ISIL in Syria

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

Courageous Tornado crews based at RAF Marham in my county have been flying to Iraq already in the last year. The question today is whether we should ask them to do more, and my answer is yes. We have a clear, present and extreme threat and we have the ability to help defeat it.

I vote today in favour of diplomacy, of united resolve through the UN, of continued humanitarian leadership, of planning for stabilisation, reconstruction and peace in Syria, of cutting off the sources of finance, fighters and weapons, and of extending our advanced military capabilities in a fight that is already going on, in which we are already involved, and in which our enemies want us dead—a fight that we must win to keep British people safe both at home and abroad, and in which our allies need our help.

It is also right that the Government take domestic action, which is not necessarily named in this motion, but which goes with that coherent military, humanitarian and diplomatic action.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chloe Smith]

I will not give way; I want to proceed and there are a few other Members who have been waiting patiently and want to come in.

We all know we are under threat. No action is not an option. We all know there is history behind and there is risk ahead. People are naturally concerned that we may make things worse, and that being part of airstrikes may make us more of a target here in Britain. Those concerns are valid, but we can only hope to have a safer world for British children, and Syrian children too, by having the courage to defeat the evil that we face. Indeed, Syrians are already fleeing it, and desperately. We must act; the UN is asking us to act.

I am prepared to back UK action with all its risks because I want to protect civilians there, here and anywhere in the world from the greater and more certain threat they face from IS: the threat of death, repression and torture.

People rightly argue that it is not possible to bomb an ideology out of existence. That is true, which is why we need the breadth of the motion. We also need to ask what the alternative is. Is it to allow an ideology that recruits from its own military success so far to continue to do so, with a headquarters, and to invoke our silence in its cause? No, it is not. We must back the motion. My morals, my conscience and my heart and head say that it is Parliament’s duty to support the Government in the actions they must take to keep British citizens safe against that active ideological evil. It would be foolhardy to fail to take an action that may allow us to do our part.

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman the action that this country and this Government have taken: meeting the 0.7% of GDP for our aid budget when no other major country in the world has done it. That has saved countless lives and this country can be proud of it. Before we listen to all these lectures about acting too late, we should recall that it was this Government who put the money into the refugee camps and sorted out the 0.7% of GDP, and it is this Government who are now saying we should take 20,000 Syrian refugees.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s move today, and the generous spirit shown by my constituents and others around the country. I wonder whether he has considered the other part of our humanitarian recent history from this House, which is the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and its measures against transport and trafficking. Does he think links can be made here?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point; that is a key part of our work against these criminal gangs, and an increasing number of countries are looking at the legislation passed here to see whether they can imitate it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The law for company donations was changed years ago, but the law for trade union donations has been left untouched. The principle should be the same: whoever we give our money to, it should be an act of free will. It should be a decision that we have to take. The money should not be taken from people and sequestered away without them being asked. Today we have seen it all. I thought that the right hon. and learned Lady was the moderate one, and the leadership contenders were the ones who were heading off to the left. What have we heard from them? They oppose every single one of our anti-strike laws; every single one of our welfare changes; and some of them even describe terrorist groups such as Hamas as their friends. In the week when we are finding out more about Pluto, it is quite clear that they want to colonise the red planet.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

On Monday two men were tragically killed in an industrial explosion in my constituency. The families are devastated, and the thoughts of everyone in Norwich are with them and with the friends and colleagues of the two workers. The emergency services worked tirelessly and investigations are ongoing, including that of the Health and Safety Executive. Will the Prime Minister join me in expressing our deepest sympathy and ensuring that the relevant parts of Government do all they can to support my constituents at this difficult time?

[The Prime Minister]

This is a very sad case, and I certainly join my hon. Friend in sending my condolences, and those of all Members of the House, to the family and friends of Barry Joy and Daniel Timbers at what is obviously a very difficult time. No words can do justice to the loss felt by those affected. I understand that the emergency services are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident in order to get to the bottom of what happened. There will need to be a proper investigation and proper answers for the families.

Debate on the Address

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What I say to the hon. Gentleman is that in the last Parliament, we found £20 billion of savings in welfare. We should be doing this, because the alternatives are to put up taxes for working people or to make deeper cuts in public spending programmes such as health or education. The right answer is to get the country back to work, find the savings in welfare and make sure that we keep people’s taxes down. That is the choice we made at the election and that is what we will deliver in government.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and for the election result that he has delivered to those on this side of the House. He will share my pleasure at this month’s employment figures, which show some of the lowest youth unemployment rates locally on record. Will he ensure that this Government keep going further?

[The Prime Minister]

One of the most important things we can do is give young people the chance of an apprenticeship and the chance of work. What we have done is expand apprenticeships and uncapped university places, so that there is no cap on aspiration in our country. We now want to go further by saying that every young person should be either earning or learning. Leaving school, signing on, getting unemployment benefit, getting housing benefit and opting for a life out of work—that is no choice at all, and that is why we will legislate accordingly.

If Labour Members believe in aspiration, they will vote with us to allow housing association tenants the right to buy their own home. That will be the test of aspiration for the Opposition: are they going to talk about aspiration, or are they actually going to vote for it?

