Help for job-seekers

"Welfare State for 21st Century" Announced

Plans to create a "welfare state for the 21st century" have been outlined by the Chancellor in his Budget speech.

The centrepiece of the plans is the much-heralded "welfare to work" scheme, designed to get young unemployed people back into work.

Describing the plan as a "new deal" for young people, Gordon Brown said that every young person aged 18-25 unemployed for more than six months would be offered a first step on the employment ladder from next year.

They would be offered a choice of four options:

• A job with an employer, who will be offered £60 a week for six months
• Work with a voluntary organisation for six months
• Work with an environmental task force
• Full-time education or training

New measures for long-term unemployed

The Chancellor called on every business and voluntary organisation to take on a young unemployed man or women as part of the welfare to work programme.

"I urge every business to play its part in this national crusade to equip this country for the future by taking on young unemployed men and women," he told the Commons.

"I appeal to every voluntary organisation to make a further contribution to their community by taking on a young person," the Chancellor said.

In order to encourage job creation, Mr Brown said the government would pay firms a £75 a week subsidy to employ long-term jobless, as part of a £3.5 billion programme funded from the windfall tax and reserves.

Unions warmly welcomed the welfare-to-work scheme. TUC general secretary John Monks described the Budget as brilliant. "The Chancellor's priorities of stability, investment, jobs and opportunities for all are spot-on," he said.

His comments were echoed by Rodney Bickerstaffe, general secretary of Unison. He said said Mr Brown had acted to help women, the poor and the jobless despite having little room for manoeuvre.

Aid for single parents

In his own words

The Chancellor also put forward what he described as a "new, radical programme" to help Britain's one million lone parents bringing up two million children on benefit.

Mr Brown said he would be putting aside £200 million out of the windfall tax for advice, training and after-school childcare to support single parents.

They would also be offered help to look for jobs once their children are at school, as well as aid for child care costs for single parents on benefits.

He said every lone parent with more than one child qualifying for benefit would have the first £100 of weekly child care costs disregarded for in-work benefits from next summer.

Lone parent groups broadly welcomed the Chancellor's measures. "At last a recognition that lone parents want to work and the guts to put money upfront to ensure that they have the chance to do so," said Liz Sewell, chief executive of the single parents pressure group Gingerbread.

"Advice, training and childcare are key measures, but we also need jobs. Employers must now recognise the value of lone parents as employees," she said.

"No longer 'lone'?" by Les Gibbard © BBC

The director of the National Council for One Parent Families, Karin Pappenheim, described it as a "good news budget for lone parents".

"The additional support with childcare costs will help break down one of the greatest barriers to work combined with the new national employment scheme for lone parents which at last promises a route out of poverty for these families," she said.