Youth Employment

Luke Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on securing this debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on an issue that is so important to my constituency and to the UK as a whole.

According to Eurostat, at 12% the UK has one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the European Union, ranking us ninth out of 28. Indeed, youth unemployment is a major issue in much of the EU. By comparison, Greece has a youth unemployment rate of 44%, Spain 39%, Italy 35%, Portugal 24%, France 23% and Belgium 22%. As my hon. Friend said, however, that does not happen by accident.

A great deal of work has been done by this Government and the coalition to drive down youth unemployment, because under the previous Labour Government it rose by 45%, creating something of a lost generation. Although this UK Government have made concerted efforts to tackle youth unemployment, it is still higher than we want it to be.

Since May 2010 the UK Government have created more than 3 million apprenticeships, which are keeping more young people in education and giving them the skills needed to excel and make progress in their careers. As a result, youth unemployment has been steadily decreasing and, at a time when so much of Europe is suffering from substantial youth unemployment, I am particularly pleased that the UK is bucking the trend.

That is a record to be proud of, but we cannot simply rest on our laurels. My hon. Friend has referred to those not in education, employment or training. On those 18 to 24-year-old jobseeker’s allowance and universal credits claimants required to seek work, the most recent ONS figures available to the House of Commons Library show that the UK rate is 2.8%. In Scotland the figure is higher, at 3.3%, while in Ochil and South Perthshire that rate of youth unemployment is 3.8%, which is higher still. I am concerned that Scotland has a higher rate of youth unemployment than the rest of the UK. The rate is higher still in my constituency, which is why it is such a big issue for me.

Since being elected I have met youth groups across my constituency, including the Logos project in Crieff and Developing the Young Workforce in Clackmannanshire, to understand the challenges young people face and how employers and politicians can work together to remove barriers to youth involvement in the labour market. When I speak to youth groups, I ask them what the barriers are, and young people identify transport, the range of jobs available and employer recruitment processes as obstacles to employment.

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about employment. We all welcome seeing young people go up the ladder—although I do not welcome zero-hours contracts—but a trend has started in the places in Scotland that he is talking about of young people taking jobs in return for work experience. One youth has worked 13 hours for three weeks, but he has not been paid for it because employers know that people want to put such experience on their CVs and job applications. What are the Government doing to prevent that from happening?

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[Luke Graham]

Our issue will be a devolved one, but to be fair to the Scottish Government, they are introducing incentives such as the recruitment incentive, which provides up to £4,000 to employers to help young people get rewarded for some of the work they are doing. On the specific point about work experience, employers need to work with the young person’s educational establishment to ensure that they are not just getting free labour and that true work experience is being gained; otherwise, as is sometimes said, some get the work and others get the experience.

As I was saying, young people raise the issue of the range of jobs available and other obstacles in the recruitment process. Meanwhile, employers tell me about the lack of suitable qualifications and work ethic as reasons that they do not hire young people locally. Government have a significant role to play here, as do MPs and MSPs. We must build a bridge between the two groups to improve opportunities for our communities and to progress young people’s development.

The key to such progress, as in so many areas, is education. I have already mentioned the successes of apprenticeships and the impact that such schemes have had on youth employment. In Scotland we have consistently created about 26,000 starts per year since 2011-12.

[Stephen Kerr]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no difference in value in a young school leaver going into work, college or university? Perhaps we have spent too long putting too much emphasis on university as a higher route, rather than looking at all those options as having equal value.

[Luke Graham]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend and I will develop that point shortly.

That figure of 26,000 starts per year is some credit to the Scottish Government—it is a strong result—but I have concerns about higher education. Only 8% of Scottish 18-year-olds from the most deprived areas enter university, compared with 17% in England, 15% in Wales and 14% in Northern Ireland. Eighteen-year-olds from deprived areas in Scotland are therefore significantly less likely to have the opportunity to attend university than those of the same age anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

Education is, of course, devolved in Scotland, but the existing policy of free tuition fees is clearly not delivering for the most deprived in my constituency. Furthermore, in order to pay for the free university tuition fees, since coming to power the Scottish National party Administration in Edinburgh has cut about 150,000 college places in Scotland, further denying people another route to education. That is a great shame, especially when the staff of colleges such as Forth Valley in my constituency are working so hard to provide opportunities and to adjust to the challenges of lifelong learning.

