‘Jobs summit’ more about politics than the economy

IT WAS billed as a “jobs summit” with “keynote speeches”. But an event jointly attended by the Labour Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy and SNP First Minister Alex Salmond yesterday hardly rose to the heights of a “summit”, while the “keynote” speeches unlocked no doors. This was an event designed to address economic recovery. However, it was shaped and defined by the approaching general election. As such, it was remarkable only for the manner in which Scotland’s two big beasts locked horns.

Both came with announcements related to jobs, but that is not quite the same thing as genuine job creation of the sustainable kind. Mr Salmond told the audience his government had created an extra 193 jobs by securing 34 million of European cash from the social and regional development funds. He said this would help 28,000 get “employment opportunities” through training. For his part, Mr Murphy announced the creation of 300 new jobs in Fife through the Future Jobs Fund.

Any sense of unity of purpose was soon lost in political point-scoring. During his speech, Mr Salmond made a barbed reference to the failure of the UK government to accelerate capital spending from 2011-12 to next year’s budget, which he described as essential to support jobs and Scotland’s fragile recovery. Later, sources close to Mr Murphy, perhaps still smarting from Mr Salmond’s grand proclamation of the new offshore wind licences last Friday, suggested the Scottish Government was behind the game in getting the European funding, which they said had gone to England and Wales first.

All this perhaps was only to be expected given the pending election. But the problem with such “summits” and “keynote” declamations is that the currency is quite devalued. Almost the first reaction at such events now is an inquisition as to whether these are, in fact, new job-securing announcements or a rehash of old releases. And, as the election may not be held until May, much more such checking will be due.

The problem with the European funding announcement is that its purpose is so ill-defined and its deployment so diffuse it is difficult to tell whether this is about new jobs at all in the conventional sense rather than a contribution to address social inequality. This may be a laudable aim. But it is not job creation in the real sense. Indeed, it is a deployment of taxpayer funds which may work to deepen rather than alleviate dependence on public finance.

And the two announcements combined at the Glasgow “summit” fall well short of the problem that the economy now faces. Last month alone brought announcements of 1,500 job losses. The most high-profile of these followed the demise of Flyglobespan (550 jobs) and savings measures announced by Glasgow City Council (600). Barclaycard also said it would close its Partner Finance Centre with the loss of 350 jobs. Thus, Glasgow has borne at least 1,400 of these losses. A real jobs “summit” is surely due, and “keynote” speeches that begin to merit the description.