EXCLUSIVE: IDS on British jobs

Jonathan Woolf

The causes of this, and the riots, are exactly the same. State monopoly education that utterly fails those most in need and has resulted in more than half of of white and black working class boys being functionally illiterate. A tax and benefits system that makes doing low paid work a mug's game. Needless to say, both are the product of the post-war socialist consensus that continues to dominate the thinking of the political elite and civil service.

Sorting them out should be equally simple - but the Coalition is not going anywhere near fast enough nor, on welfare, to the root of the problem.

Ed P

Those graphs are misleading - the different scales and the coincident starting point of the lower one make things look much worse than they are. Although the figures tell the story, the graphs (which is what everyone sees first and what provide a lasting impression) are poorly drawn.

R.McGeddon

'Having to reform a group that's progressively less able to do the work.' British 'Yooof', a chimera created by thirteen years of Labour 'Education, education, education', unprepared for any kind of employment unless it's as a footballer, 'celeb' or an overnight sensation on a TV talent show.

Ruby Duck

Do we have figures on how many jobs were created by foreign-born entrepreneurs ?

Rhoda Klapp

There's nowt wrong with the graphs, and this hobby horse of Fraser's is one of which I entirely approve.

Jez

More Good News!

Thanks!

TrevorsDen

I too agree with Fraser's hobby horse - well this one.

But how can 120 foreign workers occupy each 100 new jobs created?

Dennis Churchill

As other Coffee House posters have commented on it is time Labour’s immigration policies, official and unofficial, were properly debated. This could start with the Andrew Neather ”revealations”.In some other countries politicians would have stood trial for some of the things Labour done but not here—yet.
Forests of newsprint about hacking voicemails and other trivia but nothing about deliberately and probably unlawfully attempting to permanently change our culture by stealth—what a sense of priorities the media classes have.

PayDirt

Breakdown of society continues, where it is more important to be a celebrity than to contribute as a citizen. Grab it while you can rather than work together to win the prize.

Number7

@TD
By taking 20 jobs off the indigenous population.

Tom Pride

Jonathan Woolf – well said.

A couple of ideas:

1. Abolish the existing further educations establishments and the degree in education requirement. Push the budgets for training teachers to schools and heads (including the independent sector) and make it on the job training with time-off courses similar to other professions. Let the private sector provide the training colleges and the schools chose the colleges for their trainee teachers.

2. Introduce a “training transfer fee” whereby a business or organisation investing in an employee’s training may recover that cost from an employer who their employee moves to before the expiry of a “training contract period”. The period could be variable depending on the sum spent on the training – say between one to five years.

Note that both ideas avoid an increase in government spending.

strapworld

Trevors Den, my old pal, it takes one and a bit johnny foreigner to fill a job normally done by a Brit BUT as they are paid less than the minimum wage it doesn't matter!

Ghetta Gryppe

British standards of numeracy have declined so far that you can become editor of a national political magazine and still think that a number under 2 million can be 99% of the sum of that number and another over half a million. Shameful, shameful, shameful.

michael

Employment law, Employment law, Employment law.

Employers tax, Employers tax, Employers tax.

Employers are driven by profit.
... so is GROWTH.

daniel maris

Well if you are concerned about this Fraser you need to bring forward proposals that will deal with this.

Firstly, IDS's analysis is as thin as the hair on his head. Welfare reform will put British workers into the nation's job? Really? Do the current crop of inarticulate and barely educated NEETs really have the right stuff? Do employers really want to employ 17 year old girls with babies at home?

The hard working self-improving migrants from Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa are always going to win out.

The problem is far too serious to be plugged by a little welfare tinkering.

We need a whole raft of measures, but most importantly we need to guarantee paid employment for young people. Only then will the connection between effort and reward begin to become clear to them. A whole lot of other things are necessary but that is the most important, creating a failsafe bridge between schooling and the world of work.

Andy Carpark

Telly Savalas is a smooth man. But IDS is a noisy man.

Chris lancashire

strapworld: I know of no employers who pay below minimum wage and am not aware of any recent prosecutions so you can forget that one. In point of fact it only takes around .75 of a Pole/Lithuamian/Latvian to replace a full indigenous worker - I speak from first hand experience.

strapworld

Chris lancashire. You are correct. Living in an area with a lot of Polish people I have found them very hard working and extremely well mannered. The Welsh do not know what has hit them!

