Cooper backs AWM’s record on skills
WORK and Pensions secretary Yvette Cooper has praised the work of AWM, and says Tory plans to axe the RDA are ‘plain wrong’.
Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com after Gordon Brown’s speech to a rally of supporters at Warwick University, Ms Cooper said AWM had a proven track record of delivering localised, specific help to businesses and workers hit by recession.
The Conservative Party has come under fire after a series of mixed messages about their policy on regional development agencies, with shadow business secretary Ken Clarke backtracking after indicating that RDAs might, after all, be safe under the Tories.
Ms Cooper said: “AWM have done a really important job, not just in skills development but in going into cities, towns and villages and delviering specific on-the-ground help to redundant workers that simply can’t be provided by central government.”
Employment and skills were central to the Labour Party’s new rallying call ‘A Future Fair for All’, said Ms Cooper. Speaking a week after the government announced the West Midlands was to be designated a Low Carbon Economic Area, she said: “We’re investing in the technologies and skills of the future. We’re investing in thousands of jobs for young people, and will be increasing the number of apprentices.
“The Tories want a future of austerity. We know that we have to invest to help businesses creat the jobs of the future, and to keep investing.”
She predicted that unemployment would start to fall in the summer, but that a new Labour government would accelerate investment in job creation.
“In previous recessions, investment in jobs ended as economic activity increased. But we know there’s a long tail of continued pressure on jobs, which is why next year, there will be an extra £2billion allocated to get people back to work.”
George Osborne said: “Gordon Brown had nothing positive or new to offer Britain in today’s speech and is taking people for fools. He asks Britain to take a second look at Labour when the public have been looking at them for 13 years and know they have failed.
“They have failed on fairness and failed to find a credible plan for economic recovery. Five more years of Gordon Brown won’t change anything.
“Only David Cameron and the Conservatives can deliver the real change Britain needs to get the country back on its feet.”
