Here's the latest Argus column by Blaenau Gwent MP Nick Smith:

IT HAS been a very trying year for many.

Covid-19 continues to hit areas like Blaenau Gwent and the rest of the Gwent valleys hard.

The health service and hospitals are experiencing an incredibly difficult time and tough decisions have been made to try and keep us all safe while the vaccine programme gets under way.

The full roll-out may be some time away yet and, though there’s a chance we may be returning to something resembling normality next spring, the economic fallout of the crisis will be far from over.

MORE NEWS:

There is a jobs crisis looming and not enough is being done to get ahead of it.

I asked a question in the house earlier this month about the Government’s Kickstart scheme and how many jobs it is expected to create for young people. I did not receive much of an answer.

Billions of taxpayer money is being spent on this scheme.

We should be assured that it is creating high quality placements, is supporting small businesses as well as larger employers, and will result in long-term employment for young people who may not otherwise have been able to find work.

The Chancellor’s recent announcement that the job retention scheme would be extended by a month was made at the last possible moment, just 24 hours before businesses with more than 100 employees would have needed to begin redundancy processes.

This typifies the UK Government’s approach of waiting until the last moment to act on issues or ignoring warnings while making rash decisions that later require a swift u-turn.

There must be a plan in place.

The focus must be on retraining, retaining and rebuilding.

Labour previously called on the Government to deliver an economic recovery that will confront the combined challenges of unemployment and – another issue on which Government rhetoric and reality are very different - climate change.

This would involve capital investment to create new, clean manufacturing jobs over the next 18 months, investing in low-carbon sectors and retraining workers by putting in place an emergency training programme to equip people with the skills they need for the future greener economy.

To recover from this crisis and ensure a brighter future we must look ahead.

What we need is anything but the short-sighted attitude we have seen from this UK Government.