 Felly, y cael ei ddod yn siŵn i yw'r ddweud i'r cyllidio cyfnodd a gyd, y CBI wedi ei wneud gweithio'r pririo ar yr ysgol iawn. Mae'n ddiw i'r ddweud, yw'r probleme economiaid, a'r probleme socialau, ac mae'n ni'n yn defnyddio'r probleme sy'n cael ei hawdd ymlaenol nad o'r cyfnodd iawn y sefydliad ymlaenol. mae'n rhaid i chi'n cael eu bod ni'n gweithio? Yn yn ni'n gallu gweithio'r awdd i'r ffotograffau, Rhyw gwrs, rydyn ni'n ddweud ychydig ymlaen nhw? Rydyn ni'n ddweud y llyniaid yng nghylch ar y cyfrifio fyddfa yn y mediad. Roedd y ddweud y dyma, y dyma, y mediad. Rydyn ni'n ei wedi'i oedd eich LBI. Rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n ei wneud. Rydyn ni'n ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n arddangos o gyllideb o'r cyfle, ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio ar y dyma. I gamesh treesh. We're not going to get a solution without a private sector. Also it's important to say, I think I'm writing and saying that you've got, not just a private sector here, you've got voluntary sector, you've got public sector as well. Evidently this is an issue that requires real public private voluntary sector partnership. And so it's good news that the private sector wants to be part of the answer to this, not just complaining on the sidelines. I think, I want to start by saying that there's quite an important degree of agreement a'r mynd y fân ddweud y ffaith ar y gweld yn ychydigol. Fydai rhan o'r byw, cwrs, y mod i'n ddweud cyforyddion i'r cyfelydyd gwybodaeth, y peth ymddoedd ymlag yw'r cyfrifiadau ymddyr, wedi cyfyrddol cyfrifiad ar gyfer lynyddiad. Ac rydych ar gwrthodd cyfrifiadau, efallai, byddo'i gyrfa 20050,000 o mgei drwng ynddoedd o'r 25, Felly yn siart i ddweud yw 100,000 yng Nghymru, fyddwch chi'n meddwl, yma wedi gael y problemu. Yn 1.4 miliwn o'r un o'r un i ddweud, yw'ch fyddwch chi'n meddwl, yw'r ein bod yn y cyhoedd, yn ei wneud o'r 16-25 oed. Fyddwch chi'n meddwl, mae'r cost yn mynd oed. Mae'r gyfan mae'r report yma yn rhoi gyfwyr yma echydigol ond y 10-year net present value cost of current levels of youth unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, because all the evidence is that it's not that you want to dismiss three to six-month unemployment as not being a problem, but it's more than six-month unemployment that has a clear economic impact on earning power and tax revenues later on. If you're unemployed for more than six months, certainly more than a year, under the age of 25, you're earning less, you're working less for long periods of the rest of your working career. Especially for women actually, there's a gender aspect to it. We calculated the net present value of £28 billion on a 10-year basis when we did the report in February. We recalculated this University of Bristol statistics, £30 billion when we redid it in May. So secondly, there's a big economic loss. Thirdly, the problems are not insoluble. That is a really important message, I think. I'm sure it came out in your workshops. It's not just that there are good examples overseas. There's good practice in the UK that we can learn from. I just want to say a bit about what is the nature of the problem, what's the nature of the solution. The problem is, in my view, cyclical and structural. There's absolutely no point in denying that. I don't want to repeat what people have said, but there's clearly a cyclical aspect to this. Long-term youth unemployment has just spiked up with the second recession, with the double dip. There's a clear cyclical element to it. It's obvious, really. Actually, older workers have held their own in the labour market much better than in previous recessions, which is a good thing. But the increase in long-term unemployment, actually unemployment generally, but long-term unemployment especially for the under-25s, has been very, very marked, almost worse than previous recessions. You can see that in the claimant count, actually. The numbers I gave earlier, the 250,000, the 200,000, those are ILO figures, International Labour Organization. The claimant count has also ballooned up in my constituency. The long-term claimant count has gone from under 100s to over 500, nearly 600, just in one constituency. I think we also agree that the structural element mustn't be neglected. I go around saying the current government did not invent this problem, but they've made it worse. Now, the Prime Minister always quotes the first half of what I say in the House of Commons, and that's sort of politics. But I think there are two sides to this coin. I've got a beef about the cyclical element, but I've also got a beef about the structural element, because in 2004, pretty good times, we saw youth unemployment starting to rise, and there were about 700, 800,000 needs even in 2004, 5, 6. And the change in the labour market was pretty marked. Interestingly enough, our research doesn't link it to the opening of the labour market to the accession countries from the East. We couldn't find an economic link between immigration and youth