ePolitix.com Stakeholders comment on the employment and skills issues covered in Gordon Brown's 2007 Budget.
Stakeholder Response: Working Links
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Keith Faulkner, managing director of Working Links, said: "We welcome the announcements made by the chancellor in his Budget today that reinforce the government’s support for increasing working opportunities for all.
"It is crucial for both individuals and the economy that support is delivered for the long-term unemployed to help them re-enter the workplace and it is equally important there is a focus on providing a working environment in which people can develop skills and progress a career.
"Specific announcements focusing on extending support to lone parents by continuing the in-work credit (and extending it in London) as well as increasing access to child care are to be welcomed.
"We have long advocated the importance of actively working with employers and we therefore welcome the government’s plans to form partnerships with large retail employers to help the long-term unemployed into work.
"In the wider employment market, the most proactive employers can make a direct contribution to reducing unemployment but in our experience, for the majority, it is vital that there is active brokerage to ensure that jobseekers are offered jobs which are sustainable.
"We welcome the chancellor’s commitment to equipping ‘people with new skills for new jobs in the decade ahead’ and the initiatives encouraging individuals and employers to engage with training.
"We are pleased to see the chancellor recognise the particular needs of those 16- 17-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training and that he will encourage them to improve their skills by offering a training grant.
"Experience shows that it is vital that this group is offered support early on to prevent longer term and more intractable disengagement with the labour market.
"Equally, we welcome the £2,000 to £3,000 training grants to be offered to small employers.
"As Lord Leitch recently made clear, it is crucial that we improve the skills of our workforce in order to compete in a global economy.
"Government initiatives which encourage this are therefore to be supported.
"We support the government’s aspirations of an 80 per cent employment rate but know too that it is not simply sufficient to place people in employment.
"We must also offer support which enables people to progress in the workplace and move further away from benefit dependency.
"Our experience as a leading provider of employment services in this field is that a difference can be made, but that it takes time and investment. We welcome the announcements today as a positive step towards achieving these goals."
Stakeholder Response : Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
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John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: "Brown’s final budget has proved both his least predictable and cleverest.
"Revenues lost by headline grabbing cuts in the basic rate of income tax and corporation tax are made up by numerous tax rises pasted into the Red Book, notably removing the 10p starting rate of income tax, greater alignment of income tax and national insurance contributions, more corporation tax for small firms and fewer capital allowances.
"Brown’s smartest political act is to dip into the policy manuals of his conservative and liberal democrat opponents whilst also giving them a green tinge.
"And by making the overall package redistributive, benefiting in particular low income families with children and pensioners, including the victims of bankrupt occupational pension schemes, the chancellor has appealed to his own labour supporters as he prepares to enter Number 10."
Education and training
"With regard to measures of specific interest to the HR community the budget contains some interesting items but is overall lacklustre.
"While the CIPD welcomes the chancellor’s announcement of an additional increase in annual spending on education and training of 2.5% in real terms in the next few years, details of how the government intends to implement the recommendations of last year’s Leitch review of skills will not be published until the summer.
"The CIPD also welcomes the green paper (due for publication tomorrow) on how best to raise the age of compulsory education and training to 18.
"However, it will be important to ensure that any such move does not compromise existing work based training for teenagers."
Welfare to work
"The CIPD is most encouraged by the welfare to work provisions of the budget which echo some of the approaches the institute has been recommending as ways of helping employers make better use of the existing large groups of ‘core jobless’.
"The CIPD fully endorses the idea of Local Employment Partnerships (LEPs) between large retailers and JobcentrePlus, which will experiment with just the kinds of measures we advocate – short work trials, higher recruitment subsidies, employer mentoring and reform of job application procedures. If well designed, LEPs could provide a model for non-retail employers too and promote a new form of ‘diversity in action’.
"In this respect the CIPD also supports trials of improved English language training for jobless people with language difficulties and, in particular, efforts to link New Deal training with Train to Gain. Only if increased access to jobs is matched by job retention and movement up the skill and income ladder will the least advantaged in the labour market, and those who hire them, benefit most from welfare to work measures."
