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We need to tackle long term unemployment

Posted by Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston, at 10:12, Fri 19 October 2012:

This week's unemployment figures made sobering reading. Although there's been a small fall in unemployment overall, longterm youth unemployment's at its highest level since 1997. In Stretford and Urmston, the rate has more than tripled over the past year.

I know this is a huge concern for young people locally, their families and their teachers. If we can't get young people into work at the very start of their adult lives, there are lifelong impacts. Many will become angry, demoralised and find it hard ever to settle into stable employment. And their chances of setting up home and getting their independence look very remote.

Some groups continue to fare especially badly. Young black men have far higher rates of worklessness than their white counterparts. Disabled people struggle to find work that matches their skills. Women's unemployment is at its highest for a quarter of a century. And what's the government's answer to all this? To slash rights at work.

So I've been very busy this week in parliament participating in the debates on the Infrastructure bill and on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill. These bills are supposed to boost business and create jobs.

The infrastructure bill simply doesn't go far enough. It allows the government to provide guarantees to get infrastructure project moving, but guarantees alone won't make the difference, when what we need is vision, funding, and real determination to get projects moving. In Trafford, we have a number of projects with huge potential - at Carrington, or on Trafford Park. But there is still no progress on Partington town centre, and now I'm really alarmed to hear rumours that the Coop's pulled out, while the future of the bank's in question again as we hear that the sale of Royal Bank of Scotland branches to Santander's fallen through.

Neither the government nor Trafford council have an adequate infrastructure strategy. The new Infrastructure bill isn't up to the task. But what's much worse lies in the Enterprise bill. This bill slashes employment rights, like the right to have information from your employer if you believe you've been discriminated against, or the right to be protected from harassment by third parties at work. Huge fees will prevent ordinary workers from being able to take a case to an employment tribunal, and employers will be able to put pressure on employees to leave a company with possibly only a very modest payoff when there's a dispute.

The government seems to believe the reason we've got high unemployment is because workers have too many rights. Business doesn't think this - business organisations' responses to the consultation on the bill rejected many of the measures ministers have brought forward, or said they weren't required. In other countries, like Germany, strong workers' rights don't harm their economic performance. I'm really angry that workers are paying for government incompetence with the economy and narrow minded ideology, and I was proud to go into the debate to speak up for workers' rights.