Government looks to get UK working once again

By JULIAN SHEA in London | China Daily Global | Updated: 2024-09-19 09:29 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush-hour in London, Britain, Jan 4, 2022. Alison McGovern said new proposals to be announced by the government soon will give a fundamental overhaul to a system that she said left too many people "on the scrapheap". Currently, it is around 74.5 percent, and the Financial Times said the UK is the only "rich country" that has an employment rate not yet back to where it was before the novel coronavirus pandemic. Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, which led a recent study on how to make the employment service more effective, said "people outside the labor force don't trust Jobcentres", because of factors such as the monitoring of efforts to find employment, and reducing that would free up workers to put more effort into helping people find better work. During the course of the current parliament, the proposals put forward by the Commission on the Future of Employment Support could cost up to 150 million pounds per year, at a time when the new Labour Party government is trying to find ways to deal with what Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has called a "fiscal black hole" left behind by its Conservative Party predecessor.