Martin Sime is director of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, and writes a monthly column for The Caledonian Mercury.As the first minister Alex Salmond stated in his Programme for Government speech last week: everywhere today, young men and women yearn to be productive … we [as leaders] owe it to these young people to create the conditions that encourage growth and create opportunities for them to work and prosper. I believe this focus and future investment on young people is right and essential – they are the future of our country. It also presents us with the opportunity to give a new lease of life to hard-pressed communities and voluntary organisations at a time when public funding is being stretched like never before. How? A new Community Programme could create 100,000 paid opportunities over the next three years in communities across Scotland. Aside from the obvious benefit of earning a wage, the unemployed would enjoy the added bonus of improving their employability skills and developing a greater sense of self-worth knowing that they are making a useful contribution to their local community. And for the community services and projects hungry for resources, the programme might just be the lifeline that keeps them afloat. It would be a win/win all round. All that stands in the way is the political will to build a new, more flexible and clever employment system in Scotland. The best part is that even in this era of constrained public finances the programme is affordable when you factor in the benefits savings and tax and national insurance payments it would generate. But at present it’s Westminster, not the Scottish government, who would reap the savings. What’s more, evidence from similar initiatives in the past suggests that wider benefits to the economy and less use of formal public services can also be expected. The UK and Scottish government approaches to employability are out of kilter and have been for some time. No matter how hard everyone tries on the ground, clunky institutional arrangements create barriers and breed dysfunction and duplication. The UK government’s move towards a profit-driven, punitive Work Programme has further widened the north–south divide. The Scottish government’s deals with existing charities and not-for-profit social enterprises are focused on the voluntary sector making the most of scarce public resources. The Department for Work and Pensions, on the other hand, seems to be making pitches to private investors to fund schemes up front in return for a performance-related return on the initial investment. To add insult to injury, when the private contractors lack expertise in a particular area, the work is subcontracted to voluntary organisations on shockingly inferior terms. We need the UK government to embrace Scotland’s more supportive approach, or to allow the Scottish government to go it alone and have the savings it generates for the UK Treasury reimbursed. That would be a great start but, ultimately, the Scotland Bill must usher in more employability powers for Scotland. We need to help unemployed people do more than simply make multiple applications for jobs which they will not get, or acquire skills they have little prospect of using in the next few years. Employability is already devolved in Northern Ireland and now we must build a more flexible system in Scotland that helps the unemployed secure long-term jobs, benefiting communities and generating savings to the public purse in the process. SCVO has written to Michael Moore MP, secretary of state for Scotland, seeking his support for a new Community Programme and calling on him to work with the Scottish government to explore how the development of such a programme could help to address unemployment in Scotland. We need to act swiftly to help the unemployed until the economy recovers. A Community Programme would provide an injection of energy where it is needed most, providing vital support to the long-term unemployed and to communities up and down the country. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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