Absolutely—and I think that the jobs guarantee will extend or complement the ability to do that, rather than taking it away. However, it will also have a positive impact as a whole. It will create new jobs. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), employers will have to prove that the jobs would not otherwise be there. It will also be mandatory for them to include a training element that will provide over six months of guaranteed paid work, with all the benefits that that brings.
As I said earlier in an intervention, the system is already working. We have seen several examples of that. My local authority, North Lanarkshire council, is doing fantastic work in getting people back to work, and creating new jobs—in the voluntary and public sectors, but mainly in the private sector—through its project “North Lanarkshire’s Working”. A key part of the project is the provision of a 50% wage subsidy for employers who give unemployed people new jobs for six months. It is aimed primarily at young people, although 15% of the funds are earmarked for older people, and it has returned nearly 5,000 people to employment and training. I hope that a version of it will be rolled out throughout the country, so that others can benefit from it. The project has also put considerable effort into encouraging the creation of jobs for those who find it most difficult to obtain work, including those who live with disabilities and young people who are leaving the care system.
Earlier, both SNP and Tory Members heckled my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, saying that after the six months was over, people would end up back in the dole queue. Our experience in North Lanarkshire shows that that is not the case among the vast majority of participants. The wage subsidy allows businesses to expand at reduced risk, because it allows them to take people on for six months and then create permanent jobs for them. Even when that has not been possible, the skills, confidence and routine that people have gained from six months of paid employment has left them with much brighter prospects.
The jobs guarantee that my party has proposed today, and in the last few months, is the culmination of other successful policies that we have seen in the past, and see currently in other parts of the United Kingdom. I think that it will be a game changer, creating jobs and tackling both youth and long-term unemployment, and I look forward to its implementation by a Labour Government in May.
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