The Government's new Youth Contract: what do you think?

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello.

You may have seen/heard that Nick Clegg has announced today a £1billion Youth Contract to tackle youth unemployment.

The Youth Contract includes, among other things, subsidised work and training placements, and a programme to help the most disengaged 16 and 17-year-olds get back to school or college, onto an apprenticeship or into a job with training. You can read more about it here.

The Cabinet Office has just been in touch with us at MNHQ to ask us what Mumsnetters think about these plans. So we've said we'll start a thread to find out.

Please do tell!

SwallowedAfly - I think your posts are spot on and raise some excellent issues and questions. I do hate the rhetoric of this government - the suggestion implicit in so many of their 'initiatives' that claimants are a bunch of shirkers. Learn or earn? For goodness sake. They have made it so difficult for our young people to continue in education or to find work, with the loss of EMA, increase in university fees, and paucity of jobs. I absolutely disagree with companies like Tesco exploiting our young peoples' loss for their, and their shareholders', gain.

I think the scheme sounds like exploitation of the poor for the benefit of big business - if these young people were really going to be helped in getting long-term positions, with training involved, learning real skills, then I'd be all for it - but instead it's just another handout of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money (and not just any taxpayers - they are planning to take it from tax credits ie the poorest taxpayers) to subsidize the wage bill of big employers like Tesco etc. The kids will be doing unskilled work, so will not learn any skills that will help them in future; they'll be pushing another unskilled worker out of a job, as Tesco or whoever can employ the kid on the scheme at half price, as the taxpayer is kindly paying half the wage bill; and of course, the second the 6 months is up, they too will be back on the dole, no nearer to getting a job, whilst another young dolie subsidized by the taxpayer takes over their job.

The scheme in no way provides new jobs that aren't there already nor any training in skills - it is just another freebie for the big corporations who bankroll the Tories.

Oh, and the Tories get to massage their unemployment statistics by pretending they've cut the numbers of young jobless, when all they've done is just moved them around a bit.

Of course it's a rubbish idea.

Have they said that Tesco et al can take part in the scheme?

I hope they will screen companies that meet the criteria and multi nationals shouldn't be eligible.

adamschic - yes, from what I have read it will be particularly companies like Tesco who will benefit from the scheme.

It should exclude the multinationals. They should only make it available to companies below a turnover threshold.

i wouldn't mind it being multinationals IF there was guarantee that the young people were actually learning a skill/trade ie an apprenticeship-type position. But these aren't - we're talking totally unskilled work. There is also no guarantee that the money we subsidize these companies with will stay in the UK at all, and not end up in some off-shore tax haven or wherever.

Nice for shareholders, nice for Tories benefitting from the largesse of these companies to Tory funds.

Not so good for taxpayers or the young people concerned.

It's rubbish.

Companies get cheap labour and then dump the kids when the time runs out. It's all been done before.

[yawn][yawn][yawn]

[yawn] [boo] [hiss]

when are we going to apply some intelligence to policies instead of spin?

very very yawn worthy that we're still stuck in this old fashioned, out of date, kind of government that thinks it's still about treating people as thickies and throwing rubber carrots around. when will they catch up with the world we live in now and the way we communicate/hear news/garner our world view now?

breadandbutterfly - this is the problem, isn't it? The young people will get to put 'shelf filling' (for example) on their CVs. If they have a degree in, say, history, how will that help their prospects? Why can't they be supported to have proper, meaningful training, and why can't there be an expectation of employment, if only for a percentage of the participants, at the end of it?

If they cut tax credits to fund this we're screwed. We rely on tax credits to feed us as my partners wages just about cover the mortgage and bills and we have recently had to go carless as we cant afford to run it anymore.

I left a well paid job to be a SAHM because my job was 48+ hours a week including night shifts and it just wasnt feasible with a baby - we worked out she would have to be in childcare atleast 30 hours a week and we just couldnt justify that. I tried to find a job that was less hours but....well you know the score and I have 2 degrees!

Robbing Peter to pay Tescos ahem sorry Paul.

it's all screwed if they take this from tax credits because families trying to keep a roof over these youngsters heads whilst raising younger children and trying to make ends meet will be having their incomes cut whilst these kids are piddled around on and off benefits in complete go nowhere land.

and on a facetious note - companies offer us cash prizes or amazon vouchers as an incentive for helping them improve their brand image whilst you're not even giving out free pens i note! you can't always take something for nothing you know so do let's us know what's in it for these kids when they take up their part as porns in the latest farce.

