Real jobless totals

Jul 18 2007 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

UNEMPLOYMENT was the dog that didn’t bark through the Blair years, as the official jobless count fell sharply and stayed low.

With just 5.6% of Liverpool’s working population claiming Jobseeker’s allowance, it is a far cry from the desperation of the Boys From The Blackstuff years.

Except that Liverpool’s real unemployment rate is not 5.6%. It is 14.5% – or more than one in seven people of working age – according to a recent study.

Similarly, the Government counts Knowsley’s jobless rate as 4.6%, but the reality is 14.9%, once the “hidden jobless” on other benefits are included.

According to the study, the real level of unemployment in Britain has remained virtually unchanged over the last five years, at 2.7m.

The hidden jobless – in particular, the 1m on incapacity benefit (IB) who could be working – are concentrated in the North, while much of the South is close to full employment.

All of which should be in the mind of Peter Hain, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, when he unveils the Government’s latest welfare-to-work overhaul today.

The key question is whether local authorities or the private sector have won a tussle over who should run programmes to get this army of IB claimants and lone parents back to work.

A year ago, Merseyside was among 13 areas where a town hall-led partnership was asked to devise new ways to target the hidden jobless.

Training courses and job interviews would be set up and other help offered, such as physiotherapy sessions, or even simply assistance with compiling a CV.

The radical aspect was that the Mersey authorities – Liverpool, Wirral, Sefton, St Helens, Knowsley and Halton – would keep a share of the savings from cutting the benefits bill.

With every IB claimant costing the taxpayer £8,000 each year, the potential cut – to be spent on any project the councils want – is huge.

But last year’s Freud Report recommended a single private company-run welfare-to-work project across the entire North West, throwing the “city strategy” into doubt.

Either way, there have been so many welfare strategies that probably only Frank Field, Birkenhead’s own expert, is still counting. This is surely the last chance?

VETERANS of the notorious Bullingdon Club will be taking over No.10 and London City Hall if the Conservatives have their way.

Both party leader David Cameron and Boris Johnson, the likely candidate for London mayor, were members of the hell-raising Oxford University dining club.

Famously, when the police were called to investigate a pot plant thrown through a restaurant window, Boris was arrested – the smarter Mr Cameron having slipped away.