Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen). I should like to make it clear to him that my party is the party of work. It is called the Labour party; the clue is in the title. That is what we are about, and work includes business and enterprise. That is why it is so pleasing to have a debate this afternoon about the future of our young people and what we can do to ensure that we can get them all into work. This relates to the future not only of those individuals but of the nation and of UK plc—something to which we are all committed and in which we all play a part.

I know from my experience of working with young people that they gain confidence when they have work. Work is the biggest builder of confidence, and the biggest provider of health and well-being. Tackling the issue of young people who are stuck without work is essential for this nation, and we should unite around it. We should recognise the things that have been done well in the past, whether under Labour or Tory Governments. Let us celebrate those things and build on them.

Let us not play this year-zero game again, where we get rid of things that work, such as education maintenance allowance, because the previous Government introduced them. In my experience of working in further education, nothing motivated young people more than EMA, which was amazing to me. It was not what I expected, but it delivered attendance, achievement and better outcomes. That is what we should be about in this place. We should be about focusing on the future and what people need. Data showing youth unemployment at 764,000, a rise of 30,000 on the previous quarter, should cause us all concern, and we should all roll up our sleeves to do something about it.

The compulsory jobs guarantee will guarantee real, paid jobs, preferably in the private sector, for every 18 to 24-year-old who has been claiming JSA for more than a year. That is the sort of initiative we need in future to turn the tables. I have to say that there are really good things going on, and I am looking forward to visiting the Youth Engineering Scunthorpe initiative, where innovative work is being done in my constituency by Bradbury Security and North Lindsey college to get young people back into work today. We should build on these things and celebrate them. We should build together, across this House, a better future for our young people.