Not a single worker in one in f ive households

THERE are no adults with a job in nearly one in five Scottish homes, research has revealed.

Official figures show that Scotland has the second-highest rate of ‘workless households’ in the UK.

There are 319,000 households where no adult has a job, 17.3 per cent of all homes with working-age adults.

The number of workless households has fallen by 11,000 in the past year. However, critics say that more action is needed by the Scottish Government to boost the economy and ensure that fewer people are on benefits.

Scottish Tory economy spokesman Dean Lockhart said: ‘When it comes to workless households, Scotland lags behind almost every other part of the UK.

‘These are households which need to be helped off long-term benefits and back into the workplace.

‘If we succeed in helping these households into work, not only will they reap the rewards, but the economy will too.

‘Added to these workless households is the unacceptable level of 730,000 people in Scotland who are classified as economically inactive under this SNP government.

‘The next time the SNP talks about unemployment rates in Scotland, it would do very well to remember the 17.3 per cent of workless households across the country.’

The figures from the Office for National Statistics revealed there were 319,000 households in Scot- land with no working-age adult in a job in the three months to September 2017. The figure for the same period last year was 330,000.

The data showed 17.3 per cent of Scots households had no working adults between the age of 16 and 64. This was higher than every other part of Britain except Northern Ireland, at 21 per cent.

Elsewhere the UK, the lowest figure was 10 per cent, in the SouthEast of England, followed by 10.1 per cent in Outer London and 11.8 per cent in London.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Scotland continues to have a higher employment rate and a lower unemployment rate than the UK as a whole, while our youth unemployment rate is among the lowest in the EU.

‘As the full-year Annual Population Survey data made clear, the proportion of people in workless households in Scotland is below the UK average, while in more than a third of cases this is due to ill-health or disability.’

Across the whole of the UK, the number of households where no one works fell by 49,000 over the past year to three million.

UK employment minister Damian Hinds said: ‘We know being in work is one of the best ways people can improve their family’s lives, and under Universal Credit (UC) people are moving into work faster and staying in work longer than the previous system.

‘Unemployment is at its lowest level in over 40 years and three million more people have found work since 2010. On UC, people’s benefits reduce gradually as they take on more hours, ensuring that it always pays to be in work.’

‘Scotland lags behind rest of UK’