New Deal fails to get Londoners into work

Gordon Brown's flagship New Deal scheme is failing to tackle unemployment in London, it was disclosed today.

More than half of Londoners on the training programme never get a job afterwards, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.

The figures, obtained by the Commons Publ ic Accounts Committee, show that of the three million people the Government claims to have found jobs through the New Deal, 800,000 had been on the programme at least twice.

The figures also reveal wide variations in the effectiveness of the programme-with people in London least likely to find a job. Only 46 per cent of under 25s and 29 per cent of over 25s end up in work. By contrast, in the South-West, 63 per cent find a job.

The committee said today that six million Britons were now living in a home where no one has a job.

Conservative MP Edward Leigh, the chairman, said: "The evidence is that many New Deal programmes are becoming less successful, perhaps because the hardest to help are becoming an increasingly large proportion of those clients."