Since Keir Starmer entered Downing Street in July 2024, Labour has made a series of big economic decisions the have had a big impact on the Medway Economy. They promised to grow the economy, protect working people, and invest in communities like ours here in Medway. But the numbers — real figures from official sources — tell a very different story. Unemployment is rising. Our young people are falling further behind. Our high streets are struggling with empty units. And the three Labour MPs who represent Medway? They have backed every single one of these damaging decisions without question.
This blog looks at the facts. Not Labour’s spin. The actual data. And what it means for the people of Medway.
Jobs: The Claimant Count Keeps Rising
Let’s start with the most basic question: are people in Medway in work?
Before Labour took power, Medway’s unemployment claimant count — that is the number of people claiming out-of-work benefits — stood at 6,655 in March 2023. By March 2024, it had already risen to 7,175. That is 520 more Medway residents unable to find work in just one year. The share of working-age people claiming unemployment benefits climbed from 3.8% to 4.1% in the same period, according to ONS local labour market data.
Even more stark: Medway’s employment rate — the proportion of working-age adults actually in a job — fell sharply. In the year to December 2022, it was 81.2%. By the year to December 2023, it had dropped to 76.9%. That is a fall of more than four percentage points in a single year. In a borough the size of Medway, that translates to thousands of people losing work, or giving up looking for it altogether.
The national picture is no better. The UK unemployment rate now stands at 5.0% — with 1.81 million people out of work. But the youth unemployment figures are the most damning. As of January to March 2026, youth unemployment has hit 16.2% — the highest in over a decade — with 729,000 young people aged 16 to 24 now out of work, 110,000 more than a year ago. The number of employees on payroll fell by 94,000 year-on-year to March 2026.
Labour will no doubt point to the fall in the headline unemployment rate — from 5.2% to 5.0% — as evidence their policies are working. They should not be allowed to get away with it.
The drop has not been driven by people finding jobs. It has been driven by people giving up looking for them. Economic inactivity — the share of working-age adults who are neither employed nor actively looking for work — now stands at 20.9%, and it rose in the same quarter that unemployment fell. That is the statistical signature of a shrinking labour force, not a recovering one. Under ONS definitions, someone who stops searching for work — because they have gone back into education, started caring for a family member, or simply lost hope — is reclassified as economically inactive, not unemployed. They disappear from the unemployment count entirely. Fewer people looking for work produces a lower headline rate without creating a single new job.
The underlying data makes this plain. Job vacancies have fallen to 705,000 — the lowest level since spring 2021. There are now 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy, up from 2.0 a year ago. Wage growth has slowed to 3.6%, the weakest pace in more than five years — the opposite of what you see when a labour market is genuinely tightening. Indeed’s Hiring Lab described the picture bluntly in April 2026: “the fall in the jobless rate is almost entirely explained by a rise in economic inactivity… the headline flatters to deceive.”
Then came Labour’s October 2024 Budget. Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a massive increase in Employer National Insurance Contributions (NICs). The rate went up from 13.8% to 15%, and the point at which businesses start paying it was lowered from wages above £9,100 to wages above just £5,000. This is, in plain English, a jobs tax.
For a worker earning £12,000 a year — perhaps a part-time shop assistant or care worker — their employer’s NI bill rose by over 160%. The British Chamber of Commerce found that 82% of firms say this increase will impact their business, and 58% expect it to reduce the number of people they hire. Major national employers — Marks & Spencer, Boots, John Lewis, and H&M — have already announced store closures or redundancies in response. The ripple effect in communities like Chatham, Gillingham, and Strood is being felt right now.
Young People Left Behind: Medway's NEET Crisis
NEET stands for “Not in Education, Employment or Training.” These are young people — typically aged 16 to 24 — who have fallen through the cracks. They are not in school or college, not in a job, and not in any kind of training programme. Being NEET for a prolonged period is strongly linked to lower lifetime earnings, worse health outcomes, and greater risk of poverty later in life.
Medway’s NEET rate already sits 1% above the national average and above the South East regional average. Within Medway, the problem is concentrated in the most deprived areas. Gillingham South — a ward sitting within the constituency of Labour MP Naushabah Khan — has the highest proportion of young people with an “unknown destination” at 7.48%. That means roughly one in thirteen young people from that area simply disappears from the radar entirely. We do not know if they are working, studying, or struggling. Chatham Central and Brompton comes next at 6.88%, and Strood West at 6.23%.
What is the Government doing about it? Not enough. The Multiply programme — which funded adult numeracy skills and helped people who were NEET get back into work and learning — has been effectively gutted. Medway received £504,000 for Multiply in 2024/25. For 2025/26, that has been slashed to just £50,000. A 90% cut to a programme that was helping real people in real Medway communities. Labour’s three local MPs stayed silent while this happened.
