Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mims Davies and Jerome Mayhew

Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. We have heard about the cost of living challenge, but this is a global challenge; it is not only for us. We absolutely need to work together so that every family is doing better.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

The best solution for low-income families is not increases in universal credit but access to better-paid employment, so will the Minister join me in encouraging the 1,130 universal credit claimants in Broadland to come to my jobs fair on 10 March at Taverham High School?

[Mims Davies]

I love a jobs fair; I have another one coming up in March in my own constituency of Mid Sussex. Opening up opportunities for people just down the road can often make the difference, and I applaud my hon. Friend for doing this. Every Member should be having their own jobs fair.

Careers Guidance in Schools

Debate between Mims Davies and Jerome Mayhew

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mims Davies]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, but I am conscious of the need not to overburden schools. Let us find the bridge here—the career services and the links to the local labour market. There are good ways to assist schools with this work—Jobcentre Plus, LEPs, growth funds and Mayors—but schools also have to be absolutely determined to look at careers and long-term outcomes for young people and not solely at exam results. We have to make sure that we do not judge whether a school is good based solely on exam results; it is about where young people come from and where they get to—their progression—and some people’s progression is not simply about exam results.

That leads me to the work of the kickstart programme. Despite the pandemic, we got 163,000 young people under 25, who were those most at risk of long-term unemployment, into their first jobs. How did we do that? We got the employers into the jobcentres and we put people together. We threw out CVs, because no one has experience until they have experience—of course they do not, particularly in a pandemic. That work provided life-changing opportunities for young people, but above all it stopped people asking for the finished article. Who here has gone into a role—this role, any role—as the finished article? We have to help employers to stop looking for the finished article and to think about how they were mentored when they went into that sector. We should take them back to where they were before they came into their grand or great role.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the full functional employment we have now, with many companies facing a dearth of staff—I refer to my former entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in that I was an employer and often struggled to find staff—will help to change employers’ attitudes, so that they work with what they have, bring people on and help to develop people’s careers in situ?

[Mims Davies]

I say to my hon. Friend that there is nothing wrong with being an employer. We need people to take those risks, opportunities and leadership roles, but they have to have the experience and the start-up to get there.

I genuinely think we are seeing a sea change with careers and employers, and that lets me explain a little more about the kickstart roles that were created. We have heard anecdotally that around seven in 10 people have stayed with their existing employer, but we also found that many other people had undiagnosed health conditions, challenges at home or other issues that meant going into the wider labour market was simply never going to happen for them, and that was exacerbated by the pandemic.

When I was at the Department for Work and Pensions, we therefore opened over 150 youth hubs. Those were locally led, and included the careers service, local authorities, jobcentres and employers. People could go into a safer, more relaxed and more comfortable space to have a one-to-one conversation along the lines of, “What can you do, and what are you interested in?” If employers can spark that interest in our young people, or in anybody at any age or any career stage, rather than talking about what people cannot do, they can take a chance on people. With near full employment—employment is at almost 80% in some parts of the country—employers are having to do that. They are throwing out the usual way of doing things and putting time and training into people, and I do not think anybody really regrets that, do they?

On universities—my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and others put this brilliantly—we really have to help those who perhaps feel that there is a stigma about not going to university. We are sending people to university who are potentially wasting their time there and who could be doing something much more productive and beneficial in the local labour market. However, that can be done only based on really strong, good reading skills and digital skills, and while many young people and many of us generally can hide behind our mobile phones and feel that we have digital skills, we simply do not.

We need to tackle the STEM challenge strongly, talking about the skills needed for different sectors and jobs and what is transferable, but we cannot do that without face-to-face support. We know that works in jobcentres and with training. Online courses do not equip people with enough to get into those sectors and areas, so they can do some of that training, but they also need practical, individual human support. It is vital that we give them that and tackle the STEM issue as a result.

In Mid Sussex, we recently had a STEM event, chaired by Phil Todd and linked to the Burgess Hill Business Park Association, where schools came to spend a wonderful day building bridges, weighing things, creating things, working on projects and working with local businesses that they simply would not have known were there. In fact, 70% of jobs in Mid Sussex are not on the high street; they are in small industrial areas, back bedrooms, villages and areas that are not seen, and they are exporting globally. People do not need to work in a big building to have big opportunities; it is important that young people see that.

On good careers advice, the main thing is to give people confidence that it is not about where they start but where they end up. I have enjoyed yoghurt making, selling kitchens, working in Little Chef and selling mobile phones and pagers—remember them? I want to return to the issue of job snobbery, because pubs, restaurants and hospitality are places that we love, and we miss them when they are not open and cannot serve us. When we go on holiday and go abroad, we see how those places are revered. People can progress quickly in that sector. So let us talk about careers as a whole. I will conclude, Ms Rees, as I am sure that time is against us.