Youth Employment

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to debate under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate and on the way she advanced her arguments: she did not do so in a particularly partisan way, and I do not intend to advance mine in a partisan way either. The issues we all face are significant, and engaging in a battle over statistics does politicians in general no favours—I say that to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark). Before he intervenes to say what the unemployment statistics in my constituency are, let me say that I am fully aware of them.

[Mr Newmark]

What are they?

[Chris Bryant]

They have improved dramatically, which is thanks largely to the Welsh Assembly Government and very little to the Government in Westminster—if we are going to get partisan.

There have been some important contributions to the debate. It is an enormous shame that we have lost the Minister who was here at the beginning. I gather he has gone off to Downing street, and we will discover later whether he has been promoted as much as he would like, but I wish him well. I say gently to the Government that it is naughty not only to shift responsibility for answering the debate, which was originally intended for the DWP, to another Department, but then, when we are three quarters of the way through, to hoik the Minister off to get some new employment—taking him out of a debate on those affected by youth unemployment when he does not look old enough to be out of that category. I have not even mentioned the Minister who is about to reply, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson).

[Chloe Smith]

On that point, I will spare the Minister’s blushes by saying that we all think young people should be in Government positions. However, I should also note that Backbench Business Committee officials asked me which Ministry I would prefer to respond to the debate, and I said it would be helpful for a Minister from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to reply, because the debate is about employment, not unemployment.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, the Minister for Employment is in the Department for Work and Pensions. Be that as it may, let us get on to the matter in hand.

The truth is that the economy is improving and Opposition Members are as delighted about that as Government Members. I say that because many Opposition Members represent seats where what this country has suffered economically over the past few years is felt even more aggressively and painfully than it is in seats represented by Government Members. I know there are pockets of deprivation in every constituency in the land, but the honest truth is that many Opposition Members deal weekly and daily with multiple levels of deprivation, some historical and some new, so we know the pain. We are therefore delighted that the economy is improving, although I sometimes feel quite angry, and I think my constituents do too, when the Government seem complacent about the situation we are in.

The truth of the matter is that we still have the highest ever number of people in part-time employment who would like to be in full-time employment, many of them women. That is a significant challenge, because the issue then is how people in work pay the bills. Under this Government, for the first time ever the problem is that the majority of those living in poverty are people in work. That must be a cause of shame for all of us. Youth unemployment is still stubbornly high. I fully accept that the numbers have fallen, and they have fallen in my constituency. However, they reached an absolute peak last September, and there is still a considerable way to go. I will talk about that a little more later.

I am glad that we have a flexible labour market, but I often worry that the flexibility is all on the part of those who are employed, and that the employer can sometimes exploit that to such a degree that there is unfairness in the market. That means that whether someone is on a zero-hours contract without wanting to be, or is on an exclusive zero-hours contract, or does not have enough hours because the number they are given depends entirely on whether they get on with the boss rather than on a contract, their working conditions will be kept pretty miserable—let alone the problems of low pay.

At the moment some 853,000 young people aged 24 or under are unemployed. Although the figures have fallen, the ratio of young unemployed people to adult unemployed people is considerably higher in this country than for all our competitors. In the UK there are 3.6 young unemployed people for every unemployed adult; in the EU as a whole there are 2.4 and in Germany just 1.6 unemployed young people to every unemployed adult. Many hon. Members cite Spain and Greece, where youth unemployment is high, but we should not underestimate the problem in this country.

As several of my hon. Friends have mentioned—not least my hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) who chairs the all-party group on youth unemployment—the recession in the UK has hit the young hardest. All the economic statistics show that they have had a harder time of it than anyone else, and today, although I do not suppose that anyone will notice because the great reshuffle will obscure it all, prices are still rising 2.5 times faster than wages. That has a dramatic effect on people who are on low wages, because they spend a far higher percentage of their wages on the basics of life such as eating and heating. In the past five years, the employment rate has fallen faster among 20-year-olds than any other age group. Real pay has also fallen fastest for the young. We must factor in housing costs and the state of the housing market. They were part of the problem in Spain and Greece: the housing market fell apart, contributing to high youth unemployment. Because of the cost of housing, young people have problems with personal social mobility and moving from parts of the country with no employment to places where there is employment.

