The dividing wall

Today Theresa May, shadow work and pensions minister, gave a well trailed speech to the think tank "Policy Exchange". In it she disclosed the result of work the Tories have done on unemployment during the period of NuLabour. It was based on a recent population survey, in conjunction with the results of the 2001 general census.

The findings are bleak
- nearly two million adults in Britain have never had a job.
- a further 3 million have not worked since Labour came to power Thus 5 million have been out of work for over at least 11 years.
- in the worst areas up to a quarter adults have not had a job since 1996.

She gave an illustration of a "worst area" - Newham, in East London. Here 43,850 (or about a quarter) have not worked since 1997, and 2,400 (or about 1%) have never worked in their lives.


Many of these have not appeared in unemployment statistics, because of the nature of their benefits, e.g. incapacity benefit. A recent study estimated the actual unemployment rate could be 8 or 10 million, rather than the 2,435,000 currently registered as such.

Policy Exchange itself recently estimated that six million people in Britain are living on various sorts of jobless benefit, and the cost could be as much as £193 billion now having risen from £93 billion in 1997.

The shadow minister before her address spoke of NuLabour hiding these people for over 10 years, and "building a wall between the working and the workless."