Four months after leaving his post as minister of trade, Lord Digby Jones examines how the government is tackling the unemployment crisis.

Lord Jones analyses each of Gordon Brown's pledges to help people back into work and training - to see whether the system for handling the newly unemployed is working. Drawing on his political and business experience as former director of the CBI, he unpicks government announcements and statistics to uncover the scale of the problem and see just how dire the situation is for those who have lost their jobs.

Travelling across the UK, Lord Jones meets people who have recently lost their jobs in construction, car-manufacturing, retail, IT and property development to find out whether the government measures are helping them back into work. And Dispatches reveals exclusive research on the nature of job vacancies available, and examines just how successful Job Centres are at placing people in work.