Two events coincided this week, not altogether happily.  The first, on Tuesday, was the third reading of the Welfare Reform Bill in the House of Commons.  The second, the following day, was the announcement of the latest unemployment figures.  These, to no one’s surprise, have now topped 2 million and show every sign of reaching 3 million sometime this year. 

The Welfare Reform Bill is the latest in a long series of government initiatives aimed at lowering unemployment and making inroads into the numbers of people who make up the long-term “economically inactive”  (unless you are a labour market anorak, you may not know that “unemployment”  is different from “economic inactivity”). The trend in government policy has been to increase incentives for people to take up work while at the same time hardening  the sanctions against those who do not. Whether this is a sensible approach at a time of mass job shortages is questionable. Our experience at Wheatsheaf Trust, even when jobs are plentiful, has been that coercion does not really work. What does work is supportive, customised help and advice which is tailored to individual needs.

This recession has been hitting people who do not conform to the media stereotype of the unemployed, who have been in steady work for many years, paid their taxes and National Insurance, and are reacting with shock to the procedures they experience when they sign on at the local Jobcentre. Even amongst the long-term unemployed, our experience is that the vast majority want to work. These latest figures show that job vacancies nationally are below 0.5 million, which means that there are 5 unemployed people for every vacancy in the economy, so punishing people for failing to find a job does not seem a humane, or even politically sensible, approach.

It may well be that for the next two years or so we should be providing people with constructive and developmental activity while they are unemployed rather than trying to force them into jobs that do not exist. Wheatsheaf ran a very successful transitional employment project until recently, in which people were able to earn a wage while learning construction skills and carrying out socially useful projects around the Southampton area. The EU funding that supported the scheme ran out in 2007 and such projects seem to have gone out of fashion with funders. Now would be a very good time to revive them.

.    

 John Denham touring Wheatsheaf Trust’s construction skills workshop.

Trainees on Wheatsheaf Trust’s Entry to Employment Programme invited the Rt Hon John Denham MP, the MP for Southampton Itchen and Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills to visit Wheatsheaf Trust to see their work in Wheatsheaf’s construction skills workshop on Friday 6 March.

The trainees were keen to show John their carpentry and bricklaying projects, and were especially proud to demonstrate the miniature house that is used to demonstrate the way that different trades combine to produce a real building.

Ryan Jarvis, the E2E trainee who composed the letter to John Denham, was chosen to meet and greet the Minister and to show him round. ‘It was a great experience to meet someone in Government and to have the opportunity to show him the projects we’re working on in the workshop. Mr Denham seemed genuinely interested in seeing our work and talking to trainees on the programme.’

 John also took time to discuss other areas of the Trust’s work and a number of policy issues with our Chair, Peter Church, a Trustee, Mary Siddall, and the Chief Executive, Jonathan Cheshire.