‘Act now on jobs or see young lives blighted for two decades’

SHADOW CHANCELLOR Anneliese Dodds has warned that a comprehensive scheme is vital to get people back into employment after coronavirus to prevent the effects of the outbreak being felt on their incomes for the next two decades.

Speaking to yesterday after an online meeting with businesses in Leeds, Ms Dodds called on the Government to look to Germany for inspiration on how to build employment into the recovery programme from coronavirus.

And she said the impetus was even more important in places like Yorkshire where young people were already less likely to succeed than their southern peers.

Ms Dodds said: “We need to have a longer term perspective on this. We know that if people become unemployed, particularly if they become unemployed when they’re young, then they’re much more likely to have far lower earnings for the rest of their lives.

“And obviously that reduces tax too at the end of the day as well as being very bad for them.”

Labour‘s Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds appeals for action to save jobs.

She warned that businesses in the tourism and hospitality sector, which have been calling for a more flexible approach from the Government to coronavirus support measures due to their individual circumstances, were a particular worry.

She said: “We’re really concerned about the impact of current developments, the lack of engagement with the issue of unemployment.

“Looking at Yorkshire where you’ve got a lot of people who are or have been employed in those areas like tourism and hospitality, if you don’t have that a more sectoral approach, then we’ll end up seeing higher levels of unemployment than we would otherwise.”

Richmondshire in North Yorkshire, which contains Chancellor

Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency, topped the list of areas most at risk for unemployment in a study in April, with its large tourism and hospitality sectors meaning 35 per cent of jobs are under threat. Areas such as

Hull, Barnsley, Doncaster were amongst the 10 places with the largest rise in unemployment in April, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Ms Dodds said: “We need to be, for example, encouraging young people to stay in education and training for longer, that’s a proven way to help keep at least some young people out of the pool of unemployment. But also other groups of workers, such as older workers who might find it really hard to get another job now.

“We have been saying to government, please look at what other countries are doing right now. There’s the German investment program, for example, the kind of capital investment, heavy parts of it, is 10 times as large as what Mr Johnson was talking about on Tuesday, and it’s particularly focused actually in Germany on job opportunities.”

The Prime Minister this week announced an “opportunity guarantee” to help the economy cope with the “aftershock” of the coronavirus crisis.

Please look at what other countries are doing right now.