Summer Jobs

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Rebecca Smith

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

It is always good to speak with the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) on the Front Bench. Were we discussing the threats that we face or the problems we have with China and the desperate way that they have undercut the market using slave labour, we would be on the same side of the House completely. My respect for him is enormous. However—[Laughter.] I do want to talk about today’s subject.

I was not planning to say anything about summer jobs, but my first experience of one was in Italy, where I had been studying. I had gone to the coast to find a job. All I could find was a job working as a plongeur, as it were, in the dishwashing section of a restaurant. I was a useless waiter and got told to stop sitting down and talking to those who were eating, so I was sent back to the kitchen. During the evenings I had nowhere to stay, but I had managed to borrow a Fiat 600—an old one that I could start with the end of a teaspoon—and I drove it round to the car park and used to sleep in the back. It was wonderfully cheap but not exactly very comfortable. I am not quite sure what I learned from that—I did learn a few lessons, but I am not prepared to divulge them all here. Washing in the sea was one of them, though I have to say I am not sure how that has stood me in any good stead for the last few years. We will move on from that.

We can overstate the lessons to be learned from a job, but being in work does teach young people about working to get a salary, turning up on time, as colleagues have said, and recognising that if they do not do so, the employer has every right to get rid of them. That is the key bit that we constantly talk to our families about.

I want to come back to the problems that we face. When I was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when we came to power in 2010, we had just had a huge, difficult recession. We had high unemployment, and we had to get that unemployment down. I say to the Government is that the cost of all their problems is not one issue alone—it is when they fail to realise the impact of one change after another on what is ultimately the most at-risk group. I agree completely with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) that the most at-risk group is young people. When the Government make changes to employment regulation, add on costs and change people’s rights, it is always younger people who are the most affected. They are the easiest to move out of employment, and they are almost invariably the last ones in. They are also the most expensive to look after while they are in work—for a good reason.

When I used to tour the jobcentres I spoke to young people who were there looking for a job. I used to ask, “What is the biggest hurdle that you face?” They would say that every time they go in front of an employer, the employer would ask them what experience they have in work. They would say, “I have no experience.” Then the employer says, “Well we cannot take that risk. I am looking for someone else, so you will not get the job”. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, not only is it a marginal cost but it is also about the complete lack of experience and the risk that an employer takes on when they hire the younger person.

The triple whammy of the national insurance charge, particularly on part-time work, the Employment Rights Act and the rise in the minimum wage are the vice that is squeezing this situation. Any one of those we probably could have got through, but to have all three of them hitting employment is the real problem that we face, and unemployment is the result.

Youth unemployment at 16.2% is staggering. We used to pride ourselves on having a lower youth unemployment than the rest of Europe, but that is not necessarily the case now. The latest figures show us categorically that now have three times the NEET rate as the Netherlands has. The Netherlands is probably the closest type of economy to us in Europe; it is often quite flexible, and it often looks to the UK to import some of its flexibilities. The reality, therefore, is that the group who will suffer—they were always going to—is young people. Without that work experience, they will not go on to get that job they want—in fact, it is the job that they need—as a starter job.

Turning to apprenticeships, an individual apprentice is now much more likely to get a full-time job and go on to earn more money than somebody who has studied at university. The collapse of the relationship between university and a brilliant career will fundamentally change the nature of who we are as a country if people who go to university with the promise that they would earn much more money than they would ever have to pay in debt then find that is a broken concept. That is a matter for both sides of the House. We must deal with it.

I have family who are paying off debts. The astonishing interest rate on those debts has become staggering, and it is trapping them—they are unable to look at buying houses or anything else. That is the pressure on those people, and sometimes what they earn at work is not enough for them to be able to get by and do well.

The Opposition’s motion, which I will come to, is really important. The point is that we have to make a change. The Government may want to have young people in work and want there to be those so-called Saturday jobs, but Alan Milburn says in his report that the

“first rung has thinned. The clearest examples are the decline of the Saturday job…For earlier generations, these were…the routes through which young people first entered working life. They provided income, but they also helped young people build confidence, learn the habits of work and show employers what they could do. For too many young people now, those opportunities are weaker or have disappeared altogether.”

