UK jobless to get more help, says chancellor

The United Kingdom will boost support for the unemployed, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said on Monday, during the ruling Conservative Party's annual conference.

In a speech, he told lawmakers, activists, and party faithful that the government accepts there will be a spike in unemployment in the coming weeks, as companies lay off workers because of the end of the furlough program.

But he said the government will try to offset those layoffs.

The furlough program, which ended last week, was in place throughout the novel coronavirus pandemic and supported 11.6 million workers who could not do their jobs because of virus restrictions.

But the government said the program had to end, and Sunak believes, with the UK in dire need of workers in some sectors, those who lose their jobs should be helped to retrain.

He said the government will make an additional 500 million pounds ($679 million) available to fund this.

Sunak said the retraining will be part of a "future economy shaped by the forces of science, technology, and imagination".

"With enhanced infrastructure and improved skills, we are going to make this country not just a scientific superpower, not just the best place in the world to do business, I believe we're going to make the United Kingdom the most exciting place on the planet," he said.

Earlier, he explained to Sky News that the government will "throw the kitchen sink" at helping people find jobs.

"I said right at the beginning of this crisis it wasn't going to be possible for me … to save every single person's job," he said. "But what I do know is that the interventions we put in place have made an enormous difference."

He said the government will ensure people "get a new job, new skills, new opportunities".

"The job is not done yet and I want to make sure our economy is fit for the future and that means providing the support and skills people need to get into work and get on in life," he said.

Sunak said the Kickstart program, which subsidizes jobs for young people on universal credit, will be extended by three months, to March 2022, and the JETS program, which helps the long-term unemployed, will be extended until September 2022. An initiative that pays employers to create apprenticeships will also be extended, until the end of January.

Sunak and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have said taxes may have to rise to pay for the initiatives, and for social care reforms.

Despite the concern about unemployment, the Office for National Statistics says there are now as many people working in the UK as there were before the pandemic began. The unemployment rate is around 4.6 percent, having been 5 percent during the early days of the pandemic.

But the UK's main opposition, the Labour Party, criticized the government's efforts.

Labour's work and pensions spokesperson, Jonathan Reynolds, told the BBC: "An extended deadline will do nothing to compensate for the chancellor's tax rises, cost of living crisis, and cuts to universal credit."

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the government is also facing criticism from lawmakers over its failure to honor a promise to set up an independent commission to scrutinize post-Brexit trade deals, a vow made in July 2020 to allay fears in the farming sector that poor deals could lower standards.

In a letter to the government, Neil Parish, chairman of the House of Commons select committee on the environment, food, and rural affairs, said: "We are concerned that the government is deliberately running down the clock on establishing the (trade and agriculture commission) to allow difficult concessions to be made without the statutory oversight mechanisms."