Youth Unemployment

Iain Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Youth unemployment is the single biggest social and economic problem facing my constituency, and its effects will leave a scar on Hartlepool’s prospects for decades to come. My town has the dubious and unwanted distinction of having the worst youth unemployment in the country: 1,450 young people in Hartlepool—17.4%, or nearly one in five— do not have a job. We have not seen such levels of youth unemployment in my town since 1995. What is particularly worrying is that in my constituency unemployment is rising fastest among young people, and rising much faster than the regional or national average. Since this Government came to office 18 months ago, youth unemployment in Hartlepool has increased by some 60%, and it has been increasing fastest in the past six months.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my fellow Teesside MP for giving way. Does he remember when Middlesbrough football fans used to chant, “There’s only one job on Teesside”, in celebration of Joseph-Désiré Job, who played for the club? That is no longer very funny, because young people might be under the impression that it is actually true as hundreds of them chase every single job opportunity on Teesside.

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[Mr Wright]

As a proud Hartlepool United season ticket holder, I will never celebrate the achievements of Middlesbrough football club, but my hon. Friend is right to say that we have been here before.

When I was growing up in the 1980s, the spectre of unemployment haunted my constituency. The de-industrialisation of this country in the 1980s hit my region hard. In the recession of 1979 to 1981, an astonishing 20,000 jobs were lost in my constituency as shipyards, steelworks and heavy engineering firms closed their doors. In many respects, Hartlepool and the wider north-east is still, in 2011, adjusting to the huge economic shocks of the 1980s and 1990s. I suggest that the Government need to learn the lessons of history and acknowledge the problem that youth unemployment creates. They need to act decisively to ensure that the young people facing a bleak future are not abandoned permanently and that Hartlepool does not see once again, as we did in the 1980s, a lost and forgotten generation.

We all know that the longer a person is out of work, the harder it is for them to gain employment. Young people are hit particularly hard in this regard. They cannot get a job because they have not got experience, but they cannot get experience because they have not got a job. It does not have to be like this. The future jobs fund was a particular success in my constituency, helping more than 720 young people in Hartlepool to get a foot on the career ladder and providing them with tangible help and support into employment.

In contrast, we now have a Government stripping out demand in the economy and a Chancellor who is changing his growth forecasts more often than he changes his socks and neglecting the talent, potential and passion of the next generation. I urge the Government to change course—not to concentrate solely on deficit reduction to the exclusion of everything else, but to have a more sophisticated and holistic economic policy based on stimulating demand for our economy, providing a framework to make Britain the best place on the planet to do business and, crucially, providing good future prospects for our young people. Other nations are doing this. Germany now has a lower jobless rate in general and among young people than it did at the start of the financial crisis. It has achieved that through greater emphasis on infrastructure spending, ensuring that its economy will be more productive and efficient in future; and providing job subsidies, ensuring that its work force, particularly its young people, remain job-ready and equipped with the skills needed in the 21st century.

In my lifetime, in the 1980s, a Conservative Government abandoned a whole generation in my constituency. The rationale behind this was that such unemployment was a price worth paying. I implore the Government please not to make the same costly mistakes again.