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JOHN HUMPHRYS: So Tessa Jowell not a disaster,
the New Deal, but a bit of a disappointment. We were entitled to expect
rather more for our money weren't we?
TESSA JOWELL: Well I think it's important
to look at the experience of Sheffield which your film was devoted to against
the experience of the New Deal as a whole. If we take the New Deal as
a UK wide programme one hundred and seventy thousand young people have
left benefit and got into work and about seventy-five per cent of those
nationally are in work three months later. Now we monitor very carefully
the performance of every New Deal area and in terms of the number of people
who leave the New Deal, young people who leave the New Deal from the first
stage, what we call the Gateway, Sheffield is I think at the bottom or
next to bottom in the national ranking. If you look at the number of....
The proportion of New Deal people in Sheffield who leave the New Deal having
undertaken one of the training options then Sheffield fares much better,
it's somewhere in the middle. Another important comparison between Sheffield
and the rest of the country is looking at the levels of disadvantage that
young people come onto the New Deal with. The New Deal nationally shows
that something like six out of ten young people leave the first stage of
the New Deal and go into work. The remaining forty per cent have very
serious numeracy and literacy problems. In Sheffield that proportion is
sixty per cent which is why training, education, the further help which
is provided in the later stages of the New Deal is so important.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Well let's break
all of that down a bit over the next quarter of an hour or so and put aside
Sheffield specifically for a moment and look at the national picture as
you said and when you look at that you see that forty-five thousand of
those got, of the hundred and seventy thousand figure that you gave me,
get short term jobs in other words they're not sustained jobs, they don't
last for more than six months. That's not good.
JOWELL: Well to some extent the
fact that twenty-five per cent of young people going into work from the
New Deal are in jobs that we know last less than thirteen weeks which is
the definition, you know, is what you would expect in a dynamic labour
market. All over the country there are vacancies, there are other jobs
for young people to go to if they don't like the job that they've gone
into and they don't always tell us when they move on which is why the overall
percentage of young people leaving the New Deal and going into work is
well over half, about fifty-seven per cent.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah - but I mean you
wouldn't suggest that nationally twenty-five per cent of the labour market
are in jobs that don't last more than a few weeks. That's just not the
case.
JOWELL But before young people
come onto the New Deal let's just look at who the New deal for young people
is seeking to help. It is seeking to help young people aged between eighteen
and twenty-four who have been unemployed for six months. So they are already
facing a degree of disadvantage. Something has gone wrong that has meant
that they haven't gone into work and it is addressing those problems that
the New Deal at every stage is geared to act.
HUMPHRYS: Right but half of them
would have got jobs anyway - the point that was made very forcefully in
that film.
JOWELL: Well I think that is a
very important conclusion from the macro-economic evaluation and it is...
that is the numerical calculation that the New Deal effect in the period
that the research took, the first year of the New Deal, was about thirty
thousand jobs arose precisely because of the New Deal. But we know (both
speaking at once) if I could just finish the point, we know as a matter
of fact that a hundred and seventy thousand young people have moved from
benefit through the New Deal and into work.
HUMPHRYS: Well that's the figure
we're breaking down isn't it and we've already established that forty-five
thousand who got a short term job or a part time job......
JOWELL: ..... no not necessarily
part time......
HUMPHRYS: But a short term job
- they may have gone onto something else indeed but short term job as we've
agreed. We're also establishing........
JOWELL: But about a hundred and
forty thousand have gone on to jobs that last for more than three months....
HUMPHRYS: Indeed - and half of
those, and this is the point I'm making and it's a very important point,
you've acknowledged it, would have got the job anyway because of changes
in the economic circumstances. Now you promised when you came into ....
When you put this scheme forward when you were in opposition that you would
get two hundred and fifty thousand people off the dole, young people off
the dole - that's what you said. It was always a nonsense in a sense to
make that promise, if I could just finish the point I'm making because
by the time you got into power many of those had already got jobs, there
were then only a hundred and seventy thousand still on the dole so it was
eating away at the basic logic of this scheme.
JOWELL: Look I am as eager as you
are to measure at each stage the impact of the New Deal but what is quite
clear is that the first stage of the New Deal which is when the young person
has help with interviews, has help in compiling a curriculum vitae, is
told about the kinds of jobs that are available, is linked to their personal
advisor, their sort of mentor who is there for them to help them to move
from unemployment into work. What is quite clear is that that process
which sees seventy-five per cent of people leave the gateway into jobs
which last for more than three months has a differential effect. For some
people it makes all the difference in the world and for others the benefit
may be marginal.
