Question

请问谁能发给我一篇英文访谈的稿子?急用啊!!!！拜托啦~~

Answer 1

BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 26.11.00 Interview: DAVID BLUNKETT MP, Education and Employment Secretary on the New Deal. The Government hopes to say next week that the New Deal has got 250,000 young people into work. But is that a misleading claim? JOHN HUMPHRYS: I'll be talking to David Blunkett about schools in a few minutes. But Mr Blunkett is also responsible for employment in England and Wales. It was he who brought in the New Deal that was meant to give youngsters with no jobs and no prospects a better start in life. The government claims it's been a big success. By next week they're expecting the figures to show that a quarter of a million young people have gone through the scheme and found work. That's one of the five pledges they made on the little card that they handed out in the election campaign three and a half years ago. Very impressive on the face of it. But it's not quite that simple. Mr Blunkett is in our Sheffield studio. Good afternoon Mr Blunkett. DAVID BLUNKETT MP: Good afternoon John. HUMPHRYS: Just a thought about the unemployment figures first. They rose slightly last month, possibly only a bit of a blip, might that be the start of a trend though, might it throw your forecast off-course? BLUNKETT: Well it certainly won't throw the specific programme for the long-term unemployed off course because it was designed specifically to help whether the unemployment figures were rising or were stabilised. In other words, we planned it, Gordon Brown and I back in 1995, to deal with a much much higher level of unemployment at that time. But yes, there was a small blip, there was three and a half thousand extra in the claimant count, those who are actually claiming benefit. On the broader European and World count, that's called the Labour force survey, we were thirty-six thousand down, so you take one and you take the other and you make your choice. HUMPHRYS: So, you're going in all probability then to hit the target that I talked about a second ago, but what I am concerned about for the purposes of this interview is that you might be exaggerating the scale of that achievement and the reason I say that is because it isn't actually a quarter of a million of young people, who, to use your expression, are off benefits and into work. Fifty-eight thousand of them went back onto benefits in less than three months. BLUNKETT: Well firstly, I don't think Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and myself or my ministers will be exaggerating where we've got to. We will be celebrating that a quarter of a million youngsters who'd been unemployment or out of education for more than six months, this is not just any young person who happened between the ages of twenty... of eighteen and twenty-four to be unemployed, it's those who were long term unemployed. We will be celebrating that they've got a job. Now yes it's true that seventy-six per cent of them have stayed in work but the rest found themselves unemployed, we know that because we collect the statistics for the first time. Until we came in, nobody knew what the devil happened to people after they left what were previously work make schemes. We now at least know that, we also know that almost as many leave work in the general labour market, those who are not on specific programmes such as the New Deal actually come out of work within that same period of time and in fact the Office of National Statistics are taking a new revised look at this so that we get this right across the economy. In other words, we have a flexible labour market, it's nearer the position in the United States than it is in Europe, people are moving in and out of jobs more quickly and the real question, John, and for those viewing, is are we preparing those young people for work, are we making them ready to be able to cope with those changes to be employable. HUMPHRYS: But my point was that those people I referred to had jobs that didn't last and then there's another large chunk of people, twenty-five thousand who went into jobs that were heavily subsidised by the government, so in that sense not real jobs because many of those jobs themselves disappeared after a while. BLUNKETT: Look, let's not beat about the bush, this is a major effort to get those who would be out of a job, out of the labour market, workless for a very long time, prepared for work, able to take work and able to move back into work quickly if they lose their job. We have still a long way to go on developing their foundation or basic skills because we know a lot of the youngsters have simply not got the literacy, numeracy or information technology skills they need which is what you are coming to of course later in the interview. So we have got to get the catch up right, that is doing something about the legacy over very many years of people not actually having the skills to hold a job. But I would defend the New Deal on a whole range of fronts, not simply in terms of achieving the target but actually also ensuring that we change the culture. You see what we've managed to do, I think, in the last three years, and what Gordon Brown and Tessa Jowell and I have been banging on about for a very long time is that if we make it unacceptable that you lie in bed, that you presume that somebody else is going to fund you, if you are able bodied and able to work, that you should actually have to do so, that is a tremendous gain in terms of our broader welfare to work policy. HUMPHRYS: And I'm not disputing that clearly some good things have been achieved as a result of it, what I am saying is that it hasn't got, as the claim is being made, a quarter of a million young people into work and off benefits, because many of them have either gone back onto benefits or their jobs have been subsidised and of course, very many of them, half of those who are left would have found work anyway, that is the point that I am making. BLUNKETT: Well we have a National Institute for economic and social research study, again we have been robust in wanting to monitor this and I think one of the things that we will want to do, having achieved the target, the absolute pledge that we made of two hundred and fifty thousand into work, is to actually take a close examination of where we go from here because the number of young people who are unemployed long-term albeit that it's dropped, obviously have bigger challenges now than ever before. Let me take the question head-on. Yes, five hundred and thirty-two thousand have actually touched the New Deal programme, in other words of this age group, they have come on to it, they have either gone on to an option: environmental task force, voluntary sector or a subsidised job, two hundred and fifty thousand have actually gone through, got a job, over three quarters of them have held that job. I think that's a tremendous record and it's contributed towards the enormous change in economic circumstance that's allowed us to reinvest in education, in health and, of course, in