We did not really need the Milburn report to know that—we knew what was going on—but his saying that must be telling for the Government. The Government have overstepped the reality.

For example, zero-hours contracts were flexible and were liked by the vast majority of those who had them. Older adults—mostly those with caring responsibilities—liked the flexibility of being able to go to hospital appointments or take those with disabilities to hospital appointments one week, while on other weeks they could work, doing more hours to make up the money. That flexibility helped them. It also helped students coming out to do all the big jobs in entertainment, hotels and short-term affairs such as Wimbledon. It is travesty that the Government have tightened that up. They need to learn from this.

I stress again that most people liked the idea of zero-hours contracts as they gave them flexibility in work that allowed them to get work experience, which they could sell when going to get a full-time job, as well as the chance to earn some money to subsidise themselves while doing other work, studying or whatever. It is astonishing that the Government have got rid of that.

My party’s motion rightly mentions the astonishing high street business rates. We rightly talk about wanting to protect our high streets against competition from online retail and so on, and the majority of those part-time, small jobs are on the high streets. Those small businesses and shops need people to help them make their business grow, but business rates for some of the shops on the high street in my area have risen by 60%. It is unbelievable to think that a small business will be able to survive a 60% increase. That business has to make choices, which mean that not only can it no longer hire someone, but it has to lay people off—it can no longer keep them in employment. We have seen dramatic layings off and closures on the high street for the simple reason that people cannot afford to run their business.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the group of people who often get forgotten in these debates—certainly by Government Members—are business owners? They are trying to hang on to these young people, or even to their normal employees, and they want to do the right thing so they pay them before themselves, but often, because the minimum wages have gone up, by the time those businesses close the owners are not benefiting from that income. We tend to forget the small business owners, but they are vital, as we are trying to highlight.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is all about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I fully understand that the Government want to regulate some of that employment to ensure that people are protected, but the Employment Rights Act is so all-consuming and far-reaching that there is not just the cost—estimated at about £5 billion—for companies and businesses but the knock-on effect for those who need a job but can no longer be employed, as well as for those who would employ them but will have to close their businesses.

Flexibility is critical in employment—it always has been. It has always been a case of, “What is the risk in hiring you? Do you have the experience? Can you do the job? Can I afford to pay you the wages? Do I have to do half that job for you as a result?” For small businesses, that is a real problem. The Employment Rights Act has been a real nightmare.

The issue is not just that £5 billion cost but the way in which that impacts on economic growth. Regulating employment is not an isolated issue that does not affect anything else; it affects growth in the economy. I talked earlier about the triple whammy. With business rates alongside that, businesses face even higher costs and problems. They are being regulated a great deal, they do not have flexibility in employment, and they have to pay more.

The third critical issue in our motion is the cost of energy in the United Kingdom, which is astonishing. We have the highest energy costs in the developed world—it could be said that we have the highest energy costs in the world as it is—and a huge amount of that is to do with the ridiculous helter-skelter drive to get to clean energy no matter what. We are now threatening businesses with fines—the car industry gets fines if the right cars are not produced—and energy costs are so high that businesses can no longer manage to manufacture goods here. We will need to manufacture goods when we need to spend the money that we do not have at the moment but will have to have for the defence industry. That is a manufacturing case, yet none of those industries says that it can afford to expand its manufacturing base because the cost of energy is so high. Those three things are critical. I therefore support the Opposition’s motion.

I finish with one single fact. We have all been talking rather blithely about what we did in those summers and how we got our first jobs, but it is worth reminding ourselves that for the generation going through now, the flexibility, opportunities and ability to earn are far less than they have ever been. When we talk to our children, we discover how difficult employment is for them. We can talk to them about being able to earn the right money, about being able to pay for a house or about sky-high rents. This is a serious problem. If we want to face it and take it on, we should think of the old health dictum, “do no harm”. I say to the Government that when they pile those three massive burdens on to industry and the individual, they are doing great harm to those we need to protect. My advice to the Government is simply this: think again about the triple whammy and reduce the burden they have put on industries.