Hampshire News
Former Tory hits out over MP's job views
11:10am Sunday 12th February 2012
COMMENTS about jobseekers by Basingstoke MP Maria Miller have riled an unemployed former deputy borough mayor.
Phil Heath, who was the deputy mayor of Basingstoke and Deane between 2009 and 2011, has spent more than six months trying to find work.
He said he is disgusted with remarks made by Mrs Miller, a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, on BBC Radio 5 Live last Sunday evening, where she said there are 400,000 jobs at any one point in job centres.
She told the Pienaar’s Politics programme: “I was up in the Wirral on Friday, talking to one of our local job centres there, and there isn’t a shortage of jobs. What there can be is a lack of an appetite for some of the jobs that are available.”
The remarks disgusted Mr Heath (pictured), formerly a long-standing Tory councillor, who worked as a consultant in the building industry before being laid off nearly eight months ago. He said Mrs Miller is “out of touch”.
“I am absolutely appalled,” he told The Gazette. “If you go to the job centre in Basingstoke and put in a search, you get four local jobs, and then others in places like Glasgow.
“She says there is a lack of skills. I have applied for 40 jobs including working in an office, driving a van and plenty of others that I am well qualified for. There is not a lack of skills – it just boils down to the fact that there are 40 to 50 people applying for each job.”
Mr Heath was expelled from the Conservative party in 2008. He then served as a member of the Basingstoke First Community Party.
Mrs Miller told The Gazette she felt her comments had been taken in isolation rather than within the context of the radio show’s discussion, which was looking at how to get people on disability benefits, who can work, back into jobs.
“The important thing is that it is not just about the number of jobs that are available. It is about making sure people who are about to take that jump into employment know they cannot be better off by being out of work.”