Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It gives me huge pleasure to join this debate in which we can all surely agree with the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) that youth unemployment is too high and must be reduced. As many hon. Members have said, none of us is complacent on this issue, so what to do? The hon. Lady had three main suggestions: spend more, lower VAT, and bash the bankers. There was also a possible fourth suggestion of bringing back the future jobs fund or, as she put it, creating 100,000 jobs. The first of those suggestions has been utterly discredited and the second did not work. On the third suggestion, no Government except those of the ex-USSR and the current Democratic People’s Republic of Korea create jobs. We must be clear that the business of government is about setting the conditions in which businesses can create jobs. It simply does not work when Governments try to create jobs.

On the future jobs fund, the evidence we looked at in the Select Committee on Work and Pensions was absolutely clear: it was expensive and public sector-dominated. It was useful and it did give experience, but no future jobs came from it.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the future jobs fund—that it was basically about short-term jobs that did not last. Does he agree that this Government’s approach to apprenticeships and investing in young people and skills will give us sustainable, long-term jobs for the future?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is entirely right and brilliantly anticipates the thread of my argument.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

If the future jobs fund was not a success, why have the Government introduced the youth contract, and is it not simply a watered-down future jobs fund?

[Richard Graham]

Let me be clear that I was not writing off the future jobs fund—I did say that it was useful. However, there are better ways of dealing with these issues, which the Government have identified and are going ahead with.

I was coming to a point that will answer the hon. Gentleman’s query about our alternatives to the hon. Lady’s four main ideas about how the problem of youth unemployment can be solved. I believe that we need a mixture of different things. We need to allow manufacturers to thrive again by reducing corporate tax and the bureaucracy that surrounds their activities. We need to encourage their entrepreneurial spirit. Happily, and by chance, I can show hon. Members an excellent packet of tea that is made in Gloucester and exported to China. I also have in my pocket an aluminium pedal made on the Bristol road in Gloucester and exported to Australia. These examples show that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and kicking in my constituency and I hope that all Members’ constituencies have similar companies doing great things. Both the companies I have mentioned are looking to take on apprenticeships this year. That speaks to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) about the heavy support and increased numbers of apprenticeships that the Government are delivering.

We also need incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises and I am very grateful that the debate I led in Westminster Hall last year, in which many hon. Members spoke up in favour of SMEs, was heard by the Government, who have introduced those incentives so that SMEs can take on apprentices. If every member of the Federation of Small Businesses in the land took on one apprentice, the largest part of the problem of youth unemployment would be solved. Similarly, we can all lead by example by taking on our own apprentice. I wonder how many Members from the Labour party have taken on an apprentice. We can also encourage businesses in our communities to take on apprentices and we can create apprenticeship fairs and job fairs. I am delighted to be welcoming the employment Minister to the skillsfest in Gloucester on 9 February, when he will see what we are doing to promote all aspects of the Government’s programme and will be quizzed by businesses on what more he can do to help them to grow.

The motion mixes an unacceptable fact—high youth unemployment—with an unpopular sector: banking. It is my strong belief that hammering our financial services sector, which is vital to this country, and destroying jobs in it will not help to create jobs elsewhere, so I propose, as an alternative, an idea that I believe would resonate across the land. It came to me when opening a regenerated bank branch in Gloucester two months ago. It would enable banks to reconnect with their customers and grow cost-efficiently, and it would support our communities by reducing youth unemployment. The idea is simple: every bank in the land should take on one apprentice in each of its branches. That would include the Co-operative Bank, which is shortly, I hope, to take over the Cheltenham & Gloucester branches from Lloyds. If the financial sector pursued that idea, Members in all parts of the House, instead of haranguing bankers, would be able to praise them for their role in solving the problem of youth unemployment. Some talks have already taken place; I hope that there will be more. I commend that policy, rather than the motion before us, to the Minister.