Dennis Churchill

Chris lancashire
August 17th, 2011 1:44pm
The building industry has tens of thousands of foreign nationals that don’t appear on any tax returns.
No wonder the government does not cross reference data bases—remember the census returns from Westminster which resulted in the council threatening to apply for judicial review if the government based its grant on the population figures?
We don’t even know our population figures so prosecution for not paying the minimum wage is not much of a guide.
Open borders are liked by One World Socialists and Free Market Capitalists, quality of life issues ,such as riots, homelessness and unemployment, are for others to worry about.

libertarian

@Denis Churchill

Total bullshit, you obviously know less than nothing about the construction industry

Purpleline

Maybe I have a fuzzy head today but should the columns read UK Born and Non UK Born.

IDS and Chris Grayling should work on a programme to send young unemployed to Poland & other Eastern EU countries. And bring in a law that UK benefits can only be used in the UK. While NHS Hospital treatment has £150 per visit excess. This is needed as Polish people and others will have Children born here and in the end the number will equalise but still reflect the great disadvantaged British in future job market here

Baron

to start with the columns in your tables are wrongly labelled, both as non-UK born.

as to the point you’re making, who on earth would employ the unemployable? We don’t even have enough of the highly trained people we need, hence the industry pleading with the government not to cut immigration.

sinosimon

'great progress with the Work program'

errr....any actual evidence to back this up?
from what I can see it just means unemployed people sitting in a privately owned job centre instead of a publicly owned one. so are there any figures to show any change in outcome?

Hard Romantically Heartless Perry

Appalled as I am by the figures and reasons for them emanating from the Hero of the H2B and his sidekicks during the LieBore years, - I am intrigued by the figure of ’99.9’.

Granted that the Hero of the H2B and his entourage fiddled just about every stat available, perverted every norm of a half-decent society, and ruined edukashun, what does this tell us? – apart from that it appears beautifully judged for some reason.

And tell us,

1. what is the work begun by the Hero of the H2B, that the H2B so earnestly wishes to complete?

2. Wouldn't it be quicker and easier to reinstall Bliar? After all, many 'conservatives' approved of him and his devious ways, regardless of 'Cool Brittania' Slebs and other baloney.

graham

As an employer this rediculous state of affairs has been going on for sometime.

Firstly, much of the potential indiginous workforce is unemployable (poor attitude, work ethic & basic education). Secondly, the benefits system encourages & rewards idleness. Thirdly, the immigration system is completely broken & allows hundreds of thousands in to the country to take up work here.

We are not using the country's homegrown assets & creating bored & idle people whilst filling the country with foreigners (who naturally need accomodation, transport, schooling etc).

A ridiculous situation, which apart from hot air I can't see U turn Dave & his crew turning around.

My solution is the Brits should move to Poland & start again there. There must be plenty of space as all the Poles are here!

TrevorsDen

Strapworld/No7 -- I fully take the point about foreign workers taking UK jobs, and its a savage condemnation of Labour's record.
But if 100 new jobs are created how can more than 100 people occupy them? If Brits are leaving the jobs market then that crates a 'new' job to be filled. If ALL those jobs are filled by foreigners then you cannot get more than 100%.

Until education is improved and until the lure of benefits are curbed and until the low paid keep more of their wages then the indigenous population will continue to lose out.

Andy Carpark

David Bellamy is a hairy man. But IDS is a noisy man.

I S

Who in their right mind would wish to employ a surly, sullen, uncommunicative, monosyllabic, innumerate, functionally illiterate, lazy, ungrateful, bolshy, whining Brit teen?

Charles

Can you separate public sector from private sector here?

If most of the UK job losses are in the public sector (possible) then that is arguably a good thing (I am assuming that the public sector has a higher ratio of indigenous workers).

Clearly the tendency to higher foreign workers in the private sector needs to be addressed: welfare and education reform will do a lot to help that

Yosemite Sam

It is not considered good practice to express the components of total change in % form. The reason is that if any component is negative than it gives misleading even impossible % figures. To illustrate using an extreme example: suppose total employment did not change, but that UK element went down 100 whilst non UK went up 100. Then the % component change for non UK would be infinite.

John Richardson

Dennis Churchill.

