Scotland’s councils should follow the Fife example of integrating schools and colleges to tackle youth unemployment, says Gordon Brown.
The former prime minister outlined his economic vision for the country in a speech in Glasgow in which he argued for a Scottish school of finance and UK city deals for all of Scotland’s population centres, including Dundee.
He also floated the idea of a Scottish hub for innovative industries to create 100,000 jobs and called for new house building to be doubled north of the border.
He said: “We must learn from Germany’s model that links colleges, universities and vocational training in the workplace, and expand on what counties like Fife are doing making the colleges which have suffered grievous cuts central to a plan for ending youth unemployment as well as helping mothers in their twenties and thirties get back into the workforce.
“The latest new secondary school in Fife is being built on a college campus as part of the ambition that 30% of 14 to 17-year-old school pupils will soon undertake college-led vocational courses and thus reverse the recent trend in which the under-16s who received college courses fell from 20% of college numbers in 2009 to just over 10% today.”
In one of his final speeches before stepping down as an MP, he cited President John F Kennedy’s 1961 inauguration address as he urged his party colleagues to ask “not what Scotland can do for Labour, but what Labour can do for Scotland”.
He attacked the SNP for focusing on “the minutiae of Westminster insider politics like confidence and supply deals” with Labour ahead of the general election, rather than “the big issues that matter, such as ending poverty, unemployment, inequality and injustice in Scotland.”
SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie said: “Despite this transparent attempt to cover for the failures of Jim Murphy’s leadership, Gordon Brown has the substance all wrong.
“On housing and jobs the SNP is making real progress compared to Labour’s legacy of failure improving on Labour’s appalling record on council-house building and well on course to exceed the target for 25,000 modern apprenticeships this year.”