Lord Watts
Main Page: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we have not heard from the Labour Benches yet.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
No, I am sorry, we have not. The noble Lord, Lord Austin, is a non-affiliated Member of this House.
Lord Watts (Lab)
Following the previous question, which set out a strategy for dealing with youth unemployment, may I remind people that it was under the free market antics that we have just heard about that the Thatcher Government decimated my constituency and many Merseyside constituencies, and left them with record levels of unemployment?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Of course, I completely agree with my noble friend; I will offer just one illustration of that. Under the last Government, long-term sickness became the most common reason why people were economically inactive for the first time. It reached a new, record high of 2.8 million people. This is a shameful record, and not something that they should be preaching to us on.