GETTING STOURBRIDGE BACK TO WORK
Job creation is nothing new to Margot. As well as employing people in her own business for 15 years, she has been a mentor for the Prince’s Trust and for the Young Enterprise group at Stourbridge College.
It’s a shocking fact, but unemployment in Stourbridge has risen by 120% since last year, much higher than average for the Black Country. What's more, many young people are not in training or education either - with serious long-term consequences for their future employability.
Labour has made things worse
Every Labour government has left unemployment higher than it was when they came into office and this one is no exception.
To make matters worse, so much government money designed to help is misdirected. The grossly incompetent administration of skills funding has led to cuts in the Train to Gain budget. Local businesses complain to me that the process of qualifying for and getting funding for training is too complex and inflexible. Some even felt there was no point trying.
Our number one priority is to get the economy growing again
The debt crisis and lack of jobs are interlinked. Many viable companies in Stourbridge are still finding it difficult to get working capital. We have to start paying the debt back, meet the interest payments and get banks lending again. These are the pre-requisites for growth but they cannot happen while government spending is as high as it is or if companies are taxed out of creating jobs. Labour is committed to another 0.5% increase in National Insurance for employers, employees and the self-employed. This is a tax on jobs because the government can’t get a grip on public spending - and it’s something the Conservatives wouldn’t implement.
We need to help people into work, especially the young
Employers need tax breaks and support for training to help create the jobs we need. I recently took the Shadow Minister for Skills to Stourbridge College. The young people there all said the same thing: “What they teach us at College is great, but there are no apprenticeships where we can apply what we’ve learned.”
A Conservative government will make it much easier for employers to access training that is relevant to the needs of their business. We will subsidise companies offering an apprenticeship to a young person as part of their training with a payment of £2,500 per apprentice. We will also ensure 50,000 additional training places in Further Education Colleges. With double the number of under-25s out of work and claiming benefit now than when Labour came to power in 1997, this help can't come soon enough.
Helping the long-term unemployed
Tony Blair promised he would reform the tax and welfare system to make work pay and get people off welfare dependency. But today under Labour, five million people have never had a job and one in six children now grow up in a home where no one works.
Conservatives would introduce a single back-to-work programme for all those on out-of-work benefits, delivered by private and voluntary providers and paid by results. It would also include special support for people claiming disability benefits.
On top of this, any new business would not pay National Insurance for two years for the first ten employees they take on – a great incentive that adds genuine value and stimulates the creation of new, vitally needed jobs.
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