Job schemes have failed minorities, admits minister

The Government pledged yesterday to break the "glass ceiling" that prevented black and Asian workers getting the jobs they deserved.

Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, said she was deeply concerned that well-qualified workers from the ethnic minorities were being passed over by employers in favour of white people. She called on the Civil Service to lead the fight against discrimination, admitting that even her own department fell short on providing equal opportunities.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Independent, Ms Hewitt admitted the Government had failed to deliver its full employment pledge for sections of society including women, ethnic minorities and the over-fifties. The plight of blacks and Asians in the jobs market would be a priority for the Government in its second term in office.

"New Deal programmes [for the jobless] have been very successful but they have generally been less successful in reaching out to minority- ethnic communities," Ms Hewitt said. "This is the new glass ceiling. That's the challenge for the Government."

She said the Civil Service needed to look at its career policies because new recruits from ethnic minorities had found themselves "getting stuck". She said: "Among my own senior managers the percentage of women has shot up to a quarter in the last five years but there are very few Afro-Caribbean or Asian people amongst them."

Ms Hewitt also urged companies to change the way they hired workers.

The Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair's think-tank, forecasts that 508,000 people from ethnic minorities will join the pool of people of working age over the next 10 years compared with 456,000 whites. But unemployment among black and Asian communities is still 25 per cent in some places.

"If you have a white workforce and you recruit through word of mouth you will carry on recruiting white people," Ms Hewitt said. "If you advertise in Asian and Afro-Caribbean magazines you reach candidates who are very well qualified."

But she said the Government would not bring in targets, quotas or laws because companies would realise it was in their interests to widen the pool of potential recruits.

The Government also wanted firms to make it easier for older workers and women with children to get a job.

"We have an increasingly ageing workforce but when you look at those in their 50s and 60s the labour market is not functioning well," Ms Hewitt said. Official figures show that in 1999 two fifths of the over-55s were out of work compared with one fifth two decades earlier.

The focus on bringing excluded groups into the workforce forms a main part of a DTI discussion document, Full and Fulfilling Employment, which is published today. The document looks at ways of sustaining full employment and seeking higher levels of productivity in Britain, which languishes below levels in America or mainland Europe.

It dismisses as unhelpful the perception of a clear choice between an American-style deregulated market and a European social model. A DTI official said: "We believe we can take the best from the 15 countries that make up the European Union, and the US."

* Ethnic-minority campaign groups have criticised a report to Labour's ruling executive on how to increase the number of black MPs.Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote said recommendations by a Labour task force, including setting targets and a "long-term action plan", were watered down and disappointing.