Blair's labour yields fruit on job front

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, MARCH 20.Amid the all-pervasive gloom over the foot-and- mouth crisis and consequent political uncertainty, Britain has had at least one good news last week as unemployment fell to its lowest level in over 25 years and the Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, claimed that full employment was round the corner.

Media reports indicated that this was already happening in some areas with employers complaining of staff shortages.

Ironically, it was under a Labour government in 1975 that unemployment jumped to over one million and in 1979 the Conservatives led their election campaign on the slogan ``Labour Isn't Working'' with huge billboards showing a serpentine queue of jobless outside an ``unemployment office''. But during the long Tory spell, unemployment shot through the roof to touch the nearly three million mark. The turnaround this week, with unemployment falling below one million in a quarter of a century (lower than France and Germany), is attributed by the Blair Government to its New Deal under which it spent 120 millions in the past two years to create new jobs and target ``unemployment blackspots''.

As many 270,000 young jobless got jobs under the New Deal and the Chancellor, Mr. Gordon Brown, announced this week that its second phase was on its way - provided of course Labour got a second term in office in the May elections. Having created sufficient jobs in the first phase, the Government would now crack the whip to get those into the job market who have been too lazy to look for a job or learn new skills that would make them employable. The Government, he said, was determined to get people off the dole and get into work.

``I want every child in every part of Britain as they get up for school every morning to see a whole community around them getting up and going to work,'' he said. And to achieve this the Government would not hesitate to impose `sanctions' on those preferring dole to employment. Compulsory job interviews would be arranged for those deemed employable but shirking work, and they could lose support benefits if they refuse to attend these

interviews. A large number of single parent who find it more convenient to live on income support would be the hardest hit by the proposed regime.

While businesses and independent experts greeted the news saying it was a result of sensible economic management and labour market reforms, the Tories predictably poured scorn over government claims. They dismissed the New Deal as too expensive and vowed to replace it with a new scheme of their own if elected to power. Some experts said the Government had `fiddled' the figures by taking into account only those jobless people who claimed benefit. It had excluded a large number of people over 50 who were ``economically inactive'' but did not claim government benefits. The actual number of unemployed, they said, was much more if such people were included.

A more widespread reaction however was that the job market had never been healthier and as The Guardian noted the quibbling over statistics notwithstanding ``It still shows Britain in a favourable light internationally with a jobless rate of 5.2 per cent compared with 8.7 per cent in France and 7.8 per cent in Germany.''

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Section  : International
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