Caerphilly’s Conservative Assembly candidate Owen Meredith, has promised to set up a ‘Jobs Trust’ if elected on May 5.
Mr Meredith said the trust would help the unemployed match their skills to local job opportunities and develop partnerships between schools, colleges and local employers.
He said: “This is a new way of thinking to help tackle Caerphilly’s long standing employment challenge. More than 40% of working age people in this constituency are not in jobs and not active in the economy. We cannot go on like this.”
According to the Rudry-born candidate, the trust would also promote Caerphilly as a place of investment and act as a source of venture capital tp encourage new business start-ups.
The latest employment figures for the Caerphilly constituency show:
- 2,574 people are claiming Job Seekers Allowance
- 17,800 people are economical inactive – 34.4% of the population. The 3rd highest rate in Wales.
- 12,450 people are claiming out of work benefits.
- Our employment rate is just 59.4%
- The business birth rate is 33.67 per 10,000 population – the fourth lowest in Wales.
Mr Meredith commented: “If that is not proof enough that we need change, just look at the job creation rate. In the last three months 143,000 jobs were created in the UK economy – depressingly just 2,000 of those are in Wales.
“Of course, there is no silver bullet to solving our jobs crisis in Caerphilly, but a new approach where we join up thinking between educators and employers; support people to find work with jobs clubs; and encourage entrepreneurs to start new businesses by slashing tax rates and cutting rates tape will be a vital step forward.
“Working together we can create the enterprise-led economy that Caerphilly desperately needs.”
Shocking figures, but sadly not surprising. It will be interesting to hear the views of the other candidates when they respond.
I am not a Tory voter and the Conservatives are, correctly in my opinion, blamed for much of the economic decline of the UK, especially Wales.
Even so I congratulate Mr. Meredith for highlighting this issue and having some sort of a vision for the future of Wales. He cannot be blamed for the errors and spite of Thatcher and is quite right to say that we can't go on like this, wasting the talent we have in Wales.
A good starting point would be a root and branch reform of business rates. Businesses in Caerffili are being taxed out of existence on a monthly basis, denying those that want to work of the possibility of a local job.
the one question i have on thease figers is how meany of these "economical inactive" are reterd penceners and disabled? figers like this may look bad when they are given likes this but whould you count your 83 year old grandmother as an "economical inactive" person or as some who has worcked most of her life and is intiteld to a brake in her decling years
Geriant – the figures only count people of working age. So pensioners are not counted.
there is still disabled peaple, stay at home mums, house wives/husbands and thows on long term sick leave (compenys will often termanat imployment after some one has bean on the sick for a year)
the term “economical inactive” is still far to brawd a term
Simply an extention, in age, of Thatchers Youth Opportunities Programme.
Whats new, and is`nt it ironic that the Tories were the ones who took the view that high levels of unemployment was a price worth paying, what goes around comes around, just a redabbling of an old idea.
I dont blame Owen for this tinkering at the edges of his UK governments determination to see unempoyment rise in line with their overall strategy for Government.
It will not last and predict the coalition falling apart some day soon. We can all then get back seeing a government in the UK which will ensure that the disabled, the infirm the elderly and the disenfranchised do not unfairly carry the financial burdon of the Tory bankers stuffing this Country.