We must find a way to energise those who are languishing on the dole
RECENTLY Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have both said the answer to curbing immigration postBrexit is to get more of our own people with the skills and education required to fill the vacancies that immigrants take.
There are 1.6 million unemployed people (defined as people not in work but seeking and available to work) in Britain and around 770,000 job vacancies. The proportions – two people theoretically available for every job – are similar for Scotland. There also many people who have opted out of paid work, or with help could work despite disability.
Few would argue against immigration if we had more vacancies than people available to fill them, and justifiable skill shortages. What no politician is honest about are the underlying reasons, or the huge challenge turn this round. It isn’t just lack of spending on skills or education. We have new primary teachers who themselves didn’t learn basic numeracy and literacy at school, parents who don’t value education, encourage their children to learn and behave, accept school rules or even send them to school with food in their stomach. Or whose lives are too busy making ends meet that they don’t have time for all that.
Our education establishment has watered down the curriculum, discipline and exam standards. We encourage people to go to “universities” to study subjects that render them unsuited to be the nurses, teachers, joiners and engineers that the country craves – and hugely in debt.
We have employers who prefer immigrants because they work harder and are more reliable – and can be paid less, and people who can’t move to where the jobs are because of housing costs. And, yes, there are people who prefer to scam the system and live off benefits.
Politicians say we need immigrants to pay for the ageing population. If there are twice as many British unemployed people than there are jobs another conclusion is that immigrants’ taxes are actually paying for the benefits of the British person whose potential job they are filling. And doubling the need for housing.
Fixing this is extremely complex and requires unpopular decisions and policies.
So there are two main problems; changing the education system so we produce people with the skills required, and finding a way to encourage and convert the millions languishing on the dole or in jobs way below their earning, aspiration and ability potential to take their proper place in society and the economy.
If it is not fixed we will have millions of people reaching retirement with no pension, a decline in birth rate because families can’t afford to have kids, and huge social unrest.
A terrifying prospect. I don’t know the answer, but the first act is to be honest about the scale of the problem. Throwing money that we don’t have at it isn’t the answer and neither is the SNP’s idea of independence.
Allan Sutherland,
1 Willow Row, Stonehaven.