Liberal Democrat call to save the "lost generation"

12.00.00am GMT Wed 10th Mar 2010

Young people facing unemployment during the recession should beoffered a package of measures including an option of a 3 month paid internship or work experience, a significant increase in College places across Scotland, early action to prevent young people drifting into unemployment, and better support for voluntary sector organisations who provide support in developing key skills, confidence and motivation for young people.

That was the call made at the Scottish Liberal DemocratConference this last weekend by Glasgow Liberal Democrat MSP Robert Brown. He was summating a motion at the Conference on "preventing the creation of a lost generation" which was passed overwhelmingly.

Mr. Brown said that the election of more Liberal Democrat MPs was vital - to act as champions and guarantors for the young people, those left behind by Labour's recession and those dispossessed of their futures. He said the country ran the risk of a "poisonous legacy of lost opportunity and blighted hopes which will damage and demean our country for a generation."

Robert Brown went on:

"Many people vividly remember the last lost generation when Margaret Thatcher stripped away Britain's traditional heavy industries, drove unemployment to record highs, and denied a whole generation of young people the opportunities that are their right. It left a legacy of dereliction, of hopelessness, of broken communities that endures through several generations.

It must not happen again! - But it is happening again under the Labour Government.

And the people who pay the price are the most vulnerable, the young, the disabled, those at the bottom of the pile. It is in part a world wide crisis, but the Labour Government are

culpable for their lack of action and their feeble response to the banking collapse. It is Gordon Brown's recession!"

Ends