Brown: New Deal will be expanded
Creating jobs and working towards full employment is central to Labour economic policy, Chancellor Gordon Brown said today.
In a key speech on the New Deal, Mr Brown said it would be extended in a third term of office to become the “New Deal for jobs and skills.”
This he said would help lone parents into jobs, and to get teenagers not already in education into training and employment.
Mr Brown promised that any money saved by getting people off benefits would be channelled into education.
Though Mr Brown was determined to focus on the New Deal, he was dogged by questions on his taxation plans. In an early interview on GMTV Mr Brown again refused to comment on whether Labour would promise not to raise taxes, saying the media should wait for the manifesto.
The Independent and the Daily Telegraph have claimed that Labour will pledge not to raise the basic or top rate of income tax, but will not make any promises on National Insurance – which they raised into 2002 to gain money for the NHS.
Mr Brown though was determined to focus on employment, telling his audience that the Conservatives’ plan to scrap the New Deal risked undermining the current levels of high employment.
While the UK now has half the unemployment rate of France and Germany, and lower unemployment than the USA, Mr Brown said that “falling unemployment didn’t happen by chance”, claiming that the New Deal had been vital.
The Chancellor said it was “ludicrous” for the Conservatives to claim the New Deal was not working when there was the lowest unemployment in 30 years with half the claimant count of 1997.
But the Conservatives said the New Deal was a revolving door back into welfare, claiming that less than one in five people in the programme were staying off benefits for more than a year.
Shadow Pensions Secretary David Willetts, said: “The New Deal is not a route off welfare, it is a revolving door back onto it. There are more young people neither working nor studying nor training than when Labour came to office in 1997. Even the Government admits that barely a third of the people going through it find jobs that last just three months.
“Our new analysis shows less than one in five people leaving the New Deal stay off benefits for a year. We will replace New Deal with schemes run by commercial and not-for-profit sector specialists with a strong incentive to help people into real jobs that last.”
And Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Dr Vince Cable said the New Deal left too many people without ‘real’ jobs.
Dr Cable said: “The New Deal leaves too many people on unnecessary or ineffective schemes rather than getting them into real jobs.
“You can’t push individuals through a one-size-fits-all programme.
“Liberal Democrats will tailor assistance so that jobseekers receive the package of support they need to get proper, permanent work.”