unemployment. Actually, some of the areas with the highest levels of youth unemployment had the lowest levels of immigration and vice versa. We couldn't find that link, but it's important to say there's a structural element, as well as a cyclical element to it. And final point, this is a concentrated problem. Whenever I'm on the TV with the Employment Minister, Chris Grayling, he takes it in quite a good heart, but the unemployment rate in Epsom and Yule is, I think, 0.2%. And in 600 wards in the country, it's double the national average. The neat rate is about 20%. And I think Nick Clegg spoke about this today, and it's good that they've recognised that there is a concentration to this problem. So what are the causes? Beyond the cyclical element, which we can talk about if you want, we diagnosed three main causes of the youth unemployment crisis. First, the preparation and motivation of young people for the world of work. And that speaks directly to what's happening in schools and colleges. In a way, the problem is exemplified by the CSE debate that has happened over the last five or six days. I actually did CSEs in the 1989 to 1981, or two CSEs, as well as O levels. We've got a real issue, which I'll come back to, about how we prepare and motivate young people for the labour market of today and tomorrow. Second big issue is the clarity and quality of the offer for those who are not bound for university. Personally, I defend very, very strongly the expansion of higher education in the UK, up to 45% of the 18-30 cohort. Those who are on the A-level route or the BTEC route, where you've got a whole programme of study for the week, there's a pretty clear route through to age 18-19 and then beyond. But for the other 55%, the CBI report, which was published in January or February, it talked, I think, about a minefield for those who are not on the university. I think that's absolutely right. I see it in my own constituency. It's exactly the right metaphor. It's a minefield that these young people are trying to walk across. It's a minefield in the qualification side and a minefield on the quality side as well. Third problem is the weakness and lateness of welfare state interventions in this country for young people when they become long-term unemployed. We intervene later than other countries and we intervene less effectively than other countries through the welfare state. This may not be a welcome message for the CBI, but we also spend half as much as the OECD average on active labour market policy. I'm not saying there's a direct causation, but we need to recognise that. So those are the three biggest drivers of youth unemployment. We didn't find, we did the econometrics on the minimum wage. We actually didn't find that. What we saw was that you could argue that you're on the cusp of whether youth minimum wage is now, but we couldn't find, this was independent economic researchers, we couldn't find a link between the current level of the youth minimum wage and levels of unemployment. We identified these three issues. Now the government, I don't know if Nick Clegg mentioned this this morning, I was only sent the snippets of his speech, not the full version, but he said something very important and he's been consistent about this. He said the government's goal is to abolish long-term youth unemployment. That seems to me to be a very good goal around which the whole country should be able to unite and which we should all be working towards. And he has been absolutely consistent in saying that. It's also been a consistent feature of government policy that the remedies they've come up with for current levels of long-term youth unemployment won't deliver on that goal. And that's really what I want to speak about today. If we're serious about abolishing long-term youth unemployment, what do we need to do? We argued for four things really, and I just want to go through them quite briskly. There's an issue of jobs now to prevent the new youth unemployment becoming long-term unemployed. There's the transition routes for the non-university bound. There's the reform of the welfare state so that all roads lead to work. And fourthly, there's massive reform needed of the delivery systems to make sure that we're fine-tuning the offer for young people and for employers at local level. I just want to go through those four aspects. First on jobs now, I think I'm right in saying that Nick Clegg announced today that instead of waiting nine months in the hotspot areas, the wage subsidies will come in at six months. I'm not going to say that's bad because obviously it's a step in the right direction, but with the best will in the world, you can hardly describe it as more than a very, very small step in the right direction. Why the last experience of wage subsidies when Ken Clark introduced them in 1994-95 was that less than 10,000 people took them up. Because he tried, you recommended in the CBI report, the National Insurance Holiday, that's what the government are basically going for. What we said