Shadow chancellor backs long-term UK coronavirus jobs programme
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Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds has pushed for the government to back a UK-wide post-coronavirus jobs programme to deal with expected high unemployment.
In an interview with City A.M. Dodds said that the government needed to place a greater emphasis on “upskilling and redeployment” in its response to Covid-19 and should look to Gordon Brown’s Future Jobs Fund as inspiration.
The programme saw the government hand out grants to businesses in an attempt to get young people back to work after the 2008 financial crash and resulting recession.
The £1.3bn fund created 200,000 jobs that were partly subsidised by the government, with the programme emphasising skills and training.
The programme, which was cut by David Cameron’s government, was found to have a “net benefit to society” of £7,500 per participant by a 2012 Department of Work and Pensions report.
“I think there’s very little discussion in a UK context on the role of upskilling and redeployment as a result of this crisis,” Dodds said.
“That’s a real contrast between the UK and other countries, so I think that’s an area where we are working on, particularly developing skills for the future.
“We can’t have a situation that we saw in the UK for example at the time of the pit closures [in the 1980s], we can’t have that standing back approach we saw.”
The UK’s official unemployment rate is expected to rise substantially when new figures are released, after a 70 per cent increase in Universal Credit claims in April.
More job losses will likely follow when the government’s furlough scheme is lifted, with some economists predicting that many companies using the relief programme are already insolvent.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Westminster’s Liaison Committee yesterday that it was “very likely” that the government would look to implement a post-coronavirus jobs programme.
“The challenge now is going to be about getting the economy moving again and creating high class jobs, good jobs, for the whole country,” he said.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said last week that the UK faced “a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen”.
An Office for Budget Responsibility forecast last month predicted a 35 per cent drop in GDP for the year’s second quarter.