Business of the House

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Last Thursday evening it was my pleasure to take part in the Gatwick Diamond young start-up talent event, which is a “Dragons’ Den”-style event for young people with entrepreneurial ideas. Can we find time for a debate, perhaps through the Backbench Business Committee, to discuss ways in which we can better help young people with entrepreneurial ideas to get ahead?

[Sir George Young]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern, and I was delighted to hear about what happened. We are putting more resources into apprenticeships and the enterprise allowance scheme. We have made a change this week to the amount of time young people can spend on work experience without losing access to benefits and we are introducing the new Work programme. I hope that we can reduce the large number of young unemployed that we inherited from Labour and encourage them to become entrepreneurs.