The Times is reporting that Labour is planning to make a jobs guarantee for anyone at risk of long term unemployment a centre piece of it’s election manifesto. This is an idea James Purnell and I argued for before the Pre-Budget Report and which we will flesh out in a forthcoming Open Left report on the future of the welfare state.

If the report is accurate it’s great news. The lesson from the 1980s and 1990s is that long term unemployment is the most damaging and enduring consequence of a recession. People lose touch with the world of work, often with terrible impacts on their health, well-being and income. The number of people on out of work benefits rose by a million and half a million following those previous downturns. We can’t let that happen again.

However, this recession has highlighted a hole of insecurity in our welfare system. Despite far higher numbers facing unemployment, the vast majority continue to find work again within a year. But where the market fails to provide employment for the minority who do not, the government must step in. That’s the principle behind a jobs guarantee – and the Future Jobs Fund is already showing how it can be done. Expecting people to take up the work provided is a fair recognition of our mutual obligations to one another.

Labour faces a major political challenge over the coming months in the run up to the general election. This news report suggests the party is confronting that challenge in the right way – bold, transformative policies, consistent with Labour values, that will appeal to the broad majority of the British people. More of the same please.

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