Councillor claims people without qualifications have 'wasted their lives'

Coun Paul Ezhilchelvan made the comments at a meeting of Northumberland County Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board after a report revealed that 7.6% of working age people in the county have no qualifications – below the average for Great Britain of 6.6%.

Members of the board were discussing work towards a collaborative approach to reducing inequalities in employment outcomes for people living in the county.

Coun Ezhilchelvan, who is the Conservative councillor for the Cramlington South East ward, said: “I was horrified to read that 7.6% of the working age population have no educational qualifications. I asked what that means and they don’t even have GCSEs.

“That is appalling, because their lives are wasted. Their future is demolished by this, whatever the reason.

“We need to address this issue. They could be filling in positions that we are finding it hard to fill in.”

Also contained in the report were stark figures have revealed that tens of thousands of people in Northumberland are not working due to economic inactivity.

According to the Office for National Statistics, people fall into this category when they are neither working, have not been seeking work within the last four weeks and are unable to start work within the next two weeks.

In the UK, the number of people classed as economically inactive has been increasing since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

In Northumberland, as of February just 6,414 residents are out of work and on the unemployed claimant count – a “relatively low” figure of 4.4% according to the county council. However, there are currently 46,300 residents economically inactive.

Of those, 11,800 are on long-term sick, while 9,800 have said they want to work. The council’s employability and inclusion manager, Kevin Higgins, explained to the committee that the situation in Northumberland reflected the national picture.

He told members of the board that economic inactivity had risen to the highest ever levels and the pool of labour had reduced. The proportion of people on long-term sick had increased by one-third since 2010, while those unable to work due to chronic pain had increased by almost 200,000 in the last two years.