................................................................................ ON THE RECORD DAVID BLUNKETT INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 5.4.98 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Tomorrow, the government launches its "new deal" for youngsters. They've already tried out pilot schemes, but now it goes nationwide. From now on every person in Britain aged between eighteen and twenty-five who's been out of work for six months or more will be offered some sort of training and or work. It's a pretty complicated set-up. All of them will join what is called the "gateway" for four months of training and advice from a personal adviser. Then they'll be offered four options for another six months before they're left to fend for themselves: they can either take a subsidised job; work on an environmental task force or do voluntary work; or go back into full-time education or training. The big idea behind all this is that at the end of those ten months they will be fit for work as they've never been before: they will be "employable" - that's the word. But it's costing a lot of money - three and a half billion pounds, and the question is whether it's actually necessary to spend all that to achieve that aim. The man in charge of it all is David Blunkett. Mr Blunkett, good morning to you-good afternoon to you. Are you quite satisfied at this stage, knowing everything you now know, that this is the best way to spend all that money? DAVID BLUNKETT: I'm satisfied but I'm not complacent. I believe, very strongly indeed, that we have got it right. That the twelve pilot programmes that we launched in January have begun the task of getting young people to believe in themselves, to have the social and educational skills to be able to get a job and to have the optimism and hope that we took for granted after the Second World War, when I was a child. HUMPHRYS: But the reason I put the question to you is that so many, as you well know, so many of those who when you came into Office, didn't have a job. There were about a quarter of a million then, most of those now do have a job. Most of those who are in this scheme, who are going to go into this scheme, would have got a job anyway. And what I would suggest to you, is that the poeple you should be most concerned about and concentrating the real fire power and the real resources and the real money on, are those who have been out of work for more than a year. Whether they are under twenty-five or not. BLUNKETT: Oh well there are a number of key questions there. The first is that with a hundred and eighteen thousand young people who have been out of work or education for more than six months, we owe them an obligation to give them a start in life. But we owe it to ourselves as well because if there are tens of thousands, and there are, of young people in that position, they form the long-term unemployed of the future. So if we get it right for them now, we can avoid the syndrome you've just described occurring in the years to come. Secondly, we owe it them in terms of the social impact. What happens in our communities, often the most deprived, is that these young people are aimless, they have no hope for tomorrow. They don't build families in the way that we're expected to and therefore you have the social disintegration. The third part of your question is yes, we do need to address the needs of the long-term adult unemployed and we are going to. There will be a programme from June, with a subsidy of seventy-five pounds and a full-time education option for up to a year. But there'll also, from November, be a new programme, with a hundred million pounds that the Chancellor allocated in March, in the Budget in March, so that we can pilot the same kind of programme for the over twenty-fives that we're actually implementing from tomorrow for the under twenty-fives. HUMPHRYS: But you are spending a fraction on them, of what you are spending on the under twenty-fives, aren't you? About a tenth in fact. BLUNKETT: It is true that we are spending a very large amount of the money on the under twenty-fives. The reason for that is very simple. Firstly, to get it right now, so that we don't have to repeat it for the future. Secondly, because you do need to spend the money if you are going to have a quality programme. We could have a very thinly spread programme, similar to the kind of measures that the previous government took for all those who were unemployed for say more than a year. But you wouldn't be providing the specialist advice and counselling service. You wouldn't be providing the gateway for education and social skills, preparing those people for work and you wouldn't have the education and training option for all the programme. And that was the failure of the past government and that's why of course, that we have so many long-term adult unemployed. HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but I don't think you're taking my point, you see, which is that most of those youngsters-I mean of course every body agrees that the overall objective of this scheme is entirely laudable, no-body would argue with that for a moment. Getting these kids into work is absolutely vital. My point, one of my