22 June 2004
Rt Hon Andrew Smith MP
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
SEEDA Conference
Speaking notes
(CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY)
1. Good Morning – I’m very pleased to be here with you this morning to celebrate the economic successes and listen to your views about what you see as the key challenges and opportunities facing the South East.
2. As you can imagine – as a South East regional MP – these issues are very close to my heart! I’m very proud of what we are achieving.
3. One of the key themes I want to stress today is the importance of partnership working. The economic and social development of the South East relies on all of us – central government, local government and business – working together.
4. I believe my organisation - and Jobcentre Plus in particular - have an important role to play. I’ll be back in Guildford in July to open the South East regional office. I hope to see many of you there too.
5. A successful and sustainable South East is critical to the performance of the UK as a whole and to improving the UK’s global economic position.
6. The facts speak for themselves
- The South East economy is bigger than a number of individual countries including Denmark, Norway, South Africa, Greece and Singapore.
- The region makes an estimated net contribution of £17.7bn to the Exchequer. (After slowing in 2002-03 forecasts suggest UK economic growth is likely to pick up over the next few years. The South East economy should improve in line with or perhaps slightly faster than the rest of the UK.)
- And of course the region is the gateway to the rest of the UK, with transport infrastructure of national and international importance.
7. The entire area has been highly successful in attracting key industrial sectors such as computing, research and development, business and financial services, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and the automotive industry.
8. With all this activity it is no surprise that the regional employment rate – at 78.4% – is above both the EU and OECD average.
9. Indeed, in the last 7 years employment is up by nearly 200,000 –- to nearly 4 million.
10. And some 80 thousand people have been helped back to work through the New Deal – 3 thousand of these in the first 3 months of the year.
11. Now – I could say, most communities and peoples across the globe can only dream of what we already have. Go back to your places of work and homes and carry on. This is about as good as it gets.
12. But that would be a complacent message; and we all know that in today’s competitive global environment the minute you are not moving ahead you are falling behind.
13. So I thought I should be a little bit more provocative and rather than giving you a list of the Government’s initiatives and achievements I want to pose a few questions which I hope you will find relevant to your agenda and discussions.
- First – despite the overall growth and prosperity there remain pockets of disadvantage and deprivation – how can the region learn what works well in some areas to target social exclusion?
- Second – How can partners work together to increase skills of population and ensure that we harness the potential of all our people? What do businesses need? How can we make training and education more responsive to your needs?
- Third – How can the South East ensure that growth is truly sustainable, economically and politically? ‘Smart growth’ as I like to call it.
14. So, my first question. Unfortunately, although the overall headline is of economic success, the successes are not spread evenly throughout the region.
15. Employment rates, for example, vary considerably from 88 per cent in Tandridge to 66 per cent in Thanet.
16. And as well as areas of affluence, there remain areas of real social exclusion. In terms of percentages, these are small, but they translate into large numbers of people because of the overall size of the population.
17. On an absolute basis the South East has one of the largest numbers of excluded or deprived people of any UK region.
18. My question to you is – as we move forward in our aim to create a prosperous and dynamic region, how can we ensure that all our people have a share in this success?
19. How, as a region, can we learn what works so that we work together to tackle social exclusion in innovative ways?
20. For example, are we making use of people’s potential resources? This is something we need to look at, because across the region most areas with low employment rates still have high numbers of vacancies.
21. Now – here’s a little known fact. One in eight incapacity benefit claimants live in the South East – that’s more than in the North East.
22. This is a huge untapped pool of resource.
23. The investment we are putting into Jobcentre Plus – bringing worksearch help together with benefits advice for the first time - will pay dividends.
24. It’s all about helping people to overcome obstacles to work. And for people receiving incapacity benefits – it’s about challenging a belief that people with health conditions are incapable of doing any work and exploring innovative ways of helping them back to work.
25. And as we move forwards we need to work with all of you – we need to make sure we tap into the full range of potential employees (for example, lone parents, older workers, as well as those whose ability to work is limited by sickness, ill health and disability).
26. And in turn we will need to work with you to ensure that our programmes and the support we give these individuals meet the needs of the local labour market.
27. Is there anything we should be doing differently? Who else can we work with to deliver better and better outcomes for the individuals we’re working with?
28. My second question to you is closely linked and is around skills.
29. Over time the population is becoming better qualified. In 1996, 20 per cent more people of working age had no qualification than had degrees. Now the reverse is true.
30. This feeds through to a better skilled workforce. But there’s no room for complacency.
31. The skills needed in the labour market will continue to change, to take advantage of new technologies.
32. And increasingly, people with low or no skills will be even more disadvantaged –- unemployment rates for people with low or no skills are currently about double that of the working population as a whole.
33. My question to you is – how can we all work together to increase the skills of the workforce? What do businesses need? How can we make training more responsive?
34. An awful lot is already being done. For example, Regional Skills Partnerships are now in place to better co-ordinate the supply and demand for skills in each region.
35. This is particularly important given the work-focus of Jobcentre Plus.
36. But of course there’s a lot more to do.
37. We need to make sure we’re moving ahead on all fronts. The New Deal for Skills, announced in the Budget, will provide further help to people moving from welfare into work and from low skilled work into higher skilled work.
38. And we also need to make sure that we ask how the high tech high value added sector can make more of the skills of all our people.
39. In particular – how can we all enable, encourage and support those who are under-represented to make the most of their potential, and to win - on merit - more positions of leadership and enterprise?
40. People from minority ethnic backgrounds account for 4.2 per cent of the region’s population. Yet they are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts –- and this disadvantage tends to be magnified as you climb the hierarchy of business and Government.
41. We need to make sure we continue to work in partnership to make sure we’re identifying and developing the key skills that businesses need to be successful and start to close the productivity gap with our leading economic competitors as well as ensuring that we don’t waste any precious human resource.
42. The third question I’d like to pose is – as the South East strives for ever more economic success, how can we ensure that this growth is managed in a sustainable way?
43. Demographic trends and projections indicate that the South East will account for over a quarter of the total increase in population of the UK over the next 20 years.
44. This will inevitably put more pressure on public services, infrastructure and the environment. The transport question looms large.
45. Some of the transport infrastructure in the South East is a real strength. The range and quality of international connections, closeness to mainland Europe, and generally good transport connections to London, benefit business and help foreign and domestic investment. But movement across the region and the road infrastructure is not so good.
46. As we strive to bring ever more investment to the region, we need to work together to address the challenges that growth brings with it.
47. We need to make sure not only that we have the right skills in the workforce, but also good transport connections so people can travel to where the jobs are, and of course increase the supply of affordable housing.
48. What more can we do – working together – to ensure that we get the right balance between transport and the environment, and that the infrastructure keeps pace with this development?
49. I will now hand over to Paul Bevan for the first of this morning’s discussions.
50. I wish you a very successful conference and continued success in our shared drive to make the South East an exemplar of how enterprise, social justice and high quality environment can and must go hand in hand - so that we can fully realise the potential of the communities we are fortunate to live and work in.
51. I look forward to hearing your views and thoughts on these issues.