The opportunities available to someone born in Britain today still remain some of the greatest in the world, yet the talents and aspirations of millions of people in our country have been let down, and allowed to sink into a cycle of worklessness and welfare dependency. 

When the Office of National Statistics started to calculate the economic activity of the working age population in 1971, 92% of men were ‘economically active’; today it is 79%, and overall the level of worklessness is the highest is has ever been. Even in the Folkestone and Hythe constituency, over the last 10 years the number of people of working age who are not working has increased by a staggering 74%.  That means that there are now over 12,000 people of working age in Folkestone and Hythe not working: over one in five of the working age population. 

With the world economy growing and becoming more competitive, Britain must make sure that everyone who can is equipped to take their place in the world of work.  

This makes full employment a Conservative issue. We want a dynamic economy that creates job opportunities for all and a tax and benefit system that rewards and provides incentives for work. Not full employment at any price, where people are paid not to work, fill non-existent posts or attend endless training courses with no prospect of a job at the end, but full employment where everyone has the opportunity to find meaningful work. 

We need to ensure that there is enough vocational training linked to work available for young people, retraining opportunities for people throughout their lives, and where necessary, enough compulsion in the system so that people out of work are not left to suffer in silence, but instead given the help they need to get the right job.

The rise in worklessness amongst working age people is one of the great failures of the Labour government. It not only symbolises the wasting of the talent and resources of the country, but has helped to foster a culture where unemployment becomes a way of life.

Over 40 years, Ronnie Corbett said in the famous 'Frost Report' sketch demonstrating the British class system -  “I know my place”. But, the working class Ronnie Corbett added, ‘while I am poor I am industrious, honest and trustworthy.’ Comedy characters in the 60s, 70s and 80s from ‘Steptoe and Son’, the ‘Likely Lads’ and ‘Only Fools and Horses’, showed working class guile, industry and aspiration. Today the nation’s favourite comedy sketch is of Lou and Andy from ‘Little Britain’, where the big joke is that Andy, unknown to his carer Lou, is pretending to be disabled and wheelchair bound, when he is actually able bodied.

If the Frost Report sketch was recreated today, to show the new social order in Britain, it would show a class of people wealthy enough not to work, now including entrepreneurs, celebrities and foreign billionaires, as much as the aristocracy. Then there would be the new working class, the growing number of people who regardless of their social background, effectively work to live, and are right up on the margin at the end of the month, managing debts, struggling to afford suitable housing and with little guaranteed security for old age. Finally, would come the non-working class: the growing number of working age people who have become trapped into long term welfare dependency provided by the state.