HUMPHRYS: But that is absolutely
crucial you see.....
JOWELL: It is crucial and what
we can't do is to weight the precise impact but the figures tell us, the
figures are published they are the government's statistical figures that
a hundred and seventy thousand young people since the New Deal launched
have moved from benefit to work.
HUMPHRYS: Sure, and you keep making
that point and statistically it's right. But when you break it down it
tells you a great deal about the scheme. And what it's telling you is
that it's been fine in terms of general youth unemployment, but this scheme,
in order to have proved itself, really to have to proved itself, would
have dealt with the most difficult people. You spent a lot of money, in
other words, and this is the very important point, you spent a lot money
on this deal, where it need not have been spent. That's the point.
JOWELL: No, I don't think that
is the case and the point.....
HUMPHRYS: Well it's sustained by
the experts in the field, the people who......
JOWELL: No, I think the point is,
and every young person who comes onto the New Deal as a condition of their
eligibility for the New Deal has been out of work for six months or more.
HUMPHRYS: And they would have got
a job when economic circumstances changed. That's the whole point, and
what you were trying to do with the New Deal, Gordon Brown, let me tell
you what will remind you, no doubt you will know it, what he said, a few
years ago, our plan, when the scheme was being drawn up, our plan is nothing
less than to abolish youth unemployment. Now that was an enormous thing
to say, and if it were to happen, then of course it would have meant that
everybody, every single young man and woman, who was not employed however
difficult to find a job for, would have got it. That is not what is happening
and those who are at the bottom of the heap, those who are least likely
to find a job are not, under the New Deal, finding a job. That's the basis
of it, that's why it's a flawed scheme.
JOWELL: That is not the case.
HUMPHRYS: Statistically, it is.
JOWELL: Let's take first of all,
the point about youth unemployment. Since the election, youth unemployment
has fallen by sixty per cent.
HUMPHRYS: ....and we'd established
.......
JOWELL: ...and a major forty per
cent
HUMPHRYS: ....nothing to do with
the scheme.
JOWELL: ...no, no, no, that's not
the case...
HUMPHRYS: ....you've acknowledged
it is the case.
JOWELL ....no, no, I have not acknowledged
it is the case. Forty per cent of that reduction is due to the New Deal.
Of course we've seen a combination of the New Deal driving down on youth
unemployment and we've also seen growth in the number of jobs as the figures
we published last week show seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand more people
are in work, at least seven-hundred-and-fifty-thousand more are in work
that at the time of the election.
HUMPHRYS: ...because of economic
circumstances...
JOWELL: ....and we have a buoyant
labour market and we have vacancies all over the country. But let me pick
up a key point from your film and a point that you've also suggested, which
is, this is about job creation.
HUMPHRYS: I haven't used the word
'job creation' actually.
JOWELL: OK, well the film certainly
did. The New
Deal is not a job creation programme. The new deal is about giving young
unemployed people the skills to make them employable...
HUMPHRYS: I understand that..
JOWELL: ...matching skills that
they have to their local labour market.
HUMPHRYS: I understand that but
you can't given them those skills if they are functionally illiterate and
if they are innumerate and forty per cent of them are.
JOWELL: Precisely, which is
why, last week, or the week before last, we announced a ten-point plan
to build on the success of the New Deal so far, in recognition of the fact
that increasingly the New Deal is going to be facing young people who are
increasingly disadvantaged, like the sixty per cent in Sheffield who come
onto the New Deal, not able to....with inadequate standards of numeracy
and literacy, that's why the New Deal will work harder, will build on it's
success, will address the basic skills gap, and will also do things which
are very important to employers, and you know, having talked to the Employment
Service in Sheffield, they confirm the importance of this feedback.
HUMPHRYS: Well I got it, I got
that.......
JOWELL: ...how to present themselves....
HUMPHRYS: .....absolutely, that's
the sort of thing you say, helping young people how to present themselves.
There's a lot of waffle in it, if I may say so, it's ten points and some
of it is incredibly obvious stuff ensuring, but when you get to the really
crucial stuff, ensuring that every young person is literate and numerate,
number one, you don't tell us how you are going to do that, you tell us
how you are going to assess people, to find out whether they are literate
and numerate, but you don't yet have the assessors, and it's going to take
a year to get all of those assessors....
JOWELL: ....well, I don't know
where you get that from John.