We should never forget how those things affect people, including their long-term health. A young person who has been out of work for more than six months is twice as likely as anyone else to be taking antidepressants, and anyone who is out of work for six months or longer is six times more likely to have a mental health problem of some kind, which might make it difficult for them to get back into the labour market. People move further and further from the labour market. One of the most depressing statistics that I saw this year was from the Prince’s Trust Macquarie youth index, which suggested that 750,000 young people in this country said they had nothing to live for.

[Mr Newmark]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I have very little time and it is more important that we listen to the Minister than that people listen to me, or, frankly, to him.

I want to say something about regional variations. My hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde and for Airdrie and Shotts are right to say that in areas formerly dominated entirely by one heavy industry, the issues are writ large. Whether the industry was mining, steel or shipbuilding the long-term effects are the same. A community of that kind would have had perhaps 100,000 people—nearly all men—employed in a job that they could start straight from school, perhaps at 14 or 15, with no further qualifications. Such communities had to move on to a world where women are just as likely as men to be employed, where some technical or academic qualifications are necessary, and where people may have to travel to work. I pay tribute to communities that have managed that without violence in the past 100 years, because in many parts of the world similar transitions have been far more difficult.

Conservative Members sometimes misunderstand or do not see the real difficulties faced by a young person growing up in a place such as Inverclyde, Airdrie or my constituency. In my constituency, the majority of people own their own homes and there is not much of a rental market, and what there is is in poor condition. There may be 70 applicants for every available job. Young people could move to other parts of the country, but they would have to meet housing costs, and if they are under 25, they will have no help with that whatsoever. They will be in an area where they had few social connections and little family support. People all too often underestimate the difficulties that young people face.

What should we be doing? The most important thing for my constituency has been the fact that when the coalition Government abolished the future jobs fund in England, without being even prepared to publish the document that they claimed proved that the fund was a waste of money, the Scottish and Welsh Governments decided to start new, similar schemes. As a result, 16,000 young people in Wales have been given jobs through Jobs Growth Wales, which means that they get a first chance when many young people never have a first chance at all. They have 25 to 40 hours a week on at least the minimum wage. It is really encouraging that 80% of those jobs are in the private sector, so the scheme is not simply extending the public sector; and 80% of people who have been in those jobs have been able to remain in them after the subsidy from the Welsh Assembly Government ends, which is a real sign of success. I deeply hope that at the next general election when we form the Government—I am sure that whenever we form the Government we will do this—we will have precisely that system across the whole country, so that every young person has a guarantee of a job and a chance to start off in the market.

We need to do far more about vocational skills, which is why we support the idea of a technical baccalaureate. The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) pointed out the problem with apprenticeships, namely that only one in 10 employers have an apprentice. Two thirds of the apprenticeships available in the UK would not stand the test against apprenticeships in other countries. We believe that all apprenticeships should go up to qualification level 3. We also think that every firm that wants a major Government contract should offer apprenticeships to young people, and that that should be enforced. We also believe that young people must be given the skills to get into work, which is why we would create a youth allowance, similar to jobseeker’s allowance, to ensure that young people are in learning.

I have a few questions for the Minister, which I hope she will be able to answer. If she cannot answer them, I hope that someone else from another Department will be able to do so, and I hope that she will take responsibility for making sure that we get the answers. She will know—or she may not—that in Wales, we still have the education maintenance allowance. Universal credit, which is being rolled out slowly and perhaps surely, or perhaps uncertainly, until 2017, will affect those who receive EMA. How will EMA be considered under universal credit? Will it be assessed as part of income or not? Will it be assessed as income to the family or to the young person?

The Government last year commissioned Sir Jeremy Heywood to produce a report on young people and employment. We are still waiting for the report to be published. When will that happen? As the Minister knows, we are more than halfway through the Youth Contract scheme. Several hon. Members have preached to us about how wonderful the Youth Contract is, but so far only 6% of the anticipated wage incentive payments have been made. That is £10,030 out of a projected £160,000. That suggests that it was a monumental failure rather than a monumental success. I am delighted about the 6%, but the scheme, frankly, is not working. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

I have two more questions. One is about work experience. Why are people not allowed to start work experience for 13 weeks? Finally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts pointed out, why has the number of staff working on apprenticeships been so dramatically cut?