Youth Unemployment
Philip Dunne challenges the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the Governmnet's policy for tackling youth unemployment.
Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): What steps her Department is taking to reduce the level of youth unemployment. [321774]
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Yvette Cooper): We are backing 470,000 additional youth opportunities, including through the £1 billion future jobs fund, as well as extra training and job opportunities. That is part of a youth guarantee, which is that all young people should be guaranteed a job, training or a work placement if they have been unemployed for more than six months.
Mr. Dunne: I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but does she recognise that 923,000 young people aged between 16 and 24 are now unemployed? That is a 50 per cent. increase on the number in that age group unemployed when this Government came to power in 1997. Will she admit that the Government have got it terribly wrong for the youth unemployed?
Yvette Cooper: No, I think the Government are right to provide additional support for young people, through a youth guarantee that the hon. Gentleman's party opposes, and the future jobs fund, which it would abolish. He asked about the figures. In fact, if we exclude the number of full-time students from those figures, there are 657,000 young people who are unemployed according to the definition of the International Labour Organisation, compared with 830,000 in the early '90s and more than 1 million in the early '80s. It was the hon. Gentleman's party that turned its back on the young unemployed and left a lost generation, whose scars we have seen for very many years. We are not prepared to do that, which is why we are investing in the youth guarantee that his party opposes.