Two excellent contributions.
You are also obviously correct when you refer to the building/construction industry; no question.

Ruby Duck

Chris lancashire, 1:44pm :

"In point of fact it only takes around .75 of a Pole/Lithuamian/Latvian to replace a full indigenous worker - I speak from first hand experience."

I'm happy to defer on experienced Eastern European labour vs our own unskilled and demoralised, but in IT, which I do know about, the homegrown variety is more than the equal of the imported.

The reasons are obvious. The first to come are inevitably the most dynamic and resourceful, hardworking and determined to establish themselves. The ones that come later have swallowed the myth and believe that the Brits are lazy, or have no skills. They regard us with contempt and we are too polite, or too cowed by political correctness, or too blinded by habit, to disabuse them.

How long does it take for the rot to set in ? We have been importing IT workers in large numbers since 1995 or earlier. Eastern Europeans have been doing our plumbing and so forth, for about 6 or 7 years. It's probably time to reassess.

Baron

Graham @ 3.24 tells it as it is, he should be advising the quiet man.

and another thing:

andy, the carparking giant, listen, you’re beginning to lose me, please do explain to me what’s this hairy Bellamy, noisy IDS all about, Baron didn’t realize he was that poorly educated.

TrevorsDen

Perry - if all you can talk is bollox - talk it somewhere else. Its not even clever bollox.

Simon Stephenson.

Of course, in his indignation about "British" jobs being given to foreigners, what Fraser Nelson doesn't seem to ask himself is how many of these jobs would just not be there if it were not for there being a foreign labour force to fill them? How many businesses, if confronted by a requirement to favour British nationals, would just pack up and move to another country where the right quality labour force was available?

Matthew Norman writes in the Independent this morning:-

"The reason for the disproportionate rage with the looters isn't the looting, nasty as it was. It is that they robbed us of the chance to feign ignorance. They blew the whistle on our massive collective failure, and no fury is hotter than the fury reserved for the whistle-blower"

I think the Fraser Nelson/Iain Duncan Smith attitude is based on a similar emotion - the unwillingness to accept that the environment which so energises the competent, the well-educated and the self-confident is at the same time a horror-story for the less-capable, the poorly educated and those who see little purpose in life beyond staying alive from day to day. To these people, the saying "Life's a bitch and then you die" is the gloomy reality, not just a snappy outburst to draw attention.

So it would be good to see from society's winners the recognition that that the only way to lift significant numbers out of the welfare pool is to make the bottom-end of the work pool more attractive to them, and them more attractive to it. And that this will just not happen by making the welfare pool less attractive - all this will do is to make their lives even more miserable than they are already. Tough love may be the right approach in a small number of identifiable cases, but for the vast majority the only love that it shows is the love which the people administering it have for themselves.

Dennis Churchill

libertarian
August 17th, 2011 2:31pm
No doubt you have worked man and boy on the lump, but regardless, it is common knowledge that there are parallel economies with regard to immigrant labour. Not only in the building industry but others. Do you think the Filipino domestics in Kensington are all on PAYE? Have you ever dealt with the huge African cash economy?
You sound like a public sector employee safely protected from the realities of modern Britain (England) anyone who thinks there is not a considerable cash economy paying well below minimum wage in this country must live a very sheltered life.

Dennis Churchill

John Richardson
August 17th, 2011 4:55pm
Thank you.
There are none so blind...
We have allowed a ridiculous situation to develop. The highest proportionate rate of unemployment and welfare dependency is among Ethnic Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. The proportionately highest ethnic concentration in our prisons is Afro-Caribbean.
Regardless of the Latvians etc who may or may not be friendlier than the non-working underclass (of various ethnic origins) we still allow immigration from the third world of what are effectively unemployables.
As I wrote before Open Borders suit One World Socialist (see Andrew Neather) and employers who profit from the reduction in wage rates. The average tax payer pays in quality of life and cash. Rather than tackle the failures in our education system and social model we import cheap labour and allow sections of our cities to resemble Kingston.
Where are these multicultural, multiracial paradises? Why do our political class think we will be the first?

