• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

It is not the fault of the education system. The educators will know that if young people have manual skills and are not academic, they can, at the end of their education, push them in the that direction, but there is nowhere to push them to because there are not enough training places. We do not have trade colleges now, we do not have apprenticeship schemes. It is really quite serious and it is about time certain people woke up to this. The Learning and Skills Council have done a very, very poor job in this area and we cannot...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

So, it is rather a meaningless figure, is it not, actually in reality, because it does not give a true picture of those people who need to be helped into work.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Or workless. They are not workless, because they are not able to work. They are doing other things. Elizabeth Howlett AM: You have hit on a bête noire of mine, I must say, because I think we have marginalised and done very badly by a whole group of youngsters leaving schools who have manual skills and do not get training. There is nothing disrespectful about saying you are a manual worker. It is an essential element in our life and, in fact, Poles are keeping the construction industry going. You talked about people coming from the Asian continent with great...

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Can I just ask you a little bit about this 30 per cent figure? I think some of us find it a little difficult to believe that one in three people of working age in London are potentially standing in dole queues. I find that very difficult to believe. Can we ask you, first, if you would define the difference between unemployment and worklessness and perhaps you would also then explain at how you arrive at this 30 per cent figure?

• Question by: Mike Tuffrey
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

That is them rather than you, because when the Mayor is taxed on this issue he says `Oh well, when I get more powers over skills all will be well'. But actually the LDA has been up and running, and you are in your sixth year now. What I am trying to understand is what more ought you to be doing or what more ought you to have done, given that you are, at heart, an economic development agency and the primary indicator of economic growth is the number of jobs created.

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

With all these interventions, have you accounted for the impact of migration?

• Question by: Joanne McCartney
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

I think in tackling worklessness, it is obviously important that you have children coming out of school and training and retraining for adults to meet the needs of the workplace, but I am wondering presumably you will be consulting with business, about what business needs and a strategy but will you also be consulting with young people as well? I know from some of the work we have done on the Economic Development Committee that the views of young people often is that perhaps academia is not the best place for many of them and that they should be given...

• Question by: Murad Qureshi
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

If 30 per cent of working age Londoners are workless, what kind of skill provisions do you think are best targeted at them?

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

It also presumably includes people who choose not to work.

• Question by: Angie Bray
• Meeting date: 11 October 2006

Forgive me, but that presumably, therefore, includes everybody who is in further education, which means they could not really be pursuing a job could they because they would actually be pursuing their further education.