Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Swinson and Julie Hilling

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

20. What steps the Government are taking to (a) enforce payment of the minimum wage and (b) encourage firms to pay the living wage.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The Government are taking tough action on employers that break minimum wage law. We have made it simpler to name and shame employers that do not pay the national minimum wage properly, and have increased the financial penalty that employers pay for breaking the law. The Government will always support and encourage businesses to pay higher than the national minimum wage, where they can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Wow! It is always useful to have a bit of information.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

When many large employers are making vast profits but charging the taxpayer by paying their employees the minimum wage, and when families are hit by the cost of living crisis, why will the Minister not follow Labour’s lead and our plans to incentivise employers to pay a living wage through “make work pay” contracts?

[Jo Swinson]

I do not think the proposals put forward by the Opposition stack up. Providing only a small incentive for only a 12-month period is unlikely to change behaviour, but it is important to encourage employers to pay more than the minimum wage where they can. It is important that we are cutting income tax by £800 for low and middle earners so that they can keep more of their hard-earned cash. That is why this Government will continue to build the stronger economy we need so that people can properly prosper.

Youth Employment

Debate between Jo Swinson and Julie Hilling

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Crausby, to serve under your chairmanship. I appreciate your flexibility in recognising the rather unusual circumstances of this debate, following the change of Minister part way through. I thank hon. Members for their understanding. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) has been called away to a meeting at No. 10, and I was delighted to step in and respond to this debate.

Youth employment is hugely important to Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as it is to colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and across the Government. We need all parts of the Government to work together on the issue and not least with MPs across the House. Many of the contributions I have heard, and those made before I arrived, have been made with the intention of solving some of the issues.

I wholeheartedly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing this debate and her important focus on employment rather than unemployment. We want to focus on that because it is the outcome we want to achieve. Her Norwich for Jobs campaign has ensured that there is an improvement in the situation for young people in her constituency. We have heard from many hon. Members about the schemes they have been involved in in their constituencies. The support of constituency MPs is particularly important as, for example, are MPs who have taken on apprentices in their own offices. We have heard a good series of examples of how MPs can make a difference in their own way to the situation in their constituencies.

We heard from hon. Members about schemes and initiatives whereby business people go into schools to offer insights into the world of work and enterprise. That is particularly valuable for young people. We have heard about challenges to people from more deprived areas and backgrounds. It was striking that when I went to the health day at a private school in my constituency, the pool of individuals available included neuroscientists who happened to be the parents of one of the children there, for example. In other areas, it may be more difficult to get a wide variety of people who are personally connected to the school to come in and offer career insights. Programmes such as Inspiring the Future are important in linking people who are happy to give an hour or two of their time once a year to speak about their job to local schools that do not necessarily have those contacts. Just last Friday, I took part in an event in a school in Islington for the Inspiring Women part of that campaign to ensure that young girls have a wide variety of role models presented to them to open up their aspirations.

The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) raised the important point about supporting people who do not want to go to university. It is wonderful when people go to university and gain the education it offers, but it is not right for everyone and that is one reason why the Government’s support for apprenticeships has been so important in ensuring genuine options for young people, so they can choose the right path for them. I wholeheartedly agree with him that what matters is employment, not separation. It is a shame that in Scotland over the past couple of years, the Scottish Government have not been able to focus strongly on such issues because they have been distracted by the referendum.

My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) made the important point that almost all young people want to work. It is important to hold on to that in the face of some negative media stories about young people and how they are presented in our society.

My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) also mentioned his experience of having an apprentice in his office. His support for the business community in the north-east and providing jobs has been second to none. He will be greatly missed following his decision to stand down from this place, as will his work in supporting jobs in Redcar and the surrounding areas. He was right to raise the issues of employability and skills, and he contrasted the huge appetite for jobs at the crematorium compared with jobs with manufacturers of oil rig equipment.

The Perkins review highlighted the challenges we face in recruiting enough skilled engineers to ensure that our economy can grow in the way we want it to. I understand why my hon. Friend entreated us to become rather more Stalinist regarding the skills we need. I am not sure that is the word I would reach for, but employers have told us that basic skills such as English and maths need to be prioritised. That is why the curriculum is being strengthened and we are ensuring that all young people up to the age of 18 must study maths and English to at least GCSE grade C.

