Surely Members on the Government side of the House must see that the policies that got us into this hole are not sufficient to get us out of it. There must be a credible employment strategy if we are to confront this problem. The core of our problem is the 300,000 people who are unemployed, most of whom are men. Over 85% of the people who have lost their jobs are men, most of them young men. If we do not respond to their problems, we will see a huge long-term unemployment problem scar our country again. Consider the sectors from which these unemployed come. Of these 200,000 males, 130,000 came from the construction sector while 40,000 come from the manufacturing sector. A total of 170,000 have come from sectors where there is no immediate prospect of re-employment. There must be an adequate response to this. An employment strategy must surely be the core response, but that is not in the Government's thinking.

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