in our report is our fear is it's not going to be enough to really shift the problem. So especially in the hotspot areas, one of which is my own constituency, the equivalent of a national insurance holiday, our fear is not going to be enough to drive the problem. So it's good that it's six months rather than nine months, but if you buy my argument that it's the lateness of our intervention that's been historically a big source of our problems, then we're going to have to do more. We're going to need, to coin a phrase in another context, we're going to need a big bazooka rather than a pea shooter if we're going to tackle this problem. On apprenticeships, I think there's a lot of agreement that we want more consistently high quality. Where there is an issue is that less than 40% of new apprenticeships are going to the under 25s. There are some figures showing 900% increase in the over 65s who are getting apprenticeships. That's a bit of newspaper headlines I think because the numbers are pretty small. But in terms of the extra apprenticeships for young people, they're not primarily going to young people. And I think that if we decide this issue of youth unemployment is a real priority, we're going to have to do better on that. I also think that although the National Apprenticeship Service say they've got a clearinghouse for apprenticeships where young people can go and visit, it's nothing like applying for university. If you apply for university you've got the UCAS system, it's nationally clear, there's high status. We've got nothing like that degree of clarity for a youngster who wants to get an apprenticeship. If you want an apprenticeship and you're willing to travel throughout time and where, there's no place you can go to say well what's available. It's a simple point but in the modern world I think it matters. Thirdly in terms of jobs now, the government are beginning to say they want to do more to drive infrastructure investment in the country. I think we can do a lot more with public procurement in saying that all public procurement should have requirements for the number of young youngsters that you take on especially the number of young apprentices you take on. We had a representative of Kent County Council on our task force. They say that for every, I think it's for every million pounds of public sector procurement you need one young apprentice. And so they're a pretty big authority. I think we can take the public procurement side of this much further. Final thing which nobody talks about is transport costs. Transport, if you talk to young people that is a big issue for getting to interviews, never mind getting to a job. If you're on an apprentice, you're on a £2.60 an hour. Transport, if you live, I was in Hastings in May. It's 17 quid to get to Brighton. And this issue of transport costs and how we're going to make it financially viable for people to get to interviews, never mind get to work is absolutely key and I think there's a bigger role for local authorities in negotiating what they call quality contracts on this. Second point, the transition to work for the non-university bound. I mean, maybe we can come back to some of this in questions, but briefly, you've got to start earlier with those who look like they're at risk. We've got to do far more for those who are in the care of local authorities. The most likely to end up as long-term unemployed are those who are in care or who are doing caring. And I think that within the public sector we can do a better job. Thirdly, the whole work experience debate, the government dropped this thing about docking benefits if you turn down a work experience. And I think work experience can have value. We've got to make sure it's real quality offer because too many youngster say to me that what they were doing wasn't actually sufficient quality. We suggested, I'm not sure this is perfect, we said you should be guaranteed a job interview, not necessarily a job, but a job interview or training in the course of your work experience as a way of weeding out those who are actually not using it for the right purposes. I don't know if that's quite the right answer. Final thing about the transition to work for the non-university bound, we should use those young people who are actually in work. We suggested that a mentoring scheme could be established where any youngster who's employed for more than a year should be mentoring someone who's unemployed for more than a year and actually using the success of young people and the networks of young people to actually make a difference. Third area is about reforming welfare so that all roads actually lead to work. I know Nick said today he doesn't buy the argument about a job guarantee for those unemployed for more than a year. I absolutely promise you there's not a single labour market system anywhere in the world that has abolished long-term youth unemployment without a job guarantee. It's just a simple statement of fact. Now the argument is that the future jobs fund, which was an