistics which would generally support the initiative and by the net effect it has on the economy, which figures show to be substantially improved as a result.
As ever with these things I suppose it is a matter of what do you call employment?
I aggree that the large number of people going to university can be a good thing but it also clearly means that it might well distort the figures of those who are unemployed.
Interestingly, if you look back at unemployment rates the last high point for unemployment was in 1993 (which was almost as high as 1987). The sharpest fall from then was during the period 1993 to 1998. Since then the decline in unemployment has been a lot slower, so perhaps things have not been done as well as you claim.
http://www.in2perspective.com/nr/stats/uk-unemployment.jsp;jsessionid=1FE9A0FF0766B6D41603F12FC37E46EC
Then how is it on the ONS site we have a little section which say inactive people 4.5 million, when i asked this was explained as people who for reasons unknown do not claim benefits, so I dug a bit deeper and found out these people would have been classed unemployed under the Thatcher government.
people who have been made redundant and have had redundancy payments, under Thatcher they would have been added to the unemployment under Labour they are inactive.
So sad to say who was best Thatcher with 3 million or Labour with 5.5 million, except of course Labour were good at altering the target and altering the accounting.
Oh yes people under 25 are not calculated.
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