Schools: Below the National Average
Education is the long-term answer to unemployment and entrenched poverty. So how are Medway’s schools performing under Labour?
According to Government performance data, only 29.27% of Medway pupils achieved Grade 5 or above in both English and Maths at GCSE — the “strong pass” benchmark that employers and colleges look for. The national average is 30.84%. Medway is below average.
At primary level, the picture is worse. Only 5.34% of Medway children achieved a strong pass in reading, writing, and maths combined — compared with a national average of 7.42%. Nearly two percentage points below the England figure. These are not abstract statistics. They are children in Medway’s classrooms leaving primary school without the basic skills they need to succeed.
Medway has 113 schools in total, serving around 49,294 pupils. There are some excellent schools — Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School is rightly celebrated as one of the best in the country — but the system as a whole is below average, and that matters. A child educated below the national standard in a borough with rising unemployment faces a much harder road. Labour promised an “education decade.” In Medway, the data does not yet show it.
Our High Streets: Will the Grants Move the Dial?
Walk down Chatham High Street or Gillingham High Street and the evidence is hard to miss. Empty units. Shuttered shops. Businesses that once employed local people, gone. Across Medway, 30 of the borough’s 163 neighbourhoods rank among the most deprived in the entire country.
Medway Council has deployed two main tools to tackle this. First, the Pride in Place Impact Fund: £1.5 million in total, split between £800,000 for street improvements in Gillingham and Chatham town centres, and £300,000 for a Shop Front Improvement Grant scheme. The grants offer individual businesses between £2,500 and £5,000 — the lower amount for cosmetic improvements like repainting and new signage, the higher for structural works. Second, a Partners in Investment Scheme commits up to £400,000 to bring empty units back into use.
These schemes are well intentioned. But do they actually move the dial? Let’s look at the numbers honestly.
At the maximum award of £5,000 per business, the entire £300,000 shopfront pot funds improvements to exactly 60 businesses. Medway has approximately 14,000 registered businesses. The street improvements — however welcome — are investments in pavements, lighting, and community-designed public spaces. They do not create jobs. They do not attract new employers. They make the high street look better; they do not make it function better economically. And the £400,000 Partners in Investment fund, while useful at the margins, will not meaningfully dent the level of vacancy we are seeing.
It is also worth putting a larger number in context. In March 2026, the Labour Government announced £61.5 million in Pride in Place funding for Medway — three areas (Twydall and Gillingham, Rede Common in Strood, and Luton in Chatham) each receiving £20 million. That sounds transformative. Until you read the small print. The £20 million per area is spread over ten years. That works out at £2 million per area per year — or roughly the cost of fitting out a single mid-sized restaurant. It will fund community projects, green spaces, and local improvements. These things matter. But they are not economic regeneration on the scale Medway needs.
Meanwhile, Labour’s National Insurance tax rise — which took effect in April 2025 — is actively working against the high street. When it costs more to employ someone, businesses hire fewer people. When thin-margin local retailers face higher wage bills, some close. When they close, high streets suffer. The grant schemes do not compensate for this. The government is, in effect, increasing costs for local businesses with one hand and offering paint and signage money with the other.
Inward Investment: One Bright Spot, One Costly Failure, and Too Little Else
There is one genuinely significant piece of private sector investment news for Medway, and it is worth acknowledging it. In October 2024, BAE Systems announced a £220 million investment to build a new state-of-the-art factory at its Rochester site — a 32,000 square metre facility that will create around 300 jobs over the next five years. Construction is already underway. This is real, identifiable private sector investment that will benefit Medway directly.
However, context matters. BAE Systems is the UK’s largest defence contractor, and this investment reflects soaring global demand for defence and aerospace technologies — driven by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the rearmament of NATO allies. It is a decision made by a company responding to geopolitical reality. It is not evidence that Labour’s economic policies are generating a wave of business confidence in Medway.
It also sits against a backdrop of significant public money being wasted. The Innovation Park Medway — once heralded as Medway’s answer to the Silicon Valley of the South, with ambitions to attract global names like Netflix, Google, and Amazon — has effectively been abandoned after eight years and more than £33 million of public money. The original promise was 3,000 high-value jobs. What Medway’s Cabinet approved in March 2025 instead was: a northern site converted to ordinary industrial and mid-tech units, and a southern site earmarked for a 70-bed care home and retirement housing. That is the reality of what £33 million and eight years of ambition delivered.
Beyond BAE, identifiable private sector inward investment remains thin on the ground. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund — the main government vehicle for local regeneration — was extended into 2025/26 with an additional Medway allocation of just £606,754. The Medway Together Fund, replacing the UKSPF entirely, launched with a total budget of £400,000. A new “Grow in Kent” inward investment service has been set up, and a business showcase took place at Chatham Dockyard in June 2025. None of this is unwelcome. But none of it comes close to substituting for a serious private investment pipeline. The NI increase has made Medway a harder place to invest and hire. Business confidence is down. And the skills funding that helps local people qualify for new jobs — the Multiply programme — was cut by 90%.