HUMPHRYS: From your document.
JOWELL: I mean, the assessment......no,
no, no, we haven't said there's a year before we start doing that...
HUMPHRYS: ...in addition, eleven-thousand,
NDPA's, those are the people who are going to do it, will be trained over
the next twelve months in the handling of identification of basic skills
needed. So we have not even got to begin the process of actually giving
them the education they need. We are simply trying to find enough assessors
in order to establish how many there are.
JOWELL: That is not the case.
It is a part of every personal advisors job to assess basic skills when
the young person comes onto the New Deal. If they haven't got GCSE's,
because what the New Deal is seeking to do is to guarantee that the young
person, before they move to work has standards of literacy which are broadly
equivalent to having GCSE's. Which is the employability threshold.
HUMPHRYS: Right, now given that
they don't have that, let's assume that we've leapt forward a year and
now you have got all these assessors, and the kids come along and the assessor
says, yes, he can't read or write or whatever, or she, what happens to
them then?
JOWELL: Well they then go on, where
they don't have those basic skills, they then go on to courses in order
to teach them those skills.
HUMPHRYS: Do they exist all over
the country today because we've had a little difficulty finding them.
JOWELL: They do, they do. And
if you look at the use of the full time training and education option in
Sheffield, you will see that that is part of the Sheffield programme that
has success which out-performs other New Deals in other parts of the country.
HUMPHRYS: Well, I tell you, you
don't need to go all the way to Sheffield from London, you just pop across
to East London here where Safeway were trying to find some people to do
very very basic jobs like shelf-stacking and manning check-outs and all
the rest of it. They had difficulty recruiting, they tried to recruit
them and they couldn't do so, because the people who were applying for
the jobs couldn't read and write. It isn't happening is it? That is the
problem. And the scheme has been going for a long time and had you not
spent an awful lot of money in ways need not have been spent, perhaps there
would have been enough to spend, when it absolutely had to be spent to
help the most in need.
JOWELL: John, I think you're trying
very hard to make a case, with respect, that is not sustained by the facts.
HUMPHRYS: Oh, I wasn't making
the case, I am simply putting it to you.
JOWELL: You know your film tried
to make the case. There is nobody more determined to build on the success
of the New Deal, to address these issues..
HUMPHRYS: I don't dispute that
for a moment..
JOWELL: ..than I, the Chancellor,
David Blunkett..
HUMPHRYS: It's the way you're doing
it that I'm questioning, not your determination. Of course you want to
do it, I'm questioning whether you are going about it the right way.
JOWELL: What is absolutely clear
after eighteen months of running the New Deal is that we are now facing
levels of disadvantage which mean that the efforts that we make in the
first stage of the New Deal in particular, have to be redoubled in order
to address basic skills, standards of numeracy and literacy and..
HUMPHRYS: ..re-directed as well
as redoubled..
JOWELL: No because the, I mean
this has already been going on but you know we haven't been doing enough
of it in recognition of the levels of..
HUMPHRYS: My point precisely.
JOWELL: The New Deal is a dynamic
programme. You know you wouldn't expect me to say that when we launched
it in 1988 it would continue, you know in its...
HUMPHRYS: No, but you could have
listened to the points that people were making. I can remember sitting
in this very studio with people like the Chancellor, the man who is now
the Chancellor of Exchequer, the man who is now the Secretary of State
for Employment and Education and saying look, these are going to be the
problems and they were saying no, no, no, we are going to crack it and
they didn't say we were going to take years and years and years to get
around to dealing with these youngsters with the biggest problems of all.
They didn't acknowledge the difference, this is the point you see. Now,
if you tell me you are redirecting it, fine, a lot of people say about
time too.
JOWELL: What we are having to do
is to provide for these young people in a period of nine months or a year,
what most of us get through at least eight years of secondary education.
We have to move very fast but don't pretend that it can be done over night.
We are not going to give up on these young people. We are not going to
give up on these young people and all the signs are that the New Deal,
strengthened, refocussed at tackling levels of disadvantage that I don't
think anybody quite believed existed at the levels that they do, will deliver
these young people into work and an alternative to what would otherwise
have happened of a lifetime on benefit. And when the Conservatives you
know criticise and carp about the New Deal, just remember they have opposed
it every step of the way. They are responsible in very large part for the
levels of disadvantage that the New Deal is now tackling.
HUMPHRYS: Tessa Jowell, thank you
very much indeed for coming here this morning.
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