EU: Youth Unemployment (EUC Report)

Lord Wilson of Tillyorn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Tillyorn (CB)]

My Lords, it was a very great pleasure to take part in Sub-Committee B, which drafted this report under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain. As other noble Lords have said, we were enormously well served by the staff and by the witnesses who came to give evidence.

I will deal with a couple of general points first and then deal in slightly more detail with the section of the report that deals with the job market for youth in the EU and with the question of migration. On my first general point, there is some evidence of improvement in the unemployment situation, including for youth recently, and for the overall situation for unemployment. That is obviously a good thing, and it is a good thing, too, that we in the United Kingdom have not been among those who were hit worst by the unemployment problem during the recession. Equally, however, we have not been among the best at dealing with the issue. We have been beaten by a long way by Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and, somewhat to my surprise, Malta. We are not at the bottom but we are not at the top or nearer the top, where it would be nice to be. Despite this improved situation, what struck many of us and came out so strongly in the recent maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham was the sense of despair among many young people—the feeling that they would not be able to get a job in their lifetime, that there was a tangle of ways to make progress, but that they were not capable of finding out what to do or how to do it. That is a very real psychological problem.

Another general point is that it was clear from the evidence we received that it is far better to deal with most of the issues of unemployment on a national basis. The differences between countries of the European Union are so great in that area—the disparity between the methods of employment and the structures are so great—that to try to deal with them on a one-size-fits-all basis for the European Union will not work. Therefore I am sure that the majority of the work on unemployment should be dealt with on a nation-state basis. But, equally, if funds are available from the European Union, we should make every effort we possibly can to access those funds.

I shall make one or two points about the jobs market within the EU. It was very interesting that there appeared to be a growing realisation that vocational training is just as important as purely academic training. One interesting bit of evidence was from Barclays Bank. It stated that it now had a new point of entry and it was for people who were not graduates. It explained that when it had only a graduate point of entry, many of those graduates found that what they were expecting to happen in terms of the job they were going to be given did not occur and therefore they left early. Therefore, it recruited people, appropriately trained and educated, for the jobs they were going to do. For many years we have downgraded the value of vocational training. It is rather good to see the circle turning and we are now valuing it again. That is a good thing. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to the number of apprenticeships and apprenticeship schemes. They are now being reintroduced and valued, but from the evidence we received there was a problem area here. Perhaps it is just a dumbing down of language. What is an apprenticeship? Some of the apprenticeships we heard about were a very long way from the traditional schemes of training people in skills for long-term employment. Some of the schemes, indeed, produced some pretty caustic comments from members of the committee because they did not seem like apprenticeship schemes at all—it was just a good headline to use. Apprenticeships, good; dumbed-down apprenticeships, not so good.

We need to be careful about wording that we use for all these different schemes: apprenticeships, traineeships and internships. It became clear—it became clear also in the Government’s reply to our report—that there are differences in different parts of Europe about what these schemes mean. Nevertheless it is a pity that the Government seem to be opting out of what is called the quality framework for traineeship schemes which the European Commission has put forward on the grounds that the criteria for these traineeships are not the same in other parts of Europe as they are for us. It seems worth trying to find common ground with other countries within the European Union which would help to promote traineeships and apprenticeships and also help to access EU funding for that.

It may be instructive if I quote from an interesting exchange which comes from the sayings of Confucius. I thought it might be rather nice to have sayings from Confucius when the Chinese Prime Minister is here. One of Confucius’s disciples said to him:

“I hear that the King of Wei wants your help in running his Government. What are you going to do first?”.

Confucius replied:

“What is necessary is to rectify names. If names are not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, then the affairs of state cannot be carried on to success”.

I think it was a good point, considering how long ago it was said. He went on to say that if things are not done properly, then the consequence is that punishment cannot be meted out correctly and, as he put it,

“the people will not know how to move hand or foot”.

We do not necessarily need punishment, but we need people to move hand and foot. Correct use of language may be helpful in this and may be helpful in accessing funding from the European Union as well. We need to know what we are talking about when we put forward schemes for apprenticeships, traineeships and internships. On a slightly different point, we also need to avoid schemes such as internships in particular becoming some form of low-cost exploitation—just a cheap way of recruiting labour. All these schemes surely should be designed for long-term high-quality jobs and training for that.

Another area which perhaps presents a similar problem to this is zero-hours contracts—much discussed and by many people much criticised, including by some of our witnesses. The committee concluded and indeed the evidence very clearly supported the fact that zero-hours contracts are helpful in present conditions. They allow young people to get experience and they reduce the amount of youth unemployment. Again we need to ensure that they do not become some form of exploitation. There are rules to protect workers and workers’ rights, and things such as minimum wages. Those rules need to be known and they need to be used.

