BBC News | UK POLITICS | Jobless to get free mobile phones

BBC News Online: UK Politics

Tuesday, 29 February, 2000, 19:37 GMT

Jobless to get free mobile phones

Free mobile phones and pagers are to be offered to jobless youngsters as part of radical plans to help them find work.

Help for the jobless includes:
One-off grant of up to Ł400
Action teams to spot suitable vacancies
Firms to provide a trial run

The phones will be supplied to thousands of people in areas of high unemployment.

The move is aimed at helping them to get quicker access to vacancies, with special personal advisers phoning, bleeping or sending text messages about job vacancies within minutes of them being advertised.

Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett is to announce next week that 15 regions of the UK will become Employment Zones from 3 April.

Six-strong teams of Employment Service officials will target the areas of high unemployment, launching new initiatives such as grants, training or even driving lessons.

The zones will be run by a mixture of public and private partnerships.

If people don't want to work and they absolutely clearly refuse to work then the penalties will come in
Gordon Brown

The move is part of Chancellor Gordon Brown's plans to cut unemployment.

And Mr Brown said he was also looking at ways of covering the transport costs of people in areas of high unemployment to help them to take jobs in other areas.

He also indicated that his Budget on 21 March would include grants to help claimants overcome the gap between coming off benefits and collecting their first pay packet.

Up to 250,000 unemployed could benefit from the scheme with the "employment grants" of between Ł300 and Ł400.

But Mr Brown warned that as the government aimed to reach its goal of full employment there was now no reason for anybody to "stay at home doing nothing".

'Remove barriers'

The grants will be coupled with a new requirement to take work or face the loss of benefits. gordon brown

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Brown denied that the initiative was similar to Norman Tebbit's "get on your bike" message to the unemployed in the 1980s.

"Nobody should really stay at home doing nothing if there are jobs available," he said.

"In the 1980s there were three million unemployed and only 300,000 or 400,000 vacancies, today there's over one million unemployed and one million vacancies.

"We want to link people to the vacancies which are available.

"What I'm saying is that we'll remove all the barriers to help you get back to work.

"We'll make it easier for you to get the skills, we'll get you the information that's necessary, we'll help you if necessary with the transitional costs of getting back to work, we'll help mothers with child care if that's necessary.

"We want everyone who can work, to be able to work and there are jobs for people to be able to go to."

Related to this story:
Take jobs, Brown tells unemployed (28 Feb 00 | Business)
Brown faces job-not-giro row (28 Feb 00 | UK Politics)

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