A report in the Birmingham Post says that £500 million of taxpayers money poured into the city since 1997 in training and job creation schemes has failed to reduce unemployment of poverty.
According to Be Birmingham, the strategic partnership via which some of the money is wasted, has acknowledged the startling extent of the failure. While official unemployement figure for Birmingham is 10%, the figure for worklessness among adults of working age is 37%.
Furthermore an increasing proportion of those in work are employed in the public sector.
Cllr Len Clark, a Conservative councillor on Birmingham describes BeBirmingham as “a load of local worthies who think they know more about the economy than they really do”.
Cllr Clark says that, 30 years ago, 38% of GNP in the West Midlands was concumed by the public sector while today it is 49%.
He added: “The West Midlands is about to join seven other UK regions where more than half of their economy is in the public sector. We will soon have more people in Birmingham employed in the public sector than was the case in East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.”