employment programmes. In other words we are recycling the investment we make in overcoming failure, back into decent quality public services, so this has a very major economic and fiscal effect, as well as an employment effect. HUMPHRYS: But the very reason that I'm querying these figures, not querying them in the sense - I'm not disputing anything you've said. What I'm saying is that there are different ways of presenting these figures, and if you take out of that quarter of a million those who would have got jobs anyway, or those who are in subsidised jobs that will ultimately disappear or those who end up on the dole again in less than three months - Job-Seekers' Allowance in less than three months, you're left with a much smaller number, something like eighty thousand. Now, if you then look at the amount of money that you have spent on this scheme you discover that each of those jobs cost about ten thousand pounds and what I'm suggesting to you is that that money would have been better spent had it been more sharply focussed on those young people who are most in need of this kind of help. BLUNKETT: Well, firstly the statistics we have indicate that it's something just under four thousand, not ten thousand per individual, and of course the longer they're in jobs the more tax they pay, the National Insurance and the less we -..... HUMPHRYS: Ah, but that ....... BLUNKETT: We.... HUMPHRYS: But that is based on your figure isn't it and not on mine, which I think you have actually acknowledged, that my figure is actually right. BLUNKETT: Well the National Institute figure actually also shows that a hundred and sixty-thousand of those youngsters got jobs faster than they otherwise would, not - which is a different issue to whether eventually they would have got a job. Bear in mind John in the mid-eighties a half a million youngsters of this age group had been unemployed for more than six months. It's down to thirty-six thousand now. Over a year there were a third of a million - it's down to six thousand, so the speed with which you get people off unemployment is not only important in terms of what you pay them in benefit, it's important in terms of what sort of person they are when they come out of that experience of being long-term unemployed, so there's an economic, there's a social and there's a broader labour market issue here about flexibility, about readiness for work, so let's not dispute that not every one of them has got into a job because of the New Deal because I accept that fully, but let's accept that this has been a pretty good effort at overturning a long-term problem of generational unemployment in areas of greatest need, and of course the programme is targeted in the sense that you put the money in where the need is, and we're trying to do that with another programme alongside it, the employment zones, which started fully in April in fifteen areas and is working extraordinarily well, that's about providing much greater flexibility with a job account that can buy training and skills, can buy the equipment, the materials, can focus the counselling specifically on long-term unemployment .... HUMPHRYS: And I gather that you're also now looking at ways of focussing more sharply on those people who most need the help by sending people into shelters, finding young people who are sleeping rough on the streets, and then actually saying to them: look you've got to come out of this and we're going to make you go onto, help you get onto the New Deal. I mean is that right, are you going to do that, send people out to find them? BLUNKETT: There's one or two pilot programmes in London called Routeways, and they are aimed at looking at how if you like the cross-agency, cross department approach to those who are homeless, rootless, unemployed, no training can actually be helped in a much broader way. The foyer scheme - I don't want to complicate the situation, has tried this already in terms of offering homes, training, back-up support, counselling services, all of us are building on the idea of counselling because if you can actually - I don't mean in the social work sense, I mean in having a case load, working with the individual, not just turning up as was the previous system for job-seekers, turn up at the Employment Centre, actually tick off whether you've been looking for a job and send you away. HUMPHRYS: This is a... BLUNKETT: ... go through with you what you need and then start doing something about it. HUMPHRYS: This is a sort of pre-new deal then if I can put it like that? BLUNKETT: Yes it is and I think as we look to the long-term, as Gordon and Tessa Jowell and myself look at where we're going, we'll need to focus on those not exclusively, because these programmes are not about those who have got simple major problems, but those who perhaps have experienced drug problems, perhaps are homeless, perhaps have got major long-term health problems. Let's enable them to get out of that problem, rather than presume that we pay benefits for the rest of their lives as we have done in the past, and that's what happened, people came up against the benefit system and if they were of working age they weren't automatically presumed to go into a job, to be employed, but we'd need to presume that, and the combining of the employment service and the benefits agency for those of working age will make this easier, because everybody who asks for money will then be asked to go through the programme of working out how they can earn their own money rather than simply taking somebody else's. HUMPHRYS: So the intention would be to extend those pilot schemes nation wide would it? BLUNKETT: It would if they work, and obviously we want to adapt to what is working best, we want to work with - they're not for profit, the voluntary sector and for partnerships, the employment zones for instance that I mentioned a minute ago are substantially a partnership between the public and the private sector working together, bringing together the best of both. HUMPHRYS: And are you thinking of making hostel places - a lot of these youngsters end up in hostels of course - conditional on membership of the New Deal, joining up with the New Deal? BLUNKETT: Well, we have discussed with the exclusion unit, the Number Ten exclusion unit, the possibilities of ensuring that you actually do have something for something in this area. I've been a long advocate of this, and I know that Tessa Jowell's been working on it as Employment Minister ensuring that if you are in need you get the help you deserve and require, but you get it for doing something yourself. It's investment in a person who is prepared to invest in their own future, and I think that self reliance and self determination backed by the strength of the community is the philosophy that we'll be taking into the second term of a Labour government on a whole range of issues HUMPHRYS: Right. Well thanks for that. Let's leave it there for a moment if we would, because as you say we're talking about education in the broader sense now.