RocketDog

Nelson
Isn't it time that you took a leaf out of Mr Churchill's book and started to sound like your namesake?
The numbers may be true but few are convinced by numbers any more and it is difficult to unpick them
Isn't it time we got to the heart of the matter and started to unpick Neather? It is a larger and more important scandal than expenses or hacking,... and whatever the political class may wish, it will not go away

2trueblue

All is irrelevant if we have no idea who is here, where they come form and what they do. We simply know of those who are registered, and we all know that these figures are irrelevant. Our housing, schools, hospitals, roads, sanitation and water, public transport, energy supplies are all woefully unable to take the strain. All this is going to be our real problem. Who then will win?
It will be irrelevant where, who etc., it will be a greater mess than we can envisage.
Already we know that we are incapable of feeding ourselves and our energy needs are being met off shore. THanks to 13yrs of Liebore the problem in all of these areas got worse. We are walking towards disaster and the money is gone. This government can not undo what Liebore did to destroy the UK. Statistics are useless, just another set of lies.

AliC

Most of the Eastern European folk round here are quite nice but check this out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8704896/Gipsies-move-into-immigration-officers-home-while-she-spent-night-away-at-Proms.html

Back to domestic things. It needs to make economic sense to take a low paid job i.e. benefits should not be more money, and more comfy. Benefits should not be a 'career choice'. But support should be given for the 'transition' to work.

AND if you have worked for 20 years and lose your job through no fault of your own, benefits should be more generous and ensure you don't lose you house!

Richard Marriott

When Labour were voted into Government in 1997, I recall Blair making a speech which commenced with "Education! Education! Education!"

Blair should now hang his head in shame, since for all the additional funding poured in, education under Labour went backwards faster than ever, with grade inflation, soft courses, indiscipline and inappropriate further education (as Labour inmposed a daft 50% target on young people in FE).

The problem is that the State is a useless provider of education. The state should provide the funding, but the service should be contracted out to the private sector. After all, which schools perform best on all measures year after year - the private sector and the remaining state grammar schools.

N.B. Selection works - it increases opportunities for the bright but poor and thus increases social mobility.

Chris lancashire

Ruby Duck: We've been employing East European unskilled and semi-skilled for 5 or 6 years now with no noticeable change in the quality of the labour. I was also concerned that local labours' workrate would rub off over time but it doesn't. I can only conclude that it's a real cultural difference in attitude and approach to work that is really ingrained in East Europeans. And, by the way, we don't pay minimum wage (just thought I'd mention it).

Purpleline

Frazer the other scandal these figures does not expose is the rabid Scottish racism in the jobs market.

I would like to see a study of Scottish owned firms including (RBS, BOS, Halifax)employment record of English and Welsh born people.

It has long been mentioned that the so called Scottish Mafia exclude other nationalities and this can be extended to the LABOUR PARTY who have more Scottish parliamentary members & activists in their ranks.

This will become a major issue if / should Scotland get their independence and needs clear precise analysis now.

Span Ows

One is a 13 year figure the other a one year figure based on a total that is only 10% of the first total.

Nick

So what proportion of these jobs were created in the public/quasi public sector? And what proportion were subsidised via benefits to those on low pay?

Sandwichman

At Left Foot Forward, Will Straw criticized your argument, claiming, "This is called the ‘lump of labour fallacy‘ and has been widely debunked."

I am afraid it is the fallacy CLAIM that has been debunked, not the bogus "fallacy," the claim of which has indeed been widely repeated. Among debunkers of the claim were A.C. Pigou and Maurice Dobb. Back in May, I summarized the strange history of the fallacy claim in a letter to Paul Krugman:

http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2011/05/open-letter-to-paul-krugman.html

wan lou

It is the result of extreme income inequality. Where City Traders can earn 100 million in a fraction of a second, others have to work a lifetime for a poor existence. In Britain work does not pay. Work hard and your boss can take a deserved holiday to the Maldives. Work even harder, your boss becomes a millionaire and fires all employees as he would like to enjoy early retirement and doesn't want those pesky employees around. To add insult to injury government taxes income from work highly and income from investment much less so. It doesn't pay to work. It pays to have other people work for you: let someone else do the work, you do the earning. Britain, land of scroungers.

know it all

All the negative tosh spoken on here by all you know it all's about lazy brits makes me sick to my stomach, work this out,
1 brit married with 2 kids paying morgage and c tax = £120 week,
5 poles living in 1 rented house and paying c tax = £25 week each,
how can unskilled brits compete, what gullible fools you all are soaking up the spin put out by our MPs and media