points, and I don't think you addressed it there, is that so many of them, eighty per cent according to research work that's been done and accepted by the Employment Select Committee, eighty per cent of them, would get into work anyway. That's the point. And there is a great deal of waste in this scheme, that's really what I am saying. Money being spent unnecessarily that could be better spent on other things. BLUNKETT: The ones that would get into work anyway are being assisted into work. It's why we're taking the ones who have been unemployed for more than six months, rather than starting it at an earlier point. They need the facility often of the gateway to improve their social and educational skills to get a job. And the pilot schemes have shown that something like seventy per cent of the youngsters that have come out of the gateway have got a job. Just under half of them have gone into unsubsided work. That's fine with us, we've equipped them for the world of work without the subsidy, without the special programme having to continue it. I think that is a success and in some cases, we've helped them by very simple measures: enabling them to get to work. Tomorrow, I shall be able to announce that the Association of Train Operators are going to join with us across the country, building on the National Express and the Stage Coach programme and local schemes across Britain, to subsidise the travel costs because in most areas, not all, but in most areas, there are jobs available within and about an hour's travel distance of the home of the youngster who is unemployed. So there's a real opportunity here to put things together in a commonsense way, in a manner that's not been undertaken before. It's precisely because these things have not been undertaken before that we have a pool of long-term unemployed who, if not helped and supported, become for themselves and their community, a social disaster for the future. HUMPHRYS: Come back to that in a minute. But just on the subsidised travel thing. How long is that going to work. Will it stop the moment they finish their ten months? BLUNKETT: It's for the New Deal programme, it's for the opportunity of being able to travel to the work or to the appointment for work. It makes sense in those terms, obviously, if they get a job they start to earn and when they earn they are on the same basis as other people, so it's using a bit of immagination, being flexible. Because one of the accusations of government in the past that Andrew Smith - who has done enormous work on this as the Minister for Employment in my team, Gordon Brown and I are clear about is, this has got to be something very different to what people have experienced in the past. HUMPHRYS: The other question you didn't address is whether there is an easier way of getting those youngsters into work. Not all of them, admittedly, but the majority of them again. Three weeks' training, three weeks' subsidised employment, has been shown to give them that sort of work habit. What you're doing is really a sledge hammer to crack a nut - that is really the point I am trying to make. BLUNKETT: Well, firstly, I don't accept that. I think the more we can sustain employment through macro economic policy, then the more of course we are dealing with youngsters who are 'up against it' and many of them not in difficulty but actually needing that chance require a long period of preparation to get back into work to ensure that they can get up in the morning, that they can present themselves well, that their communication skills are improved, and when they are in work their confidence builds. Now you can't do that in three weeks and experience of the 1980s and the early '90s with the plethora of different programmes and schemes that the Tories initiated was that it didn't work for those particular youngsters. And if they are going to get a job will get a job and that's fine and we can support people to do it, the employment service for which I'm responsible places 1.7 million people a year in unsubsidised jobs, that's part of their programme. They work with employers, they help with recruitment. We've got to expand and develop that at the same time as implementing this specialist programme for those who were otherwise excluded and it's that exclusion from what we take for granted. But when I was eighteen, John, five and a half thousand youngsters of this age group were unemployed, even with the improvement in the economy and the massive reduction in unemployment over the last year, there are still one hundred and eighteen thousand currently. HUMPHRYS: But I would still suggest to you that you are not taking sufficiently seriously - compared with what you are doing for these youngsters - the problem of the older, longer-term, long term, unemployed, because one of the things ... let's assume that your scheme is successful and all of these youngsters come out of there gung-ho and ready for jobs, they will then take jobs that might otherwise have gone to those older, long-term unemployed, because after all you are not creating new jobs as a result of this scheme, are you? BLUNKETT: Well, I think we are. You see, I think the added value of this programme and in talking to employers - and