Work Experience

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I am delighted to have been able to secure this important debate on work experience. I am also delighted to see so many hon. Friends and hon. Members from throughout the House in the Chamber today, to debate a subject that not only is topical and relevant to the recent newsfeed but has seen the concept of work experience turned into a matter of political ideology, rather than of pragmatism in how to help our young people and create opportunity for them. I bring the subject to the House in all seriousness, and out of concern for many of our young constituents whose future well-being could lie in the debate around work experience. I therefore ask right hon. and hon. Members to approach the debate in the spirit of helping our young people into work from a pragmatic rather than what I might describe as an ideological standpoint.

I come to the debate as a parent with two young children. Despite their ages, I am not prevented from being a little concerned about their future and what the employment market will look like by the time that they step into the big, wide world of work, whether from school, college or university. I suspect that many of my thoughts are not far removed from those of most parents throughout the country, which is why I wish to consider briefly what the Government are already doing to tackle youth unemployment, and to put that into the context of the importance of work experience, which will be the focus of the majority of my comments.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree, on pragmatism, that MPs can lead the way? I employ an apprentice, as part of my team working in the House of Commons, but we can also have work experience in our constituency offices—we had 40 in the Hexham office over last summer.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. MPs can certainly show the way practically and, as I will come on to, by supporting people who are willing to give work experience opportunities to our young people.

Youth unemployment is not a new phenomenon in this country, and it has been on an upward trend since 2004, when we were in a better economic position, although getting young people into work should be a priority for any Government regardless of the economic situation. Tomorrow we will see the latest unemployment figures, and we wait to see the figures on youth unemployment with bated breath. The current figures indicate that we have more than 1 million young people unemployed and out of work, which equates to 22% of young people in the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is incumbent on Members of the House to support work experience and any tool that we can put into the toolbox to reduce the shocking number of young people who currently lack opportunity.

To return to our 1 million unemployed young people, if we compare our situation with that in many European Union countries, we will probably see our figures compare reasonably favourably. We should, however, never be satisfied or content to have one in four young people unemployed. For that matter, we should never be content to have any young people out of work. Recently, we have started to see policies put in place by the Government to increase opportunity for our young people. For example, places for apprenticeships have increased by 50% over the past year, to 440,000; my constituency, I am glad to say, has had a 56% increase in apprenticeship take-ups, more than half by young people. The youth contract, starting in April, will also see many more opportunities, including financial incentives for businesses to take on young people, which I hope will mean the creation of up to 160,000 opportunities—as quoted, I believe, by the Department for Work and Pensions, in particular given the £2,275 wage subsidy to support young people.

Under the youth contract, a number of opportunities are coming along in April, but we should also realise that, although we have many opportunities and however many schemes we have, there is always a cohort of young people who struggle to take up such opportunities, often because the education system has failed them and sometimes because they have low self-esteem or no experience or track record in employment. They might have previously experienced employment but had a poor experience.

[Guy Opperman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the advance of academies and free schools, such as the enterprise school being set up in Newcastle, next to my constituency, will provide greater skills and address youth unemployment problems?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For far too long a cohort of young people has been failed by the education system in this country, and we need to ensure that such people have the maximum opportunity to gain a high-quality education. Hopefully, we will reduce the number of people who need work experience. Until that happens, however, it is incumbent on us all to support the principle of work experience, because we need to reach that cohort. Figures from the International Labour Organisation show that, of the young people out of work in this country, more than 50,000 have never had a formal job and 20,000 have poor or no formal qualifications. If we are to reach out to that cohort of young people and if we are serious about getting them back into work and engaging them to become part of the mainstream work force, work experience is an essential tool to have in the toolbox.