Comment: 09.06.2009

Tony Hawkhead

The unemployment rate hits 2.2m and, all of a sudden, a whole new group of public employees start to worry about their futures. They’re called MPs.

The unemployment rate hits 2.2m and, all of a sudden, a whole new group of public employees start to worry about their futures. They’re called MPs.

Doubtless some will deserve their lot while others are blameless, caught in the backlash. In the media too, many jobs are looking shaky as the internet continues its path of creative destruction across the newspaper world.

Perhaps what parts of the media have in common with some of our MPs is that they’ve been trapped in a Westminster bubble too far from the realities of ordinary life.

We don’t believe in stereotyping at Groundwork, and we certainly believe that people can change. We know that often the best answer to antisocial behaviour is the provision of positive activities, and we know through our work with ex-offenders that just because an individual has broken or bent the rules, that doesn’t mean they can’t become a positive force in their workplace or community.

Now there’s a new multi-million pound fund for tackling unemployment, the Future Jobs Fund.

So, what better way to give our soon to be ex-MPs and redundant hacks a slice of real life than enrol them on the kind of scheme that we hope to see provided via this and other initiatives?

So what work should they do? First of all, it’s time for serious investment in green jobs. That means ramping up insulation and energy efficiency schemes across the country.

Both efforts to change behaviour and practical measures are needed if we’re to meet the targets for reduction in domestic emissions of CO2. We now have the opportunity to make a huge push on retrofitting the UK’s housing stock, and for our new Westminster Work Team, giving them a salutary lesson – unfortunately too late to avoid the brickbats – in the realities of fuel poverty and the level of practical action needed now to combat climate change.

And let’s not forget work that focuses on the physical environment. I’m sure that our team would be shocked at the degraded environments that still exist in far too many of our most disadvantaged areas.

Jobs in this field can be created easily and quickly and bring many spin-off benefits to the individual and wider neighbourhood. Carrying out environmental projects has a transformative effect on young people as they become reconnected with both the land and the community.

Why couldn’t it have the same amazing results on our political class? We want to focus that work on a ‘Cool City Corps’ that would carry out urban greening projects to help adapt our environments to climate change.

Green roofs, sustainable urban drainage, new green corridors and natural flood defences can all be delivered through our enthusiastic workforce. Practical landscaping and horticulture skills will always be needed – perhaps more so in the future if the worst predictions about climate change-related food shortages and weather disasters come about.

You never know, building and repairing moats may soon be big business!But as our group of former MPs find new purpose in their lives and move on to socially productive employment, who will take their place alongside the surviving politicians in a cleaner, more responsive, more frugal Parliament of the third millennium?

There are thousands of people out there working without expenses for the benefit of their communities – from the tenants’ association activist to the volunteer who helps her elderly neighbours with their gardening to the dogged single-issue campaigner.

The challenge is how to reconnect these people and their wider communities with a political system haemorrhaging public confidence by the day.

The Westminster bubble has burst. All of us with an interest in creating sustainable development need to think what we can do collectively and individually to help reinvigorate democracy and make the case for a positive politics that faces up to the challenges we face, and the real needs of our future.