Scrapping EMA is another broken promise from morally broken PM

By John Robertson MP

Today I asked the Prime Minister in PMQs why he broke his promise at a Cameron Direct event in January this year to the Save EMA campaign that he would support Education Maintenance Allowances. You may remember at the time that Tory blogger Iain Dale made a big deal about it always being Conservative policy to support EMA. But the Prime Minister showed he says one thing before an election and does another afterwards. Also so does his secretary of state for Education, Michael Gove MP, who told the Guardian newspaper before the election only back in March that and I quote:

“Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”

Yesterday I secured an adjournment debate on the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which was affectively abolished in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). There are over 600,000 recipients of EMA in England alone who will see this allowance withdrawn and 80% of those will be the poorest teenagers in our country, from families with household income below £20,810. Now, although I am a Scottish MP I still fight for young people’s rights as a UK MP, and Scotland is where EMA was first attacked by the “Tartan-Tories” – the SNP. Last year they cut the EMA budget by 20% and axed the £10 and £20 payments. You could say I saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want EMA to suffer the same fate in England as it had in Scotland. This is a scheme close to my heart because it is based on providing a platform to poor families, which means that economic barriers will no longer stand in their way to getting an education and getting on in life.

I only hope for the minister Nick Gibb MP’s sake that the Prime Minster doesn’t have the same level of support for him as he had for EMA or he will be out of a job by Easter. Especially as the minister tried to link the ending of this scheme with the deficit, which only showed a lack of economic competence on his part. Firstly, because if he is telling me that taking money out of the pockets of the poorest teenagers in this country is our salvation then we are beyond redemption. Secondly it makes very bad long term economic sense to do so as according to the Treasury by 2020 the amount of unskilled jobs will be half of what they are today meaning more unskilled people will be fighting for even fewer jobs.

A 2009 survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that only 17% of employers were planning to recruit from the pool of 16 year olds leaving school and only a third of employers planned to recruit those leaving school at 18. And we know that being unemployed for more than 12 months under the age of 23 years has a hugely negative impact on your future, causing a permanent scar of disadvantage. Lastly, those who have experienced long durations of unemployment in their youth, still suffer from sizeable wage penalties long into their forties.

I have spoken on this subject before, when I secured an adjournment debate in the previous parliament on 2nd February this year and if you want a good example of the difference between the previous government and the new one today then it will be this policy. For example, the last time I spoke on this issue the then Minster, Iain Wright MP, committed the then Labour government to maintaining EMA in its current form up to 2011 and beyond.

Many of the young people who contacted me following that debate, sending me their support and thanks, will now feel disappointed by politics; by having their fears and hopes raised and then crushed in a matter of months. If you don’t believe me of what happens when politicians break promises, then let me leave you with a comment on the Save EMA campaign website that touched me and I included in my speech:

Cassie Campbell – “I need EMA my mum is on benefits and I am a full-time student at college without EMA I can’t go to college I will have to drop out and I don’t want to do that”