Employment Opportunities Bill
Debate between Nick Smith and Peter Bone
Mr Bone
I am not sure I really understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but “nasty Tory” is clearly an oxymoron.
I plan, at the moment, to support the Bill, but of course we have not heard from the most important person in the House, the Minister. Many people would say that the Minister is one of the best in Parliament, and I would entirely agree with that. In fact, others would say that he is the Jim Hacker of Parliament. His Ministry is the closest to the Department for Administrative Affairs in “Yes Minister”, and he is responsible for getting rid of regulation and red tape, which is in part what this Bill would do. Everybody thinks that “Yes Minister” shows what really happens in this place, but of course, Jim Hacker went on to become Prime Minister, so I hope that the Minister will not forget me in future.
I refer Members to my entry in the register and the fact that I am a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. I want to take the politics out of this debate, or at least out of my speech. I have never doubted Opposition Members’ sincere concern about low-paid people and the unemployed; I just think that the policies that they propose do the opposite of what they want. Every Labour Government have left power with unemployment higher than when they came to power. That is not because Opposition Members set out to do that or because they did not care passionately about unemployment; it is because their policies lead to unemployment.
I happen to have with me the Library figures for the constituency of the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith). In April 2006, unemployment in his constituency was 1,917, but in April 2010, when Labour left power, it was 3,202, which is an enormous increase. After a year of this successful coalition Government, the figure has dropped to 2,955. I do not say that in any way to make a political point; I just think that the policies that the Opposition pursue sound good, but result in more unemployment.
Nick Smith
I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s point. Unemployment has gone up in Blaenau Gwent because of the recession and the banking crisis. Until then, the Labour Government did a very good job of boosting employment in my area, and I am proud of their policies.
Mr Bone
For many years I lived close to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. It is a very nice constituency, made up of fine, hard-working people; there are just not enough jobs there at the moment, and I take a different view from him on how they might be created.
I thought that I could add most to this debate by not talking from within the Westminster bubble. I spent many years before I came to this place as an employer. I employed hundreds of people in both the manufacturing industry, and the service and travel industries. What particularly attracts me to this Bill is clause 3, which deals with the training wage. One thing that has been a problem for both parties for many years is this idea that we must get more and more people going on to university, because that is the way forward and the way we must progress. However, there are many young people who do not want to go to university. They want to leave education as soon as possible, get a job, work hard and progress in a career.
In the 1990s, when I was running a travel company, I was known as the meanest boss in Britain, because I made some points at a party conference that were translated into the claim that I was paying people less than £1 an hour. That is the level of debate that really frustrates me. We are talking about the kind of young people who used to come into my office. They were really bright young people, but they just did not like school. They wanted to get out of school as soon as possible, they wanted a job, they wanted training and they wanted a career. At that time, the travel industry had a good scheme in place whereby people were taken on and paid a nationally agreed wage—at that time it was, I think, £30 a week, although we are going back to the 1990s. For part of the time that they were working, they received on-the-job training, but they also went away to be trained in a classroom, which was paid for by my professional body, which I subscribed to through fees.
What we finished up with after two years were young people with national vocational qualifications who knew everything about the travel industry first hand. Furthermore—I can say this now, but I could not say it then—those young people have progressed and are now in senior positions across the country. One of the people I employed went on to become a director of my company.
We seem to have forgotten those young people who are not necessarily wealthy and who do not want to go on to university, but who want proper training and a proper career. The problem is that, if I were an employer now, I could not take on such people without paying them the minimum wage. I could not then afford to give them on-the-job training or to let them go off to college. I would also not be able to afford to let them travel to America to see how the operation worked there, as I used to do. That is a real problem, but it is addressed totally by the Bill. I freely accept, however, that there are many things in the Bill that might need to be changed.