Enlarge imageBy Adrian Croft
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown will set out plans on Monday for far-reaching welfare reform, forcing the jobless to learn skills and enlisting the private sector to help the long-term unemployed find work.
Saying the country faces a "skills race" to succeed in the globalised economy, Brown will say in a speech later on Monday: "It is time for a wake-up call for young people, employees and employers -- that we now summon ourselves to a new national effort and mobilisation to win the new skills race."
Speaking to business leaders in London, Brown will also announce an expansion of an apprenticeship programme aimed at helping young people get a start in work. Brown’s office released excerpts of his speech in advance.
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Brown will throw his support behind controversial welfare reform proposals made last year by investment banker David Freud, saying his government will hire private-sector or voluntary groups to "find innovative ways of helping the long-term unemployed & move into work".
Brown is attempting to relaunch his seven-month-old premiership after a series of government blunders and a banking crisis sent his popularity plunging.
The relaunch was thrown off course last week when Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain resigned after police were asked to investigate his campaign finances.
Brown’s decision to replace Hain with James Purnell, an ally of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, was seen by political commentators as an endorsement of Blair’s reformist welfare policies.
With their emphasis on private sector involvement and compulsion, the policies announced by Brown are a far cry from the left-wing policies that Labour championed in the 1970s and 1980s.
In a sign of the new get-tough approach, Brown will announce that Purnell will intensify welfare reforms "to include compulsion for the unemployed and many inactive men and women not just to seek work but to acquire skills".
"So if the unemployed don’t train when given the opportunity it will affect their benefit entitlement," he will say.
Brown will say that the biggest barrier to full employment in Britain is a shortage of skills among the unemployed.
The number of apprenticeship places for young people starting out in a profession has risen from 75,000 to nearly 240,000 over the last decade, Brown will say. He will announce plans for a further expansion of apprenticeships for 16- to 18- year-olds by 90,000 by 2013.
(Editing by Richard Meares)
