Oral Answers to Questions

Freddie van Mierlo Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

This is a complex change to implement, but the Government’s position is that it is right to have the same rate of VAT across our country. During the pandemic, there was a cut—a temporary cut—to the rate of VAT and that came at the significant cost of £8 billion. We have to make sure that we can raise revenue from across the country in a fair and consistent way to support the public finances.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

11. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the autumn Budget 2025 on levels of youth unemployment.

[Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)]

18. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of the autumn Budget 2025 on levels of youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Torsten Bell)]

Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility set out its updated forecast for the UK economy, including for unemployment to peak this year before falling in each and every year thereafter. Longer-term problems for young people have been building in our labour market for far too long, with employment rates that are too low and levels of those not in education, employment or training soaring in the last Parliament. We will not allow a generation of young people to be left behind, which is why the Government have committed £820 million for the youth guarantee, strengthening employment support and guaranteeing jobs for the long-term unemployed.

[Freddie van Mierlo]

I first entered the job market in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and it was a difficult time for young people, yet today they face even more difficult and uncertain times. The Chancellor’s jobs tax is bearing down on opportunities, and AI is making this worse by potentially pulling up the ladder on graduate jobs that previously included things such as note taking and supporting senior employees in meetings. Will the Chancellor correct course on the unemployment of young people and do more to support their career progress?

[Torsten Bell]

The hon. Member’s phrasing of his question was very telling about the challenges we all face in our labour market, because while we have seen more jobs created over the last year, there is a longer-term challenge with youth unemployment. If we look at the last Government, we never saw youth employment rates recover to the level seen under the previous Labour Government after the financial crisis, which was exactly the experience he mentioned.

It is important that we grapple with that long-term challenge, and there is the newer challenge with the huge increase in NEET rates in the last Parliament specifically. We absolutely need to focus on both of those, which is why we are focusing apprenticeship funding on young people in particular, why we are introducing the youth guarantee, and why we have the independent review led by Alan Milburn to focus on the root causes of these challenges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he said about the Leonardo contract at Yeovil, which supports many thousands of jobs in Somerset, and indeed Dorset. I am proud to be the Chancellor who has overseen the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war; that has enabled us to support this investment and many others.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

T10. The £100,000 tax trap means that some residents, if they have a student loan, are paying 71% marginal rates. That is one of the reasons why salary sacrifice is so popular—but those people want to use that money in the economy now. What is the Chancellor doing to address the tax trap at £100,000?

[Torsten Bell]

I thank the hon. Member for his second question, and his enthusiastic volume of questions today. The Government balance the needs of public services with tax revenues. I gently point out that Liberal Democrat Members come to the House day in, day out, and call for more spending—we have heard that happen today—but then oppose every single tax rise or tax change required to make that happen. That is not what serious politics looks like. We need to take tax seriously, and it is time for some serious politics from the Liberal Democrats.