Another area that is somewhat controversial but should not be shied away from is the issue of job migration. Understandably, the Government want to ensure that free movement is free movement to seek work and not to seek welfare, but we surely should not forget how much we in the UK have benefited from the migration of workers—nor should we forget how much our own young people can benefit from taking jobs elsewhere in Europe. It is marvellous experience and very good for what they do later in life. Migration of youth seeking and getting work is invaluable. It seemed from the evidence given to us that more could be done to publicise those sorts of schemes and opportunities. There is a scheme called Youth on the Move, which has a website that gives details of job vacancies all over the European Union. It was very clear in talking to people that most of them had never heard of it and that even fewer had actually accessed it. There is a job there for schools, colleges and any employment agencies, such as the Jobcentre Plus system. There are opportunities, and it would be very nice to see them used.

I raise one final small point on youth entrepreneurship. There seems to be a growing interest among young people in entrepreneurship—in other words, in creating jobs rather than just going out to find work. The report recommended that the European Commission should make it more explicit that two of the funds, the European regional development fund and the European Social Fund, should be used to back these schemes. Somewhat surprisingly and oddly, the Government in their response demurred; they said that, although nothing explicit appeared in the regulations on this, the funds can be used, and they saw no reason to alter the regulations. This is one of the issues that the wit of man should easily be able to resolve. The funds can and have been used, greater encouragement could come from the Commission so that they are used to a greater extent, and there is no need to change regulations, which is always a tremendous problem—so QED. As we went through all the evidence, there seemed to be a number of cases where we have got terribly tied up on questions of definition and small bureaucratic points, when with a bit of free-thinking it would be possible to solve those problems. Would that all problems of youth unemployment were as easy to resolve as questions like that.

As others have said, the unemployment situation is clearly getting better, and that is very encouraging. However, it remains the case that unemployment for anybody is a tragedy and debilitating, and for young people to go into adult life believing that they will never get a job is highly destructive. We need to do everything possible to avoid that happening and to avoid having a scarred generation. One hopes that this report in some small way will help to achieve that.

Gender Balance among Non-Executive Directors (EUC Report)

Lord Wilson of Tillyorn Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friend Lord Boswell of Aynho and to carry forward a little what the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said about subsidiarity. When one examines the case put by the Commission, one is left wondering why it was so confident that it would work. Indeed, one is left wondering why it wanted to do it. It seems to me that one finds in the Commission an ambition to govern rather than to guide, whereas from where we sit we feel that the default position should be guidance and that the governing should be done by such a large central body presiding over such different, diverse and distant peoples only when it is essential so to do. I therefore ask your Lordships to bear in mind the points made so cogently by my erstwhile noble friend the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, and also so courageously, because he is always in danger of boring your Lordships. Nothing makes one less popular in this House than boring people, yet it is something about which we need to be not bored but alert. The weight is already so preponderantly in favour of the central Commission and so heavily against national parliaments that we really cannot afford to let one iota of it that we are able to keep slip through our fingers. Therefore, I support the Motion.

[Lord Wilson of Tillyorn]

My Lords, I, too, will speak very briefly and not delay the House too long, partly because I am a relatively new member of Sub-Committee B, at least in its present incarnation; I was a member of a previous incarnation some time ago.

The inquiry into women on boards was the first one that I attended as a member of the present Sub-Committee B and it was a very impressive process. The evidence, witnesses and written submissions that came before us were all very thorough, and everything pointed very clearly in the direction in which the committee itself reported. In other words, it is highly desirable to have more women on boards. It is an underutilised resource. Efforts must be made to increase the number of women on boards. In the UK this is happening steadily. There is no sustainable case for doing anything further by legislation rather than by encouragement. Indeed, most of the female proponents of more women on boards very strongly did not want that to happen. For me, it was a very interesting learning process.

With regard to this directive, the Commission is surely right in saying that it is desirable to have more women on boards. It is an underutilised resource, which is putting it rather mechanically, but it is absolutely true. But it is very strange indeed that the Commission goes on to say two contradictory things. First, it argues—although the arguments against have been quite strong—that there is a direct and positive advantage simply to having more women on boards, rather than the more subtle version that a good company gets women on boards and it is successful because it is a good and open-minded company. At the same time the Commission argues that we need a European-wide directive because there will be some countries that do not want to put themselves at a disadvantage by having more women on boards. It is a bit difficult to square that particular circle.

I do not think that the Commission’s proposals really stand up. Of course, what we are discussing this evening is whether they offend against the rule of subsidiarity. The points have all been made by others so I will not labour them. It seems absolutely clear that European-wide legislation does not add an advantage and that such is the diversity within Europe, with different types and structures of boards, that one size fits all simply does not meet the need of the moment. Therefore, I, too, support the recommendation of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, that we should put in a reasoned opinion saying that what the Commission proposes offends against the procedures for subsidiarity.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, this is the second debate we have had about this issue. I realise that this is the second report, which deals with a different matter, but it is important that we recognise that as we debate the need for gender balance in positions of leadership in business, this Parliament and this Government should acknowledge their own failings in this area. We have no room to be self-satisfied. With just 22% of our current MPs being women, and just four women—that is, 18%—in the Cabinet, we are on a long road.