emergency thing after 2008, only had a success rate of 50%. Frankly, 50% is much higher than the work programmes getting at the moment, but we tried to take seriously the criticism of it and one criticism is it didn't do enough to help youngsters get into work after being on the future jobs fund, after the six month guarantee. So we said make it a part-time job guarantee with the requirement that anyone on it was doing training and job search in the rest of their time. So I think you could fine-tune a job guarantee, if it's part-time as well, to make that go. For the very long-term unemployed more than two years, the experience in places like Denmark is you need an absolutely massive effort, including through intermediate labour market efforts we're using the voluntary sector if you're going to help these youngsters. A final point about delivery mechanisms, I think this is a massive issue that while the commissioning is done at national level we're not going to get the kind of city deals that really address the concentrated areas of long-term employment. I would like to see, if you're in Manchester, I'd like to see Manchester employers, Manchester council, Manchester voluntary sector becoming the commissioning board for the mix of training, childcare, wage subsidies that's actually making a difference, because the truth is there's a different set of needs in a different labour market in Manchester than in Newcastle. And we call them youth employment zones, but this issue of breaking the stranglehold of national government I think is absolutely key. Now, I don't want to go on for too long because you want to ask questions. I recognise as a funding issue here. Now, I can say till I'm blue in the face, it costs us a lot to have long-term unemployed. I can say that we spend less than the OECD average, but there's also an issue, funds are constrained. Let me just give you a couple of examples where we can do much better with money that's currently being spent. The £700 million that's being offered to help so-called problem families, that doesn't have a proper youth employment aspect to it. If you think about the issues that confront families that are breaking down and causing problems, youth unemployment is going to be a central part of it. It's also the case that we've got now £150 million, Nick Clegg announced three or four months ago, for the younger end of the age range, 14 to 17, leave to one side the abolition of work experience for 14, 16-year-olds, which I think is wrong, actually. We oppose that. We can do a much better job with that £150 million, the infrastructure I've spent I've mentioned. So I don't buy the argument that the ideas that we've put forward here are impossible. I mean, not least as, yes they're within 20 minutes, they seem to find £500 million for a 3P freeze on petrol duty. This is a real chronic challenge for the country and I think it deserves real attention. My final point, the fact that we've got a bit of government attention is a good thing and I don't want to be sort of downbeat about it. But we've got to match deeds with rhetoric. One of the things that people hate about politics is when you promise a lot and deliver a little. Now the promise is that we're going to be serious if you like, as a political and business class elite, if you want to say, we're going to be serious about tackling long-term unemployment. If in fact we end up not being serious about it and the one-year unemployed become four-year unemployed, then it's not just an economic cost or a social cost, those youngsters are going to think that actually there's nothing in what we all say about our commitment to them. So I think there's a real issue of the intergenerational contract here. If we're serious about the aspirations we set, we've got to be serious about the measures that we put in place and the truth is if you go through everything I've said in respect of wage subsidies, apprenticeships, work experience, job guarantees, none of that can be done without the private sector. None of it can be done with the private sector alone but none of it can be done without the private sector and I would like to see, not just at national level but at local level, CBI and its regional outreach, also the Chamber of Commerce, I don't know if you're there that you're competitors but you know your collaboration and competition going together, sorry to mention them. We need in the sort of 50, 60 areas of greatest economic activity around the country, not just the 10 or 12 big cities, we need local coalitions to come together. In the northeast we're hosting a northeast youth job summit on the 5th of July. I've had an approach from Manchester, I'd like to see every part of the country having a regional job summit where we put together public, private and voluntary sector expertise to say we're really going to crack this problem. So that's why I welcome this meeting, that's why I think that it's really important we go forward with some actions that make a difference. Thank you very much indeed.