THATCHER SETS EMPLOYMENT BALL ROLLING
Mrs Margaret Thatcher literally kicking off the Employment Training scheme yesterday, watched by junior members of Scunthorpe United.
The Prime Minister chose to make her contribution to the launch of the Government's £1.4 billion a year scheme for the unemployed by visiting the fourth division club, one of 25 Football League teams with community projects that will now be funded by ET (Peter Davenport writes).
Surrounded by photographers and television camera crews, Mrs Thatcher symbolically started the programme by giving a special football carrying the Employment Training logo a deft stab with her right foot. She hoped, she said, that 600,000 people would take advantage of the scheme, which the Government claims to be the biggest of its kind in the world.
Asked if the programme would become compulsory, Mrs Thatcher said: “It is not compulsory, it is voluntary. But just remember, for people to draw unemployment benefit it is a rule, and has been throughout successive governments, that they have to be available for work, ready to take suitable work.
“There are jobs available for which people haven't the skills and this programme is really to concentrate on training those people who have been unemployed for six months.”
Asked again whether compulsory schemes would be introduced, Mrs Thatcher said: “We have not got compulsory schemes at the moment but I do say this: you have to be available for work to claim unemployment benefit. The only thing we have done is to say that for young people between 16 and 18, for them unemployment is not an option, nor should it be.
“The whole of the social services and the whole of the National Insurance scheme is meant to provide an income for people who can't find work because there isn't a job, or because they are sick or because they are too old.
“It is not meant to provide an income for those who choose not to go to work.”
Before leaving, the Prime Minister toured the facilities at Scunthorpe's new, £2.5 million, purpose-built ground. The club is involved in a programme that has provided about 200 jobs for people previously out of work, including former footballers.
It is hoped the scheme, with its new ET funding, will now go nationwide.