Getting Britain Working Again

Alison Griffiths Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

That is precisely what we are doing, including by providing apprenticeship courses that are shorter than the usual eight-month minimum, because employers have told us that such short courses are exactly what they need. I am all in favour of more flexibility in the apprenticeship system to suit what employers need.

Getting Britain working is also about the levels of investment in the economy: it is about the roads and railways we build, the capital programmes in education and health, and the year-on-year modernisation of the country. Here too there is a contrast with what we inherited. Compared with the plans that we inherited, there will be £120 billion more public investment over the course of this Parliament. That is what getting Britain working looks like—building and modernising the country. Underpinning all of this are measures in the King’s Speech to raise living standards in every part of the country, to attract investment, to work in partnership with business, to take advantage of new trading opportunities, to reduce the burden of unnecessary regulations, to unlock airport expansion, to build the roads that need to be built and, finally, to deliver a fair deal for the north of England.

At the heart of our reforms should be the young, for the simple and obvious reason that if we do not get the young into work, there can be lifelong effects. We have almost a million young people not in education, training or employment. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), in the last three years of the Conservative Government, that figure went up by a quarter of a million. Although the numbers have barely moved since the election, they are still far too high.

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

On that point, will the Secretary of State give way?

[Pat McFadden]

I will proceed, if the hon. Lady does not mind.

Unlike the Conservatives, who did nothing about the number of young people not in education, training or employment, we are doing something about it, because we will not leave a young generation behind. We will not give up on young people, and that is why our youth guarantee is so important. It will invest £2.5 billion in support for young people and employers over the next few years. From June, there will be hiring bonuses of £3,000 for employers who take on a young person who has been out of work for six months. For small businesses, there will be a hiring bonus of £2,000 to take on a young apprentice, and the Government will pay for all the training courses for young apprentices employed by small and medium-sized enterprises. [Interruption.] Youth hubs across the country will take support out of the jobcentre to where young people are, giving them access to community-based advice, skills training, mental health support, housing advice and careers guidance. In the spirit of generosity, I will give way to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths).

[Alison Griffiths]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way and for his astounding shopping list of action that he is taking, but the Conservatives can make life easy for him: if he had not put 2% on national insurance, increased the national minimum wage and used the Employment Rights Act 2025 to remove the option of zero-hours contracts, businesses in my constituency and across the country would not have been forced to remove jobs focused specifically on young people. It is this Government who are responsible for the increase in youth unemployment.

[Pat McFadden]

I have to disappoint the hon. Lady. If this Government were responsible, it would not be case that youth employment never in a single year reached the pre-financial crash levels when her party was in power. If this Government were responsible, we would not have seen the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training rise by a quarter of a million.

Beyond the hiring bonuses and the youth hubs, we are offering more work experience or workplace training with a guaranteed interview, designed in partnership with employers. For those who have been out of work for 18 months, we are offering a six-month paid job placement of 25 hours a week at national minimum wage rates. The reason we are doing all this is that we will not stand back and allow young people to graduate from school to a life on benefits. There has been too much of that in recent years, and to do that would be to accept the scarring effect for the rest of their lives and to accept the huge cost to the country and to businesses in lost talent.

Changing this situation should be a cause for us all, and it should certainly be a Labour cause, to give hope to the country’s young people and to show that we believe in them, we back them and we want them to have a better future. This is a generational challenge. Of course it is an issue for young people, but it is also an issue for their parents and grandparents, because they all want a better future for young people, and so do we. There is an urgency about this issue. As the population ages and net migration falls, we need the young people of this country more than ever. They are our greatest resource and our greatest asset, and an investment in them is an investment in the future for all of us.

In the volatile times that His Majesty spoke about, people look for security, and rightly so, but the future is not just about security; the future is about building opportunity too. It is about not accepting so many young people being written off and about giving them a chance to change the story of their lives. That is the message at the heart of the King’s Speech and that is what is at the heart of our youth guarantee. It is at the heart of all the changes in welfare reform that I have listed, and it will be at the heart of the changes to come, and I recommend them to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

Businesses in my constituency are not asking for special treatment; they are asking for a Government who stop making it harder to employ people, harder to grow and harder to invest. Right now, too many feel that Labour is taking the country in the wrong direction. Through my business club and regular conversations with employers across Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, I keep hearing the same thing: costs are rising, confidence is falling and businesses are becoming more cautious about taking people on. In a coastal constituency, that really matters. Our local economy depends on innovation powered by fantastic small and medium-sized enterprises and on the entrepreneurs who pour everything into growing them. These are not massive corporations with endless room to absorb new costs. They are businesses working hard to keep people employed, keep high streets going and keep our communities alive outside the summer season.

James and Marcus Fenton, who run Meridian Medical in Littlehampton, employ around 130 people locally in skilled manufacturing jobs. It is a family-run business and a living wage employer. It should be exactly the kind of business the Government are backing. Meridian is a British success story, exporting highly specialised medical devices around the world, but it is now becoming one of the businesses that tells me the UK is becoming a harder place in which to invest and grow.

I also heard recently from Mark and Liz Warom, the founders of TEMPLESPA, a science-led, Mediterranean-inspired premium skincare brand run by my constituents, whose products I highly recommend. Their clear view is that firms are becoming

“more cautious on hiring and investment due to rising costs.”

They are worried about rising employment costs, higher borrowing costs, growing compliance burdens and energy prices that remain far too high. That is the real-word impact of the Government’s decisions. When businesses stop hiring, young people pay the price first. The first job in a café, the apprenticeship, or the hospitality role in a pub or hotel all give young people the chance to get on the ladder and earn their own money.

The Government talk constantly about growth, but businesses in constituencies such as mine are asking a very simple question: when will this Government stop making growth harder? If we really want to get Britain working again, we need to start backing the businesses that actually create the jobs.