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Unemployment just keeps getting worse. Newspaper copy reading… “it has risen to the highest level in a certain amount of years” is being common place.

According to the Office of National Statistics (Sometimes you wish they did not exist because of the very serious figures they produce) unemployment increased by 210,000 to 2.47m in the three months to July, taking the jobless rate to 7.9%.

BBC News have highlighted a handful of the human stories behind these statistics and they are heartbreaking. It was difficult to hear the story of Peter Baldry who is literally counting the pennies to try and make ends meet for as long as he can. There are millions of similar stories like Peter’s and for those of us who have jobs, food to eat and stable homes to live in, as a society we need to reflect and think about those in need. Perhaps, if possible help in what ever way we can.

Equally as worrying is the level of youth unemployment that we now have in this country. 947,000 youngsters are not in employment, education or training. How can we be potentially allowing the confidence of what is the future of this country to be shattered by a lack of opportunity?

I am under no illusions that this task is a mammoth one, but what annoys me is when Education Minister Jim Knight spins the same line that unemployment is falling and lower than average rates of unemployment than the G7 and the EU. He does not really seem to publicly acknowledge the severity of unemployment.

On the September 13 edition of Meet the Press With David Gregory, author Joshua Cooper Ramo pointed out that “limited job growth” is “not the way to have a powerful country” and that America “needs a massive rethink of the way we deal with unemployment in this country.”

Mr Ramo also touched on a very interesting point about changing the way jobs are created and “retraining people in jobs that they’re that they’re usually out of in one or two years.”

For all we say about our politicians, they are intelligent people.

Let’s have a Commons debate to spark innovative ways to create good, well paying jobs with real prospects.

Because if governments just plough a little bit of money into a jobs fund, unemployment will not match figures from the 80s and 90s, but exceed them.