What is PRDave doing about youth unemployment?

Youth Unemployment is nearly a million at 20.5%. What’s PRDave’s answer?

The Tory-led government has scrapped Labour's Future Jobs Fund, which was designed to deliver 100,000 jobs for 18-24 year olds with 20 hours a week of work on minimum wage.  A better deal than the work-for-your-dole schemes that are currently being discussed by the Tory-led government.

PRDave has broken pre-election promises to keep the Educational Maintenance Allowance, and the LibDems have broken their pledge not to raise university now tripled tuition fees. Many Sure Start children centres are under threat of closure

The long-term consequences of these broken promises will blight the lives of young people. Making it harder to continue in education and get a decent job

The Tories try to justify their policies by saying they want to avoid passing on debt to future generations. But by cutting the deficit so quickly, they are making unemployment considerably worse with jobs being lost in the public sector and a virtual hiring freeze in the private sector.

The Tories boasted a 40,000 increase in job vacancies in the three months to January; what they didn’t say was that this included temporarily recruitment  for the 2011 census. The actual increase was a meagre 8,000.

So what happens when the public sector jobs loss begins in earnest? The government hopes that the private sector will create 2.5m jobs enough to compensate for those lost, but what a forlorn hope, as many economists believe that unemployment could hit 3 million over the next year to 18 months.

Remember, Labour did act when youth unemployment rose in the early days of the recession: young people were encouraged to stay on at school, extra places were created at university and the Future Jobs Fund was created to help young people into work. By last year's election, the jobless rate for the under-25s was coming down, but it has since started to climb. Labour says the scrapping of the fund and the Educational Maintenance Allowance, designed to encourage full-time education, means the jobs outlook for young people is grimmer than for the rest of the population.

The Tories should be investing to secure improvements in the quality of life for upcoming generations - something the British people have enjoyed ever since they elected the first majority Labour government in 1945.