there are four thousand of them who have now signed up and there are something like a further twenty thousand who have indicated an interest - in talking to them they have said, look, we needed a little bit of support and help if we were going to expand - this is particulary true of small businesses, we wanted to develop and businesses either expand or die in the general economic climate, therefore, getting the extra help and support with this employee, giving the youngster the chance to actually gain education and training and there's one day a week either on or off the job but for an accredited qualification is an entirely new way of ensuring that we expand the employable labour market. Now that doesn't just have an impact on the potential of the particular company to expand it also ensures that our economy can expand with low inflation. In other words, as the labour market tightens, we prepare more people to be able to come in to jobs, equipped for jobs, trained for what is needed and by doing so we allow ourselves greater growth with stability. HUMPHRYS: Well, I think perhaps the key phrase there is "as the labour market tightens", which it certainly is and which I'll come back to in a minute, but let me suggest to you that what you are doing here is producing in a sense a national solution for what is really a regional problem and if you take Merseyside for instance, an enormous number of these new dealers in that area - about seven times as many, according to the figures, as there are actual job vacancies. Now, they're not going to be able to find the jobs, quite simply because the jobs aren't there for them to find and you can't create those jobs. BLUNKETT: Well this is very interesting, both practically and philosophically. This is the line that the Tory spokesman, David Willetts who was once a free marketeer, is now taking and those who are writing editorials or pamphlets about it appear to have done a double somersault from free market for everything to old style intervention. Well ours is a very different issue. Ours is that the money follows the unemployed person and it will with the older unemployed as well as we develop the programme, and therefore we do concentrate the resources where they are most needed but we do so on the specific needs of that individual; and I mentioned a moment ago about the transport travel - bus or train - where people can get on the bus and in some cases get on their bike, because we've actually given people a bike in rural areas as part of this scheme - the Norman Tebbit writ large - they can actually get to a job. And in Merseyside, for instance, they can travel into Lancashire and Greater Manchester, they can stop the overheating of the North-West economy by being able to put their talents to work. HUMPHRYS: Well, they're going to get on their bikes in Liverpool and cycle over to Manchester, are they? Or, they'll get a coach or a train, perhaps and, then, come back again? That's not practical, is it? BLUNKETT: They're going to get-Well, no. They're going to get on the train. HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but, even that. BLUNKETT: People in London take it for granted that they commute in. In Inner London, there are people who need to commute out into further parts of the South East, where there clearly is a potential for skills and employment..... HUMPHRYS: And, then, the subsidies stop. So, then, what do they do? Because you've told us that those subsidies for travel are going to stop. They're going to have to get the kind of job there, in Manchester or wherever it happens to be that's going to pay them enough to be able to travel from Merseyside very expensive on privatised railways, or wherever it happens to be. It's not practical this, is it? It's sort of-kinda like a commuters' charter for jobs that don't exist in their own area? BLUNKETT: Well, I'm smiling, John. You're a wonderful old, cynic and one of the great- HUMPHRYS: I'm trying to be practical here!!! BLUNKETT: One of the great diseases of Britain is cynicism. It is possible for people to travel - they do it all the time. I meet them all the time because I'm travelling a great deal, as Andrew Smith has and we know that if they can get a job that is worthwhile, that offers them prospects for training they'll take it and they will pay and employers often will help them with the travel costs, particularly when it avoids the spiral of wage inflation. And, I think, therefore, this is a key economic contributor to helping us with the economy of the future, the stability and growth that Gordon Brown is righly seeking, rather than something that is an irrelevance. Now, clearly, where jobs don't exist we have to encourage and support through all the other initiatives we're taking the development of enterprise in those areas, which is why what John Prescott's doing - in terms of the regeneration of the urban economy - is crucial. It's what we're doing with the development of Health and Education public services. This is not a message of despair - that somehow Merseyside hasn't got jobs, so there's nothing you can do, other than put people on public works, which is a kind of 1930s situation. HUMPHRYS: Oh, indeed, but-but that's- BLUNKETT: Well, Sir David Willetts, going back to the Thirties, I find very extremely amusing. HUMPHRYS: Well, I'm not here to talk about Dave Willetts. I'm here to talk about you and your campaign! BLUNKETT: Well, you're following the line - that's it! HUMPHRYS: Being this terrible old cynic. No, I'm just using a bit of common- trying to use a bit of commonsense and applying to it! You don't have to tell me. You're an old Sheffield MP. I don't have to tell you how difficult it is to create jobs. BLUNKETT: No. Not that old, by the way. HUMPHRYS: Now, what-Oh, alright! Like me, then, in that case. I was getting my own back. Look, just as the-let me be a little bit
