Tories turn their backs on jobless over-50s... we’ll help them get back to work
Ashworth vows to avert 80s-style misery
JONATHAN Ashworth yesterday vowed that Labour will help jobless over-50s back to work.
The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary accused the Tories of “turning their backs on a generation” and putting Britain on the “highway to hell” with last week’s Budget.
He believes scrapping the cap on bankers’ bonuses and handing those on £150,000 a year an average tax cut of £10,000 will fuel poverty and unemployment, harking back to the grim 1980s.
Speaking at the Labour conference in Liverpool, Mr Ashworth said: “I remember queuing at the dole office in the 80s with my dad. I remember the haunted look on faces – men who thought they were in the prime of their lives. For us, unemployment can never be a price worth paying. It breeds despair, it excludes from society, it leads to hopelessness.
“Yet the Tories are turning their backs on a generation who are out of work but want help – like they did in the ’80s, when they wrote them off. I went for a run this morning listening
I remember the haunted look on faces in the dole queues in the 1980s
to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell. I thought, ‘That’s where we are going after Friday’s Budget’.”
Branding it the “most divisive, unfair, unjust Tory Budget in living memory”, he added: “All it’s going to do is grow poverty and despair. It reveals the true colours of this Tory Party. Here in Liverpool this week, you will see the Labour Party saying we are on the side of ordinary working people.”
Labour’s planned “employment support provision” will specifically target the over-50s and those out of work because of long-term ill-health.
Some 578,000 people on long-term sick say they would like a job and nearly 760,000 aged between 50 and 64 are either actively seeking work or are inactive but willing to work.
In July, the Tories announced £22million for “new measures to tackle unemployment among over50s on benefits” with “more one-toone support at Job Centres to help them get into and progress in work”.
Mr Ashworth said: “The only people the Job Centre interacts with are those on unemployment benefits but you might not have been on unemployment benefits if you’re over 50. I’m not going to turn my back on people in their 50s like the Tories are, I’m not going to write them off.”
He pledged “real, tailored help”, adding: “When I look at the welfare state under the Tories, it neither offers a route out of poverty nor a pathway to decent jobs.
“We are going to reform our social security system and do it by growing our economy sustainably – that starts with my commitment to full and fulfilling employment for all.”
The employment rate is now 75.4% – 1.1% lower than before Covid – and there are 1.26 million vacancies. The
JONATHAN ASHWORTH ON HIS FEARS FOR BRITAIN
“economic inactivity rate” is 21.7%, up 1.5%.
Mr Ashworth said:
“I want us to have the highest employment level of the G7.
“That would mean working to a target of
80%. It would be £23billion boost to the economy, improve public finances by £8bn and mean household incomes increase by £830, or £2,000 for those on the lowest.”
Labour also promises a green jobs boom in a drive for renewable energy.
Mr Ashworth will tell delegates today: “Everyone deserves the opportunity to find well-paid work. Yet at a time when we have record vacancies, the Tories have not only underspent on their underperforming programmes by £2bn, they’ve written off a generation. “That money could be invested now to help people back to work. It’s a monumental waste of talent, not to mention a cost to society.” ben.glaze@mirror.co.uk @benglaze