Work Experience

Debate between Damian Hinds and Tom Blenkinsop

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) on securing this important debate, on behalf of the striving majority for whom work experience is a great opportunity, for themselves or their children—something to be celebrated and encouraged.

I want to broaden the debate slightly to talk about work experience before children leave school, but before I do that I want to talk about the Government programme that has caused some controversy: what it is, what it does, and for whom. From an employer’s point of view it is a fantastic extended job interview, and an opportunity to see someone in action. Anyone who has ever taken anyone on will know that giving someone a job is always a risk. The more it is possible to see the person in action, the more the risk is mitigated. An employer will get some productive work out of a short-term work experience placement, but, to be honest, it is not nearly as much as some media commentators have suggested. I suggest that, for employers, taking part in the programmes is far more to do with investing in the future and the next generation.

For the individual, the key advantage of work experience is proving oneself—first to the employer directly concerned, bearing in mind the possibility of a job at the end; but, perhaps more importantly, to any employer, by demonstrating recent work experience, involving turning up on time and undergoing the discipline involved. Along the way, of course, people develop skills, and experience a business or occupation that may interest them. But most of all work experience is an in. It is an opportunity that people might not otherwise get. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) said that people who apply for jobs in retail know how hard it is to get them. Well, yes: one reason is that without recent work experience people are far less likely to be considered. Other things being equal, at the same rate of pay, the risk is lower and the odds of success are far higher if an employer employs someone who is already in a job or who has just left one, than if they take a punt, as they might see it, on someone who has been out of work for some time. I suggest that anyone who thinks that great employers—great firms with consumer brands of huge value—are in the programme just to get cheap labour, has never held a supervisory position in a consumer-facing branded organisation.

The Government Work Experience programme has generated controversy. I have had e-mails from bemused constituents about both the opposition and Her Majesty’s Opposition: the deafening silence from the Leader of the Opposition has done no credit to the great Labour movement, the party of work.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

We have yet to hear from the Government Benches about how this policy rebalances the economy and how work experience can be used in manufacturing. We hear about employers in the retail sector, but I am interested to hear whether manufacturers have taken on people in this work experience role and whether, if there have been long periods of such experience, greater numbers of people in the north-east have been employed in manufacturing in the traditional sense.

[Mr David Crausby in the Chair]

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I shall leave it hanging, so that the Minister can pluck it at the appropriate moment. All I would say is that the service industry is an enormous part of the economy. We all want to see growth in manufacturing, but services are a huge part of the economy in many of our constituencies. Getting work experience in that area is absolutely valuable in its own right.

The bemused e-mails that I have been receiving from my constituents say something along these lines: “I understand that the programme is voluntary. There are some advantages to the individual in taking part, but if, after a period of time—not on the first day but after a week or so—they just cease to turn up to work for no good reasons, there are adverse consequences.” It is called a work experience programme—I do not know about you, Mr Crausby, but that sounds an awful lot like an experience of work. I pay tribute to the firms that have taken part in the programme, particularly those that have stood firm and not given in. However, I also understand the nervousness of some of the firms that have issued statements expressing concerns.

We all welcome the new media campaigns with which we are pleased to communicate on a regular basis. As politicians, we also know that they are not always all that they purport to be. I am probably unusual on the Conservative Benches in being a Guardian reader. Perhaps I was the only Member present who was a little bemused, or amused, to read the helpful clarification in The Guardian that this right to work campaign was not run by a bunch of lefties because it contained not only the Socialist Workers party, but members of UK Uncut and the Occupy protest movement. I understand the nervousness of firms with quarterly results to deliver and daily revenues to monitor. We need a debate about how some of these campaigning organisations work and about their proper role in society.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. All credit to those organisations for creating a splash over the issue. However, I am afraid that they have done it by misleading the public and saying that young people are being forced into slave labour when that is absolutely not the case. This relates to what I was saying about the Opposition—I do not include the small number of Labour Members who have come here today. When their leader had an opportunity to debunk that theory and to put the record straight, he failed to do so. It was a great shame that we did not hear such a view from Labour, the party of work.

I know that we are short of time, but I should like to broaden my contribution to include work experience at school. Whenever employers give evidence on the Education Committee, on which I sit, they predictably complain about qualifications not doing what they say on the tin and about young people not being work ready. Work readiness is sometimes called employability skills, soft skills or, when the terminological obfuscation gets extreme, transferable non-cognitive skills. Essentially, what it means is all the stuff about dealing with other people—turning up to work on time, knowing the right way to dress, empathy with the customer, smiling and pride in a job well done. All those things can be partly developed through work experience. When we ask employers if the situation is getting worse, they often say that it is. We cannot demonstrate that it is getting worse. It may be just not getting better, but we are in the business of economic growth. To achieve economic growth, we need such things to be improving year on year.

We need a debate about the role and quality of work experience in schools. It may be that the two-week block in years 10 or 11 is an important part of that, but it does not seem to be doing the full job. With the rise in the participation age, I wonder whether moving the bulk of work experience into the sixth form might be more appropriate. It may well be that there is a role for both. I also hope that we can consider other ways of augmenting and bolstering that work experience. Perhaps we can have a more formal assessment of that young person’s performance in work experience that can count towards their future job prospects.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I suggest that we bring in that introduction to work experience at the options stage, when children at 14 and 15 are choosing their options for GCSEs, which usually indicate what career they might be going into.

[Damian Hinds]

I absolutely see that point. That is why I said that there could be a role for both. Even at the options stage, there is only an opportunity to see one employer, so it will not give a full range of career choices. We certainly need more firms to step up to the plate for school-age work experience. There are many myths about health and safety compliance and Criminal Records Bureau checks and so on. I hope the Government will turn their attention to encouraging more and more quality employers to get on board with that programme and offer more opportunities to young people.

There is a particular area in which school-age work experience can deliver huge benefits to our country. I am talking about work in the public sector, particularly in teaching. The Education Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into what makes a great teacher. One of the recurring themes is that everybody knows what a great teacher is because they have had one. They know it when they see it, but it is very difficult to predict in advance who is going to make a great teacher unless they are seen teaching. I hope we can encourage young people who are interested in teaching, particularly from the sixth form, to do teaching placements of one or two weeks in a school. By working alongside a QTS teacher, they will be able to develop their skills and decide whether teaching is right for them. Furthermore, qualified teachers will be able to assess whether they are well suited to the job.