Academic education and vocational training are not the only answers to youth unemployment. We need more initiatives to improve social capital. In areas of deprivation, young people face not only material shortcomings, but a shortfall in social capital. That means that the boy or girl born on the council scheme does not have the connections to get the work experience that they desire. Those from a workless household do not always have the chance or guide to show them not just what they are, but what they could be. For too many, their background and birth deny them the freedom to pursue their true aspiration and calling. That is why I welcome the Government’s groundbreaking TUC-CBI national retraining scheme, which provides opportunities and skills throughout life. The scheme does not apply in Scotland, but I gently remind the Minister that he is a Minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, and I know that my constituents would welcome the expansion of the scheme to Scotland and, specifically, my constituency.

The UK unemployment rate is lower than most, but the higher average youth unemployment rate in Scotland, and in my constituency, shows that current policies are not as effective as they could be. By recognising this, I hope that colleagues across the House and in the devolved Administration can work constructively and creatively to tackle this challenge and to ensure that young people have the opportunities they deserve.

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I warmly commend the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on opening the debate. She spoke inspiringly about her experience and background.

I had not planned to, but I want to talk about my own career path. I am proud to be a Cranhill boy who was elected to the House of Commons. I am pretty unusual, in so far as I did not go to university and I did not study politics. I left school at 16. The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) talked about growing up on a council estate, as I did. I am incredibly proud of that. I was brought up by a single parent, and going to university was not something that people from my family did. The only person in my family who has ever been to university is my wife—she was the first Linden to graduate. When I was growing up, I always had this idea that I would go and be a police officer. I went and took my standard entrance test and got full marks in English and maths, but I failed the information handling aspect by half a point—so making me a Member of Parliament was perhaps a bad idea.

I remember deciding, because I was quite stubborn, that I would leave school at 16. I went ahead and did that and decided to undertake an apprenticeship with Glasgow City Council. Members will not often find me paying tribute to the Labour party, but that was under the leadership of Steven Purcell, the then Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, who made a bold commitment that we would have apprenticeships that paid a proper living wage. I will come back to that. I undertook my apprenticeship and fell into the job of working for a politician. It is a bit like quicksand—the more you fight it, the deeper you get—hence I am now a Member of Parliament.

Every time we take part in Westminster Hall debates it is incumbent on us SNP MPs to defend the record of the Scottish Government, particularly when our friends from the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party decide they are going to have a go at them, but I have not been shy of criticising the Scottish Government in the House when I think they could do more. Take the International Men’s Day debate about male suicide rates, for example, and some of the other debates I have taken part in. But on this matter, I am afraid that the Scottish Government were given a bit of a bad press by the hon. Members for Ochil and South Perthshire and for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant). They were actually the first Government in Europe to appoint a youth employment Minister. I do not know whether the hon. Gentlemen deliberately missed that out of their speeches, but pretty significant work has been done to reduce youth unemployment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) outlined.

[Luke Graham]

I hope the hon. Gentleman appreciates that I paid tribute to some of the Scottish Government’s work, especially on recruitment by smaller employers, but we were critical of their performance on education. Fewer students from deprived backgrounds go on to higher education in Scotland than in any other part of the UK. That is a fact.

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will come back to education, which is important.

I want to touch on apprenticeships. I am very proud that the SNP Scottish Government are delivering 30,000 apprenticeships each year—I should probably declare an interest as I am a product of that—and I pay tribute to them for that. However, we must pay people who do apprenticeships a real living wage. I was very disappointed that, in the Budget two weeks ago, the national minimum wage for apprentices went from £3.50—which is pretty pitiful—to £3.70. I appreciate that not every company will pay that basic rate, but it is pretty disgraceful. Members have mentioned the national living wage. I am afraid that the national living wage that the UK Government talk about is a con trick, because it does not apply to under-25s. I am more than happy to give way to anyone who wants to correct that. If we are genuinely serious about building a country that works for everyone, it has to work for under-25s, too. I very much hope that the Minister will feed that back.