Entrepreneurship Opportunities

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

Yes, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich is right. Everything we can do to help to build the confidence of the young in this area is very important. We have the new enterprise allowance, which helps unemployed people to start their own businesses. It is available to those who have been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for six months or more, and it provides access to business mentoring, as well as offering financial support. Very often, it is a case of having somebody to talk to who understands the situation. I am lucky that I grew up in an entrepreneurial family and therefore I grew up with the language of entrepreneurs at home. These facilities provide an enormous advantage for children who come from homes where perhaps no one at all goes out to work and where they are therefore starting from a point of terrible disadvantage. We are looking at this carefully to see what we can do to help.

[Lord Harrison]

My Lords, on entering the White Lion pub in Alvanley in deepest Cheshire on Sunday, my wife and I discovered that it was national sandwich week. When I asked the young lady behind the bar who had so declared it, she replied, “The landlord”. Catching that enterprise, she then declared to me that next week was to be national vegetarian week. I wonder whether the Minister could explore the opportunities for mentors and young people to come together, full of ideas, and so build the small businesses and enterprises that we so badly need in this period of recovery.

[Baroness Wilcox]

Somebody clever beside me has just said that the noble Lord was describing a sandwich course, but there we are.