Three MPs. Zero Dissent.
Here is what makes all of this especially frustrating. Medway sends three Labour MPs to Westminster. Lauren Edwards represents Rochester and Strood. Tristan Osborne represents Chatham and Aylesford. Naushabah Khan represents Gillingham and Rainham.
All three stood on platforms promising to represent Medway’s interests. All three, in practice, have voted loyally for their party on every single one of the decisions described in this blog.
According to TheyWorkForYou, Lauren Edwards has voted in 470 parliamentary divisions and has never once voted against the Labour majority. Her party alignment score stands at 98%. Tristan Osborne has voted in 594 divisions — the most of the three — and has also never voted against his party. He voted for the changes to Universal Credit that reduced the health top-up for new claimants — people in some of the most deprived parts of Medway. Naushabah Khan has voted in 413 divisions with a 99% alignment score and has similarly never broken with the party line.
Not one dissenting vote between them. Not one moment where any of the three put Medway first when it conflicted with what their party whips told them to do.
I want to be clear: all three MPs work hard and engage genuinely with their constituents. That is not in question. But voting record is the only objective measure of what an MP actually does in Parliament. And by that measure, all three have chosen their party over their patch, every single time. They voted for the employer NI increase that is pushing businesses to cut staff. They were silent as the Multiply skills programme was slashed. They have sat on their hands as youth unemployment has risen to its highest level in over a decade and as the claimant count in Medway has grown.
Conclusion: Medway Deserves Better
The picture this data paints is not a partisan one. It is a factual one. Unemployment is rising. Youth unemployment has hit its highest in over a decade. Medway’s schools are below the national average. Our high streets need public money just to look presentable, let alone to thrive. Skills funding has been cut by 90%. Innovation Park Medway — eight years and £33 million later — has delivered a care home rather than the Silicon Valley of the South. And the Government’s flagship economic measure — the employer National Insurance increase — is making things worse for the very businesses and workers it claimed to protect.
BAE Systems’ £220 million is genuinely welcome, and I do not want to dismiss it. But one defence company investing because of global rearmament demand is not an economic strategy. It is the exception that proves the rule. Beyond BAE, Medway’s private investment pipeline is thin, and the public sector programmes designed to fill the gap — shopfront grants of up to £5,000, street improvements funded at £2 million per area per year over a decade — are not going to move the dial.
Medway is a resilient place. The people who live and work here are tough, resourceful, and proud of their community. They deserve an economy that gives them a genuine chance to succeed. They deserve MPs who will fight for their interests in Westminster — even when that means standing up to their own party.
As a Conservative Councillor for Hempstead and Wigmore, and Shadow Spokesman for Regeneration, I will keep scrutinising the decisions that affect our community at both local and national level. I will keep making the case for policies that grow the economy from the bottom up: lower taxes on businesses that employ people, real investment in skills and training, a credible inward investment pipeline, and a high street strategy that creates jobs rather than repaints windows.
The numbers are the numbers. Labour’s record in Medway deserves scrutiny — and it will get it.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are my personal opinions as an elected Conservative Councillor for Hempstead and Wigmore ward. They do not represent the official position of the Medway Conservative Group or Medway Council.
Sources:
- ONS — Medway’s employment, unemployment and economic inactivity
- ONS — Labour market overview, UK: May 2026
- ONS — Youth unemployment rate (16–24), time series
- Indeed Hiring Lab — UK Employment Figures, April 2026: A Surprise Drop in Unemployment Masks a More Troubling Picture
- Metaintro — UK Unemployment Falls Below 5% — But the Reason Isn’t the Job Market Everyone Hoped For
- Employer’s National Insurance Increase 2025 — pamgro
- Medway Council — Update on NEETs (democracy.medway.gov.uk)
- Medway Cabinet — Shared Prosperity Fund 2025/26 report
- GOV.UK — Compare School and College Performance: Medway secondary schools
- Medway Council — Cabinet agrees £1.5m Pride in Place way forward
- Medway Council — Shop Front Improvement Grant scheme
- Medway Council — £60m Pride in Place funding for Medway communities
- Kent Online — BAE Systems £220m Rochester investment
- Kent Online — Innovation Park Medway scaled back after hopes of attracting Netflix, Google, Amazon
- Local Authority News — Innovation Park plan abandoned after £33m spent
- Local Authority News — Deprivation in Medway
- GOV.UK — UKSPF 2025-26 allocations
- TheyWorkForYou — Lauren Edwards voting record
