Quality | 2009.11.18
Gordon Brown's bid to defuse youth unemployment timebomb
Labour hope new cash will stop young jobless hitting 1m ahead of election
Fear of youth unemployment rising above 1 million in the new year yesterday prompted Gordon Brown to use the last Queen\'s speech of the parliament to promise more money to ease the impact of the recession on the young.
Some of the money will come from £2bn the Treasury has saved because the overall rate of unemployment is lower than forecast.
Ministers are keen to ensure that unemployment for those aged under 24, currently at 943,000, does not rise above the politically sensitive 1 million mark, denting Labour\'s claims for economic recovery in the buildup to the election.
Brown described the measures as "a go for growth" strategy, and vowed to continue with fiscal stimulus in advance of the pre-budget report on 9 December.
As Labour launched its programme in a Queen\'s speech lasting less than seven minutes, both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats denounced the measures as "an electioneering fantasy" that will never be implemented.
David Cameron dismissed the speech as full of "fake dividing lines" and "just a Labour press release printed on royal parchment paper". Nick Clegg said the speech came "from a government that has run out of road in a parliament that has lost the people\'s trust".
The speech, containing 13 bills, contained the expected populist measures, including free personal care at home for 280,000 elderly and disabled people in severe need, and new entitlements for NHS patients, parents, pupils and energy users. It also included curbs on irresponsible risk-taking by bankers, new orders for parents of antisocial children, and constraints on illegal internet file-sharers.
But Brown also promised a novel fiscal responsibility bill that will bind the government to halving the deficit over four years and "put debt on a sustainable path in the medium term". The speech contained no promises to act on electoral reform, but included a commitment to publish a draft bill setting out precisely how a re-elected Labour government would introduce an elected House of Lords.
The four surprise unemployment guarantees unveiled yesterday were:
• An extra 10,000 places for unemployed 16-17 year olds, guaranteeing a place in education from January.
• A commitment that 18-24 year olds will be offered a guaranteed job or training and will not have to wait until they have been out of work for a year.
• A promise to help 18-24-year-olds find work from day one of their unemployment claim.
• A promise that new graduates still out of work after six months will have access to a high-quality internship or training, as well as help to become self-employed.
The cost of the package is likely to be an extra £200m and comes on top of £5bn the government claims it has spent to keep unemployment down.
Ministers privately believe a mixture of their anti-recession measures, labour market flexibility and outflow of immigrants has kept unemployment substantially lower than feared a year ago. But they are worried that it will still be rising in the months up to the election.
Accused of using the speech to set up pre-election dividing lines, Brown insisted the package was "not in the party interest, but in the national interest", and reflected Labour optimism and faith in the state.
He attacked Conservative plans to cut inheritance tax, saying they would benefit a wealthy few – mostly in the London constituency of Kensington and Chelsea, which includes Notting Hill, where Cameron lives. "This must be the only tax change in history where the people who are proposing it – the leader of the opposition and the shadow chancellor – will know by name almost all of the potential beneficiaries," he said.
The Conservatives immediately sidestepped one elephant trap by saying they would support proposals to cut patient waiting times to 18 weeks. Previously Cameron had said that his opposition to bureaucratic, top-down NHS targets meant he could not support such measures.
Many of the 13 bills will either not reach the statute book or be emasculated due to lack of parliamentary time before Brown calls the general election. In the Lords, the Conservative leader, Lord Strathclyde, said "rushed law" was generally "botched law" and Tories would "wave nothing through unless such urgency is overwhelmingly in the national interest".
The speech contained many bills that included references to new entitlements and guarantees, but the enforceability of these rights largely seemed to involve members of the public having recourse to the right to judicial review.
Cameron challenged Brown to explain why he had not used the speech to push through reforms to parliamentary expenses, as set out in the Kelly review.
He called for an immediate general election, saying: "The greatest failure of all, I believe, can be traced directly back to this prime minister: political calculation dressed up as a moral conviction. When you look behind the curtain of the great clunking machine of this government, all you see is someone frantically pulling levers, pushing buttons – not trying to improve the country but desperately trying to relaunch his failing political career and somehow trying to get one over on his opponents."
Brown was also buffeted last night by former home secretary Charles Clarke and a former member of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care, Lord Lipsey.
Clarke said the speech revealed a government dominated by political fear and attacked "dividing lines" in the legislative programme, suggesting they made it "difficult" for him to support it. Lord Lipsey said the plans for free personal care amounted to "a demolition job on the national budget" and told the Times Brown\'s announcement was like "an admiral firing an Exocet into his own warship".
Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw told BBC2\'s Newsnight: "It\'s not a \'demolition job\'. It\'s a very, very small part of the national health service budget of £120bn. The idea that you can\'t find £600m from a £120bn budget – tell that to any business." The personal care at home bill was a flagship designed to allay concern that pensioners are being forced to spend all their savings and sell property to fund care.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]on-brown-queens-speech-promise
