Youth Unemployment

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman should listen to his right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who said in 2006 that youth unemployment was worse than when Labour took power, and it carried on getting worse after that. By the time of last year’s general election, youth unemployment was still 270,000 higher than it had been in 1997, and still they remained in denial—they remain in denial to this day. The greatest brass neck of all was that two months ago the previous Prime Minister had the effrontery to claim:

“Tragically Britain is entering yet another decade of youth unemployment.”

Just what does the Labour party think had been happening for the past 10 years when it was in government?

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman also does not remember that during the last disastrous years of the Labour Government he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury. For those who do not know, that is the person in Government responsible for keeping spending under control. It was not we who built up the biggest peacetime deficit this country has ever known, but him. What did he do to stop his Prime Minister promising to spend money he did not have and making promises to the unemployed that he could not keep? Of course, there was the notorious letter to his successor:

“Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there is no money. Kind regards and good luck!”

What characterised the period that he and his colleagues have so conveniently forgotten is that the Labour party spent more and more money and made less and less difference. It is no wonder amnesia has set in.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Will the Minister explain why the Conservative party committed itself to the previous Government’s spending plans when in opposition?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

I do not have such doubts. I cannot comment in detail on Nottingham’s figures over the past few years, but as we have been examining in this debate, the problem of youth unemployment has not started in the past few months: it has been with us for a long time and we have a structural issue.

I was talking about the buoyancy that is needed in the private sector. That starts with investment because when there is investment, businesses grow and take on workers, including young workers. To encourage investment, we need to keep interest rates low. To keep interest rates low, we need a Government who take the nation’s finances seriously. We also need to ensure that lending is happening, and I am pleased that the Government are taking a very robust approach with the banks on that. Something that we need to work on more, but which will take some time, is ensuring that British firms are not bogged down in regulation, dead-weight administration and an enormously complicated tax system.

As well as a buoyant private sector, we need to make sure that we have the right skills to take advantage of the opportunities in the market, both generally and targeted at specific sectors. When we talk about productivity, we tend to focus on manufacturing, but the service sector now accounts for two thirds of the private sector and for much of the productivity gap that we have in relation to other leading nations. Services will continue to be important in future and we need to build up the skills base of our young people—not just their craft skills but their interpersonal and communication skills.

It is also right to have a targeted approach—a strategy for Great Britain plc. Our record on picking winners is not unblemished, but we do need a strategy. We will never again make T-shirts cheaper than China, but there are sectors in which we can excel. The trick is to find sectors in which there is the coincidence of a high-value, attractive growth market and something that Britain is uniquely well-placed to take advantage of, such as advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, the creative industries, financial services, higher education and tourism.

Let me say a word on tourism, because my background is in the hospitality, leisure and tourism sector. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I do not know why people are saying “Ah.” That market is in long-term growth and remains a great export opportunity for this country. We are well-placed to take advantage of that market because of our great heritage, our vibrant cities and our beautiful countryside. In that regard, I must say, on a local level, that I am delighted that the South Downs national park will be opening its doors in a few weeks’ time.

When it comes to tourism at Great Britain plc, the marketing department is very good but I am afraid that the human resources department still needs some work.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

This is about the future jobs fund.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

This is a very important debate, and it is a shame to see the Government Benches so empty, not least because the number of unemployment claimants in Stoke-on-Trent Central was more than 250 higher in January 2011 than in December 2010. The good work done by the Labour Government in stopping unemployment, preventing youth unemployment and preventing the worst of the recession is being steadily undone. That was the Labour vision—helping the least well-off through the toughest times. Now we face the morass of a noblesse oblige, laissez-faire big society model that will do little for my constituents.

Part of the Labour approach was the future jobs fund, which secured training and work for young people and slashed long-term ingrained unemployment. Many of my colleagues have spoken very effectively of how well the scheme has worked in their constituencies, and I can say the same of my constituency and the broader north Staffordshire area. The north Staffordshire future jobs fund put hundreds of people into work across Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Staffordshire Moorlands.

