Oral Answers to Questions — Work and Pensions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 19 July 2010.
What steps Jobcentre Plus plans to take to assist education leavers into employment and training in 2010.
All education leavers claiming jobseeker's allowance receive help and support from a personal adviser, access to jobs and a range of employment and training opportunities. These include help with job search skills, which is very targeted and very personalised. Help is also available from partner organisations such as Connexions.
Given the previous Government's legacy of youth unemployment, is my right hon. Friend aware of the additional problem of education leavers with criminal records seeking employment through the route of rehabilitation? What is his Department doing to give young offenders a second chance to get on the employment ladder?
I think my hon. Friend will find that the unified Work programme will be one of the better ways of tackling that issue, because it will be very narrowly focused. If we get it absolutely right, it will be narrowly focused on the needs and problems of those individuals. The previous set of programmes was too disparate; now we can focus, and we should be able to help. Another issue worth raising, although it does not come under the remit of our Department, is what remains on people's records, and I hope that in due course we will be able to look carefully at that. People trying for that second chance sometimes find that employers say no to them simply because they have been inside, and a compassionate society should try to do something about that.
Does the Secretary of State recognise the figure of 120,000 young people who will be added to the dole queue because of cuts in Government programmes such as the future jobs fund and the long-term guarantee for jobs, as well as the cuts to university places taking place in a different Department? Does he believe that Jobcentre Plus will be able to cope with that increased Government-led demand?
I do not recognise that. The right hon. Gentleman was in a Government who completely failed to deal with youth unemployment. They ended up leaving office with higher youth unemployment than they inherited. That is not something that we want to crow about, but it is the reality. We need to do better than that, but we also face the challenge of reducing the deficit that his party's Government left us. I recognise his interest and his compassion, but unless we put the economy right, we will not be able to exercise either.
Will my right hon. Friend look this summer particularly at the 16-year-olds who are leaving school, to make sure that the jobcentre works not just with Connexions but with the relevant parts of the youth service to provide a much more integrated and much better informed set of opinions and advice than have been offered to young people in the past? There is an urgent need for 16-year-olds to have good advice between jobs and apprenticeships and further education.
I absolutely guarantee to do that, and I will talk to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State about it. It is worth bearing in mind what a real challenge this is for us. I have to repeat that, over the past 14 years, that group particularly was most failed by the previous Government. Before they carry on giving us lectures about it, they should recognise that failure and probably apologise for it.
Given that the Secretary of State says that the Labour Government failed young people and that his policies are going to be so much better, if youth unemployment goes up, will he resign?
Unless we can get retrospective resignations from the whole pack of the last Cabinet, I do not think that I should answer that.