Brown To Make Green Jobs A Reality

Thousands of loft insulators and draft-proofers are to be trained by the Government to help ease fuel poverty.

Speaking at an EU summit in Brussels in the wale of the highest UK unemployment figures since 1999 being announced, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said offering retraining programmes would be a key factor in helping people to find work.

Mr Brown revealed that helping people to become loft insulators would be one of the Government’s main training programmes, a move which is designed to support his recent commitment to ensure every home in the UK is fully insulated by 2020.

In September, it was announced that almost £1 billion was to be pumped into helping alleviate fuel poverty, much of which will be funded by levies paid by major energy companies, such as the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target.

Mr Brown said:

“We are expanding in a very radical way our insulation and draft-proofing central-heating provision for the elderly and other people in our country. We are training large numbers of additional people to do that work in insulation.

“That will be one of the employment programmes that will grow.”

According to statistics from the National Insulation Association, nine million homes in the UK have unfilled cavity walls and 15 million need more loft insulation.

The Prime Minister’s plans to get more people qualified to work in the insulation industry have been given a warm welcome by fuel poverty charity National Energy Action.

Their director of business development, Joanne Carr, said:

“Any action to support skills development and employment opportunities within the energy efficiency industry is extremely welcome and we look forward to receiving further details of the Prime Minister’s proposals.”

However, Chris Grayling, shadow work and pensions secretary for the Tories, ridiculed the plans.

Mr Grayling said:

“He (Mr Brown) has nothing substantial to offer. If training people to lag roofs is the best suggestion he can make, then it doesn’t say much for the challenges we face as a nation.”

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