The government is so out of touch thinking it can come up with a couple of good ideas to pacify our rioting youngsters when all around them can see the education and training employment and benefit system in our country is a waste of life skills talent and goodwill.

Politicians children always do well because they are in the know to find the right path for their children. But in doing so they have enabled a defective system to fester, the product of which is cowboy builders, illegal immigrant workers, manufacutring decline, call-centre hell, benefit fraud, jobs for the boys, underpaid key workers living in overpriced key worker accommodation subsidised by the government and its taxpayers.

The £2275 will be used by employers to take on a lad for 6 months and then sack him - there are no employment tribunals allowed for small firms now, so it's all possible.

realhousewife you left one off your list and thats the sex industry. I can see many people either turning to this industry when their benefits get stopped when they dont want to do an unpaid work placement or the JC sanction them or they become so disillusioned by working for nothing that they turn to this in desperation. A person could end up doing one unpaid work placement after another. I know because they tried to do it to me.

SaF, I'm loving your posts on this thread. Especially this quote:

"the more you get to know about economics and politics the more you wish there was a way to jump ship or cry mutiny and get the captains walking the plank with their ill gotten gains left on board."

It's true isn't it. As a child and then a teen you believe that all these important men out there who know how the world works and get paid all this money to make sure the cogs keep turning...

... and then you become an adult, look into it a bit, and realise the people in power don't have a clue OR they do have a clue and are doing it all on purpose. I favour the latter opinon. I've been thinking for a while now that politicians such as Nick Clegg do know the suffering they cause with their ridiculous plans but they simply don't care

they just must know surely? there have been suicides amongst people dependent on public services that have dwindled, suicides from people terrified that they can't even cope with a scary assessment/threatening letter let alone being forced back in to work when they're disabled, etc. they don't live in such ivory towers that this stuff doesn't reach them. They must at least glance at the papers or have someone do it for them and fill them in.

i read an article the other day looking at individual cases and the stats of rocketing suicide rates in the first part of 2010 and on from there.

i do feel they've got to catch up with the fact that a lot of us are quite bright, have been around long enough to see patterns, are media savvy and glean our understanding from much wider sources and platforms than the bbc and sky news and therefore it's all a lot more 'visible' if you like.

it's time to have in some grown ups who treat people like grown ups.

however if you eradicate the chance for the working classes (and i include those who think of themselves as middle class but really don't get how times have changed and how they essentially too are the working classes even though they'd have been deemed middle class by their parents generation) to access higher education and tie them up stacking shelves throughout their youth i guess you may get a less informed, more gullible population in the future. i doubt it though because new media and technology means people can't be so utterly cut off from communicating and learning and developing their views.

I think some of them (politicians) know exactly what they are doing and want to pacify the rich at the expense of the majority, and others have the best intentions but get blindsided by their peers and caught up in so much propoganda they get dragged over to the dark side!

I agree that the world has changed now in terms of access to knowledge and communication - unfortunately the war on the net and its freedoms has already begun though so I reckon you can kiss that goodbye by the time our kids are grown.

I have emailed my local MP a few times over the NHS issues and he is pretty good at replying and collecting opnions to send on to his superiors, I would urge anyone to do the same. If enough people contact their local MP's and voice their concerns it really can make a difference as proven by organisations such as 38degrees :) SwallowedAFly, if you haven't already checked them out I think they are right up your street!

Yes, don't underestimate what a couple of generations of non-education can do to create apathy. It's really important that women, in particular, stay educated and on the ball, or these men in power will shaft our daughters and grand-daughters!

I agree about joining 38 degrees, they are doing some fantastic work. Although the health minister Simon Burns, has called us 'zombies' for emailing our concerns to our MPs.

Here is the clip from the House of Commons

I saw that clip Purepurple - he hasn't done himself any favours there has he!!

Absolutely what wibblybibble said. WB for PM.

Big business employers are taking the mickey.

Now Tescos have Local stores and have finally obliterated the last of the local family businesses. An extra £2275 a year won't keep these businesses afloat when the onslaught from big business is relentless.

Cameron recently called for parents to take their kids into work on strike day. I look forward to seeing a bunch of kids hanging round tescos all day - or the meat processing plant, the farm fields or the recycling plant. This government is so out of touch.