Even now, on the crest of a boom, the costs of UK unemployment (benefits plus lost income tax) come to about ?15 billion a year. A few years ago, in the trough of a slump, it was ?24 billion-that is, before taking account of the other costs associated with unemployment: family break-up, crime and so on. Compare these figures with the ?97 billion spent on the whole welfare system and it becomes evident why this government is taking the problem so seriously, despite the fact that the jobless total is low by recent standards.
The government is meeting representatives of those in the dole queues, mobilising its employment services to help them, challenging employers to hire them, and spending far more on these programmes than previous governments. After the indifference of the previous administration, this is progress.
But is the government asking the right questions about unemployment? It is cutting social security payments and expanding training schemes, childcare, advice services and short-term subsidised jobs in "environmental task forces." This shows that it believes the problem lies on the supply side of the labour market, in shortcomings of the unemployed-not on the demand side, in a basic lack of jobs. Across the southern half of England this assumption will often be right. But on Merseyside (where 40 per cent of manufacturing jobs went during the 1980s) and Tyneside, in Manchester, Glasgow (30 per cent lost), Belfast and the South Wales coal field, the main problem is on the demand side. The jobs lost have never been replaced. Any success the government's strategy might have will only stir workers around on the fringes of the labour market, pushing out as many people as it pushes in, and making all of them feel frustrated.
Many leading figures in the government-Gordon Brown, Donald Dewar, Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Frank Field, Tony Blair himself-represent northern constituencies where these facts are well known. So what is going wrong?
I believe that their policy advisers may be the source of error: these advisers live in and around London. When I put this argument to one of the best of them, he replied: "But surely nearly every unemployed person lives within one hour's journey of a major centre of employment?"-which is partly true, but breathtakingly short of the full truth. Are manual jobs increasing in the areas where unemployment is highest? If not, we are back to stirring people around on the margins. Will those who live in places where scarcely anyone is working, get to hear of new jobs? At the bottom of the labour market, jobs are advertised by word of mouth. On the kind of wages they will earn, can they afford to travel one hour to work? Will it be safe for young men to venture into such "foreign" territory? Everyone knows there is a "tribal" problem in Belfast; but Glasgow and Liverpool, too, have violent tribal worlds-worlds unknown to advisers commuting to Whitehall from Wimbledon or Woking.
Other debates on social policy are strangled by a similar tunnel vision. Will David Blunkett's promise to crack down on "failing schools" take into account the poverty afflicting one third of our children-poverty which breaks up families and makes it harder for children to learn? Does Harriet Harman realise that money transferred from benefits for single mothers to services which get them into jobs will only help if there are jobs available? Neither minister can ask such questions in public-this falls outside their briefs.
The conventions of departmental government make these politicians seem more stupid than they really are. So pressure groups, community activists and clergy who live and work with single parents and poorly educated youngsters in bleak, jobless council estates, and the academics who study these neighbourhoods, all have a vital job to do. They can make the links for us. They can convey the human experiences and pose the questions which politicians in office are not allowed to discuss.
When 54 professors reminded us of these things in a letter to the Financial Times, politicians such as Frank Field (who published two excellent books on unemployment in 1976 and 1993), instead of abusing them, should have thanked them for drawing our attention to facts he knows very well.