General employability is not just about paper qualifications but perhaps more about attitudes and basic behaviour, such as going to work, turning up promptly and being reliable. Traineeships have been introduced in response to that. They offer high-quality work experience, as well as support with English and maths skills and preparation-for-work training. They help young people who are not quite ready for work to get the experience, confidence and skills they need to be ready. That programme is already growing quickly; more than 7,400 trainees have started since August.

The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) asked a variety of questions. She said, importantly, that the approach cannot be one size fits all, because every young person is different and has a different set of challenges to overcome. That is why the range of available initiatives allows people to choose a route specific to the issues they face. We have apprenticeships and wage incentives for people who are already able to work. For those who are close to the labour market, we have the sector-based work academies. There are traineeships for those who want to work but perhaps do not have the experience and qualifications, and there is work experience and training for others.

I agree with the hon. Lady that promoting work experience is important. We already have tens of thousands of work experience, work trial and sector-based work academy places, and of course the traineeships will increase that figure because they include substantial work experience placement. The links between business, employers and schools are hugely important because as well as providing career insights, they can often lead to good-quality work experience placements with local employers and may ultimately lead to work.

The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) made some rather negative remarks about the work experience programme, referring to some of it as workfare. I fundamentally disagree. It is absolutely right, indeed vital, that young people are able to get work experience while they are still being supported by the benefits system, so that they can get into work. That was not handled right under the previous Labour Government—those claiming unemployment benefit or JSA who wanted to increase their skills and get work experience, so that they could get a job, had their benefits stopped. That created a trap that this Government’s commitment to work experience is helping young people out of.

[Julie Hilling]

I do not have a fundamental problem with work experience, but it is really important that it involves some training and is a good experience, and is not just about young people being on workfare and working for benefits to no personal advantage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Swinson and Julie Hilling

Thursday 18th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

I commend my hon. Friend on her work championing small business in her constituency and beyond. She is absolutely right that we need to drive through the implementation of the reforms we have already outlined. She will be pleased to note that the CBI-Harvey Nash employment trends survey shows a significant improvement in employer perceptions of the burden of employment law. That is good for British business and good for job creation, too.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

According to the OECD, the UK already has one of the most lightly regulated labour markets among developed countries; only the USA and Canada have lighter regulation. Why on earth are we trying to water down employment rights even further?

[Jo Swinson]

The first thing I would say to the hon. Lady is that our lightly regulated employment market is an asset to the British economy. It helps the economy to grow and it is one of the reasons why, despite the very challenging economic circumstances we have seen and despite the fact that unemployment is still too high, we have seen employment rates bear up rather better than in some other countries. It is important that we simplify employment law—I would have hoped that there would be cross-party agreement on that—but of course it is also important for a functioning economy that we ensure that basic protections remain in place for workers.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Jo Swinson and Julie Hilling

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

I am not saying for a second that the EHRC did nothing right. We are committed to keeping it and refocusing it to make it more effective.

The general counsel said that

“other parts of the legislation provide sufficient clarity on what our job really is.”––[Official Report, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Public Bill Committee, 19 June 2012; c. 79, Q177.]

A raft of stakeholders has criticised how the EHRC was being run. Although it has done some good things, it was not being run in the efficient way that is required of an organisation with such an essential duty and such an essential role to play in the equalities and human rights make-up of our country.

[Julie Hilling]

I am very confused about the Minister’s statement that she will make the EHRC more efficient, when what she will actually do is to continue to cut its budget hugely. How can it be more efficient with a tiny percentage of the staff that it had? It will be unable to do the representative work that it used to do and a vast amount of the other work that it used to do. How will that make it more efficient?

[Jo Swinson]

The EHRC was not particularly efficient in some of the work that it was doing. For example, it cost its helpline far more to deal with cases relating to working rights than other Government and external providers. We are ensuring that the money is spent better. Opposition Members seem to forget that the financial situation left to this Government was an appalling mess. It does no good for equalities in this country not to have the effective use of public money. We should all want to see that. [Interruption.] I am answering the hon. Lady. We should all want to see the effective use of public money. It is wrong to suggest that there are no ways in which the EHRC could have been improved.