ANDREW SPEIGHT, MEMBER OF THE YOUTH PARLIAMENT FOR BLACKPOOL AND CHAIR OF BLACKPOOL YOUTH COUNCIL – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0071)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

 

Thank you very much for the opportunity of attending the House of Lords youth unemployment committee's event for the North West today. It was a very interesting and useful session for me, and I hope that the information given by myself and other young people was useful for your report.

I was told that, if I had anything more to say, then I should email it to this address. You sent out many questions before the event but didn't get around to asking them all. Of course, I appreciate that it's important to have more questions than you need for an event of this sort - I'm currently involved in planning one myself! But just in case it is of any use or interest to the Committee, I pre-prepared answers to all the questions you sent out. I'll share my answers below to the questions that we didn't get around to asking in the breakout rooms.

What are the biggest challenges for organizations working with young people?

Research evidence I’ve seen from the Equality Trust paints an image that organizations and employers have very poor relations with their younger employees. The Equality Trust found that the following issues were commonplace amongst young workers:

The solution to this, according to the Equality Trust, is educating young people, in secondary school, on what their rights at work are so they are aware when they are being exploited and can take action. The Equality Trust is working with a group of young people from across the country (myself included) on producing these educational materials. But of course, if something on workers’ rights could be incorporated into the curriculum, that would help. This could help young people feel more confident stepping out into the world of work and, in turn, help to lower youth unemployment rates. In the context of organizations working with young people, it would hopefully create a work atmosphere wherein young workers command more respect from organizations because they are able to stand up for their rights in the same way as older workers.

Also, it might be advisable for organizations to refrain from using specialist jargon with young people where possible. Research by Heyes et al (2020) into how this affects young people’s mental health provision shows that young people feel quite strongly intimidated by jargon. Of course, this research was done on mental health provision, not employment provision. But jargon could be a potential issue.

What can be done to create and protect jobs for young people?

This is something I'm quite passionate about. When my Grandfather left school, it was common for boys to be out of the school gates on a Friday, in through the factory gates on a Monday, and he’d work there until he retired. Each town and village had its industry, its way of contributing to the economy. The provision was there and young people could easily get a secure, long-term job. Yes, they weren’t the most glamorous or prestigious jobs, but they ensured that people had a secure job and a secure income. However, ever since industry globalized in the 1980s, many countries in the West have lost this as industry has shifted to the tiger economies of south-east Asia. The entire economy of communities, especially in Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands have been devastated and these sorts of jobs are now rare to come by here. This has also caused other problems. It has led to a greater sense of uncertainty and division. It has increased crime and social disorder. It has increased deprivation. De-industrialization is the cause of many everyday problems faced by people in the UK today.

I feel very strongly that, if he had these types of secure, blue-collar, respected working-class jobs back, we would be able to reassure young people that there are secure jobs for them, no matter what happens at school, and it would help with getting young people into work.

How could this be done? China encouraged industry to move there by making corporate tax quite low and eroding workers' rights. I do not intend for any such thing to be done here. Now is not the time to cut taxes for large corporations who are doing well (for those industries hard-hit by COVID, such as hospitality, it might be - which I why I support the continued VAT holiday for the hospitality industry) because this could lead to a public deficit and make it harder for us to fund our vital public services, such as the NHS. Furthermore, workers' rights are absolutely non-negotiable. We should take pride in how far workers’ rights have come in the UK. The same goes for consumers’ rights - we’re not letting product quality slip.

The economic reasoning behind the shift of industry is that it is cheaper to do it there than here. Therefore, we need to turn the tides and make it more expensive to manufacture out there than to do it here. This could be done by introducing a further tax on foreign-made goods being sold in the UK. Of course, this could leave us vulnerable to these companies making the decision that it isn’t worth selling their goods here anymore, and this could lead to shortages. However, there are various solutions I have to try and get around this:

  1. It should be coordinated with our allies. The G7 could take a leading role here. If similar policies were introduced in all G7 nations, companies would risk losing huge profits if they chose to withdraw their goods from all these markets. There is an increasing attitude within China that western companies who manufacture there or source resources from there are bad because they’re beginning to call out the persecution of the Uyghurs. Chinese people are starting to boycott these companies and the Chinese market is becoming less important to them. As the western market, therefore, becomes more important to them, they might be willing to comply with us more.
  2. This policy would be introduced gradually. Start with those companies which profit the most from the UK market first, those who haven’t been scarred by the pandemic and those in peripheral industries (avoid initially introducing it against vital industries such as pharmaceuticals), as they’d be the least likely to pull out, and see how it goes. Be prepared to withdraw if signs emerge that the policy is failing. (Not much food is imported, so we wouldn't have to worry about it so much - see here.)

It might also be worth adding that the tax could be increased if goods are imported from a country that has known supply issues. For example, we know that many goods manufactured in China are being done through forced labor from the persecuted Uyghur race. If problems like this arose, then the tax for goods manufactured in a particular country could be increased. This would enable us to deal with two issues at once - unemployment at home and persecution abroad. It would help young people in the UK get into work, whilst also bolstering the UK's position as an advocate for human rights on the world stage.

This would economically incentivize shifting manufacturing back over here because, if the tax was high enough, it would render manufacturing abroad more expensive than doing it here. Of course, the tax would only apply to foreign-made goods. If companies started making products in the UK, they would no longer have to pay the tax here.

By following these plans and creating more blue-collar jobs, we would create manufacturing jobs that would be open to many young people, as they were historically, and get young people into potentially long-term, secure employment.

Focusing more specifically on secure employment, zero-hours contracts have got to go. When the pandemic kicked off, too many of my constituents were in insecure employment on these contracts. It rendered them ineligible for much Government support, and there were young parents who were struggling to feed their children. It was a heartbreaking and devastating thing to hear. Due to the insecure nature of these contracts, it is strongly advisable to look into getting rid of them and ensuring that all workers know what hours they will be working and just have the security of knowing that they will be having set work hours.

I hope these additional answers are of use in the Committee's report. Once again, I would like to thank you for the opportunity today - it was most enjoyable and useful.

 

22nd June 2021