cynical again. Just as these youngsters - and, let's assume everything goes really well and they come out employed but they're not going to be highly skilled, let's remember, because after ten months you're not going to be highly skilled, clearly. But, they're going to be - to use your word - 'employable'. BLUNKETT: Yeah. HUMPHRYS: Let's hope that they are. But, they will be hitting the jobs market, just as the economy you talked about - the macro-economic picture yourself a while ago. Just as the economy is really beginning to tighten up, possibly even going into recession, partly as a result of the very strong Pound that we have. Now, you go along to the Chancellor, I understand, and you say to him: Look, this Pound is really going to stuff British industry - to use a technical expression. Do something about it. He says No Way!! BLUNKETT: Well, he doesn't say No Way. He says that the programme that we're developing - in particular, the new deal itself -
actually assists us in coping with the way in which economies shift. Now, the whole task of the new Labour Government is to prevent the ups and downs - the boom and bust that we saw in the past. And, the- HUMPHRYS: The Pound's going up and down like a fiddler's elbow!! BLUNKETT: Well, the new deal- well, it isn't. HUMPHRYS: Or going up! Going up and up and up! But, it was down when you came in and now, it's going up! BLUNKETT: Well, the Pound. A unique experience for an incoming Labour Government to have as a challenge the rising Pound. And, obviously, that is an issue that the Bank of England will be discussing with the Monetary Policy Committee this coming week. However, the New Deal programme itself helps us, firstly, to avoid the tightening of the economy to the point where what you're describing takes place because we do broaden the labour market and so will the programme for one parent families that is going to be rolled out as well for now. HUMPHRYS: You broaden the labour market but you don't create jobs! And, there are going to be fewer jobs because of the strength of the Pound. You, surely, can't be saying to these youngsters who come off: Now, look we've done all this for you but from now on you're on your own and you're in a market where in jobs in British industry are going to be fewer and further between because of what-partly because of what the Pound is doing. And, the strength it's doing is doing. BLUNKETT: Yes, but why is the Pound strong?
Because, obviously, we want to ensure that we avoid inflation taking off and, therefore, the situation we experience to ten years ago happening - where inflation rocketed to over fifteen per cent. We want a situation where we can, actually, ensure that there are people available to do the present jobs that are, also, available and matching those two together is a key part of the new deal. Now, if you do that and you're successful, then, you help in terms of what Long- Medium and Longterm Interest Rates might be, the strength of the Pound and, incidentally, the underlying Longterm Interest rate is at-is at an all time low at the moment. HUMPHRYS: Yeah. But, nonetheless, you must concede, surely, that - and, other people might thing you were complacent otherwise - certainly, these youngsters might - that this could - if we're gonna see the kind of tidy-up. Goldmann Sachs predicts Unemployment rising for the middle of the year - so do many other people. This could scupper the scheme, couldn't it? BLUNKETT: Well, no. To be honest, if it did and I sincerely hope and believe that is won't, then, these are the youngsters that need the new deal most of all because many of us are much more prepared and able to cope and the social consequences, the generational Unemployment, the passing from father to son, from mother to daughter, the hopelessness of not believing that there's anything for them is something that is destroying and has destroyed parts of our Inner Cities. And, I represent an area with one of the highest levels of Unemployment in the country. I know one thing. Unemployment, low educational expectation and achievement, low skills go hand in hand because attracting Employment, attracting hi-tech information and communication- HUMPHRYS: Yeah. BLUNKETT: -industries of the future requires us to prepare people. And, it's chicken and egg. Get it right and you can develop and expand your indigenous industry and you can attract from overseas the investment needed. Get it wrong and they're not available. HUMPHRYS: David-David Blunkett - youthful David Blunkett - many thanks. BLUNKETT: Thank you, John. ...oooOooo...