A good example was to be found at Epic Housing, a housing association in Bentilee in my constituency, a tough part of Stoke-on-Trent with ingrained problems of worklessness. Epic looks after 900 homes in the Bentilee area and put 26 people through the scheme, 10 of whom now have permanent jobs—six with Bentilee Environmental Services and Training and four with the parent firm, Epic. Malcolm Burdon, the social enterprise team leader—something that I believe the Government are in favour of—said:

“In six months, the lads go from sitting at home watching Jeremy Kyle to getting up in the morning and coming into work. It makes them disciplined.”

I have nothing against Jeremy Kyle personally, but I am in favour of work and the discipline and pride that come with it, which I used to think the Conservative party believed in.

The future jobs fund has worked not just in Bentilee but in Abbey Green, and it has attacked a culture of worklessness in some tough communities in the city. It is important for my city because Stoke-on-Trent is now on an economic journey, which the Labour Government were helping. It lost its traditional industries, the pits and the pots. Mrs Thatcher did for the mining industry, globalisation did for the steel industry and mechanisation put tens of thousands out of work in the ceramics trade. We are now on a journey of retraining, reskilling, education and attacking worklessness. The collapse of those industries ingrained a culture of worklessness in many communities. People still had the idea that they could go to work in those traditional sectors without needing education and training, and when those jobs went, so too did a culture of workfulness. That filtered down the generations and there was a problem with getting people to work.

The current generation cannot go into the jobs of their fathers and forefathers. As the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said, we cannot make T-shirts cheaper than China, nor can we make ceramics cheaper than China in many instances, or steel. We therefore need to train people and give them skills, but we also need to get them back into a culture of work, and that was partly what the future jobs fund was about. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) explained very well how the fund got into communities and got people back into the culture that they needed.

The real problem with the attack on the future jobs fund is that it forms part of a triple whammy attack by the Government on young people. We had the withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance, which had allowed many people to make the transition to education and learning, which is very important in a city such as mine. We then had the rank stupidity of the teaching budget for universities being slashed by 80%, thereby imposing a £9,000 charge on tuition fees. We should not think for a minute that not all the good universities in the UK will seek to charge £9,000. That leaves many of us wondering what on earth the Government have against young people.

When those moves are combined with an economic policy of cutting too far and too fast, we see that the Government do not have a policy for growth. They have a policy that looks after the banks and supermarkets but slashes business investment.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tristram Hunt]

I would be delighted to give way to a fellow north Staffordshire Member.

[Mr Timpson]

Cheshire, actually, but I know we are fairly close to each other. You’ll get to know the geography fairly soon.

Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to enlighten us on his party’s policy for growth?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt]

My party’s policy for growth is to rebalance the British economy, and to invest in industry, manufacturing and engineering, which are vital to the north Staffordshire economy. This Government give corporation tax cuts to the banks and the supermarkets, and end initiatives that help investment in science, manufacturing and engineering.

Welfare bills and jobseeker’s allowance accounts are being added to by the undermining of the economic recovery and the scrapping of the future jobs fund, which itself imperils the Government’s hopes of paying down the deficit. The argument about the extraneous cost of the future jobs fund is economic nonsense. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who is no longer in the Chamber, mentioned the great success of the scheme. Government Members like to pray my right hon. Friend in aid at every single opportunity, but on that point they would do well to listen to him.

Many of my colleagues wish to explain the success of the future jobs fund in their constituencies, but it would be unfair to leave my speech without a good old-fashioned example of Liberal Democrat hypocrisy. In a letter dated 21 April 2010, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), wrote:

“We have no plans to change or reduce existing commitments to the Future Jobs Fund. We believe that more help is needed for young people, not less.”

We now know how far those commitments go.

Liberal Democrats say that they did not know what the books looked like or what the conditions were, but the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills spent his life writing about the storm and the catastrophe and the crash and all the rest of it, so the situation was not exactly unacknowledged. That talk was either over-egging or dissimulation.

The youth unemployment crisis and the future jobs fund policy points to three things: first, a series of broken promises, denials and U-turns by this shoddy Tory-led Government; secondly, the fact that they have no policy for growth or job creation, eggs benedict and all; and thirdly, the perils of the Government’s vision of the big society. Labour believes in civil society working with the state, but the Government believe in the withdrawal of the state, which will have terrible results in the communities that we represent.