In late January, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that about 1.72 million workers are currently jobless in Britain as the nation’s unemployment rate soared to 5% over the past three months, its highest level in more than four years.
Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has berated the government for failing to take swift action to contain unemployment.
The ex-prime minister claimed the government’s Restart scheme for long-term jobless adults doesn’t work, and that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Kickstart project to tackle long-term unemployment among the under-25 age group had helped only three out of every 1,000 young people.
He was referring to Sunak’s speech on 3 March, when the chancellor is due to deliver the details of the country’s spring budget in a keynote address to MPs in the House of Commons.
Gordon Brown
Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey was quick to respond to Brown’s remarks by claiming that he is “best remembered for leaving the [UK] economy in a terrible state, with much higher unemployment than we are bearing now”.
The remarks followed the publication of a report by the Alliance for Full Employment (AFFE) set up by Brown and which estimated that there are at least 1,000 under-25s in every constituency in Britain who are currently classed as long-term unemployed. According to the report, they have been without a job for at least six months.
Official figures show that unemployment in the UK stands at about 1.7 million, which is about 4.9% of the working population.
The AFFE study argued, however, that tax records and benefit claims appear to indicate that the actual figure stands at more than 2 million and will most likely to increase to 3.5 million later this year.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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