Compulsory skills test for jobless

Many people need help to improve their basic skills

Reading and writing tests for the long-term unemployed will be compulsory from April.

The "skills audit" will be part of Labour's plans to make full employment in the UK the centrepiece of its election manifesto, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced on Saturday.

Under the plans, anyone unemployed for six months will be required to undergo assessments - including reading and writing tests - to identify skills gaps which are preventing them from getting jobs.

Gordon Brown: "This is the way to full employment"

Testing will be voluntary for single parents and the disabled.

Benefits for other job seekers could be cut if they refuse the tests.

Mr Brown said the "skills check-up" would go hand-in-hand with a "huge increase" in training to help boost the skills of those who fell short.

In particular there will be schemes to improve computer literacy.

High wages

They are being planned with the backing of firms who are recruiting abroad after failing to find people with information technology skills in the UK.

Mr Brown said: "They are coming together with us to look at how we can increase the number of training places in high-tech skills and give jobs at fairly high wages.

"This is the way to create full employment in this country."

Details of the £8m scheme, due to start in April, were revealed by Mr Brown in a speech at a top union dinner in London.

Work-your-way-up economy

He told an audience of trade unionists that Labour's economic policy for the next five years will be guided by the principle of "opportunity and prosperity for all" with the aim of creating a society in which everyone is given the chance to work their way to a better life.

In the speech, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, the chancellor stressed the need to create a "work-your-way-up economy, where we do not only create opportunities and responsibilities for full employment, but for people to have the skills to have high-income jobs".

"We will propose in our election manifesto measures to end long-term unemployment in our country and to make progress in doing so in each region," he added.

'Gimmick'

The first stage of the government's New Deal scheme had achieved its aim of moving 250,000 jobless people off welfare and into work, and new targets now need to be set for the scheme, Mr Brown said.

Between 2001 and 2004, the focus would shift to helping the unemployed gain new skills, and rewarding those who take the responsibility for acquiring the skills they need.

But Shadow Employment Secretary Theresa May dismissed the skills audit scheme as "just another government gimmick to grab headlines".

"Someone who is long-term unemployed needs help to find work, not tests," she said.