Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Young and jobless must take priority in recovery
AS Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, I delivered 11 Budgets in 10 years – but no Budget in recent times is as important to families as the crisis Budget which Rishi Sunak will present this week.
And if the famous Red Box that he takes to the House of Commons on Wednesday does not contain new and far more ambitious measures – and money – to help the young and long-term unemployed, he will have failed in his duty to our country.
In the typical constituency there are more than 1,000 young men and women unemployed. But just three in every 1,000 have started a place on the Kickstart scheme that was supposed to provide them with jobs – and hope.
At least 250,000 job placements have been promised under Kickstart but there were around 2,000 people on the Uk-wide programme in the first week of February.
The Government’s failure to move quickly is condemning a whole generation of young people to joblessness and rejection and many to depression.
In the 1930s, the unemployed stood at street corners. Now they sit isolated at home, as their hope last summer of work experience or training has faded in a winter and spring of desolation.
Britain has 470,000 adults and young people registered as long-term unemployed. The Learning and Work Institute predicts that could rise to 800,000, and may even surpass one million, in a few months.
But not one job has yet been created under the Government’s Restart scheme, despite the fact it was announced many months ago.
Long-term unemployment in Tees Valley could more than double to 7,000-plus, the North Tyne to 5,000, and Sheffield to 12,000, the Learning and Work Institute predicts.
As Chancellor, I was involved in creating the New Deal for Young People and the long-term jobless in 1998. I was PM when we created the Future Jobs Fund, which created thousands of posts for young people after the global financial crisis of 2008.
There are lessons we need to learn from their successes and failures.
We should advertise for employers to take people on. But in the absence of big private sector recruitment, we should also make it easier and financially attractive for public authorities to take on the young and the long-time unemployed.
The Budget is the Chancellor’s opportunity to kickstart Kickstart – and restart Restart.
He has to extend the furlough, do more to encourage companies to keep workers on, as Germany does, even if working only part-time, and for now cut payroll costs for firms adding new workers.
A Chancellor thinking long-term would recognise the need to expand our health services and train up more to deliver social care, and see the benefit of taking on people for environmental work.
No Chancellor should have contemplated cutting the lifeline for six million of our poorest families by ever removing £20 at any time from their Universal Credit payments.
No Chancellor should ever try to balance his books on the backs of the poor or the unemployed.