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[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Mr Speaker, I am fairly confident that, whatever the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) might think, under you we will never be an elective dictatorship or any other kind. Instead, we shall enjoy the freedoms of this great place. Leaving dark humour aside, thank you for giving me my first chance to speak in this new Parliament. As many other hon. Members have done, I wish to put on the record my thanks to my constituents, in the beautiful areas of Norwich North, for again putting their trust in me to represent them here. I intend to speak up for them here and to gain results for them again, on the economy, on jobs coming to our city, on transport, on housing and in all the other areas where I have worked hard for solutions and will do so again.

I am delighted with the election result and I am pleased to be able to take my place on a majority Government Bench. That may be a novel feeling for the first few days, but I have no doubt that our majority will allow us to deliver the economic stability requested of us in the course of the election. It will allow us to increase living standards up and down the country, from Norwich to Newcastle, Newquay and everywhere in between. It will allow us to support real aspirations and create new opportunities.

I wish to make my few remarks tonight on the topic of younger people—the new generation for whom we hope to secure a better future. First, I wish to discuss turnout, which, as hon. Members will know, in the 2010 general election was 65% overall. However, three quarters of pensioners voted, whereas fewer than half of those aged 18 to 24 did, with the figures for the other age groups ranged neatly between those extremes. We do not yet have, and may not have, accurate data on this election from our new favourites, the pollsters, but recent figures published by Ipsos MORI suggested that turnout at the election among that youngest age group may have got worse, at 43%. Once again, the gentle range appears true, with those data showing older voters neatly and gradually turning out more than younger people.

Some people may find it reassuring to think that youngsters are just going to bounce into behaving in the same way as their parents or grandparents did when they hit a certain point in their life cycle, but I do not believe they will. A number of things have changed with this generation—I will call it my generation, although I am no longer the baby of the House. I pay tribute to our new colleague, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Ms Black), who has taken on that mantle. My generation reports less belief in voting as a civic duty; less interest in traditional politics, when asked about that per se; and less affiliation with parties. Today’s 18 to 24-year-olds will not settle down to voting once they get married and get a mortgage. If democracy were banking on that happening, we would be waiting a long time for it, as marriage occurs later, if at all, and house prices crush many twenty-somethings’ hopes of owning a home. So I welcome the announcement of a housing Bill in this Gracious Speech, and I shall discuss that a little later.

Voting is a habit that must be formed and, like many habits, it sticks if it is formed early. If individuals are not doing that any longer and are choosing no longer to exercise their vote, as a low turnout rate suggests, we have a barometer of broader patterns of change. Some have also argued that we also have

“a window into the future behaviour of Western citizens.”

The UK is the sick man of Europe for turnout among 18 to 24-year-olds, with participation rates in the UK and Ireland disturbingly low—Britain’s are worst of all. Work by the Pew Research Centre suggests that although turnout among younger voters has always been lower in the United States than in the UK, with US younger voters always turning out in lower numbers than US older voters, the turnout rates there have been comparatively solid. In other words, the gap between American youth turnout and overall turnout has changed little in 40 years, whereas in Britain that gap has worsened dramatically. Young people vote less than their elders everywhere, but Britain’s problem is worse and has worsened. That is something broken in our system. There is no one silver bullet answer to this problem, although we might talk about a number of campaigning, policy and franchise aspects. The point is that this is not about young people being young like they have always been; something has changed and has broken.

This Gracious Speech shows that it is the Conservative party that can be the home of young voters, with action on the issues that matter to them—housing, jobs, education and so on. We have a chance to serve the whole country in those terms. The youngest generation is least in favour of redistribution and high welfare spending, and we know that this group look to themselves to take action and look to business, charities and other action groups to achieve things with them for their chosen community; actions that the state can take come a long way down the list, according to some research. Even The Guardian has been forced to admit that generation Y may back the Conservatives.

I want politics in Britain to work for generation Y. I want to show clearly that the principles of the small state, responsible economics, freedom, enterprise and social liberalism matter for this generation as they have always mattered, and that people can have them through a Conservative vote. In government, we Conservatives have had a good record of action and delivery. We have spoken honestly about the public finances and have tackled the deficit; we have brought about more jobs, with the most recent figures showing record levels of youth employment—that is important; we have set out our stall on house building; we have reformed welfare; we have set out ambitious standards for quality in education and put universities on a freer and more stable financial footing; and we also delivered a successful large-scale programme for young people, through the National Citizen Service.

The No. 1 thing the Government can do—we can do it more through this Queen’s Speech—is mend the economy. If the economy improves, there will, of course, be more good jobs. This generation wishes for the Government to be able to cut red tape further and foster a business-friendly environment, because 80% of 16 to 30-year-olds believe they will start their own business in the next five years. So I welcome the Bill to increase the tax-free allowance to ensure that people working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage will pay no income tax. I welcome measures to deliver more childcare and 3 million more apprenticeships. That is why we shall be the party of young working people.

Let us also consider what is happening on housing. Obviously, building more homes, and thereby bringing down prices, will benefit the young people who are locked out of those prices at the moment. Like all hon. Members, in my constituency I have had to balance the needs and desires of older residents, perhaps for tranquillity and green spaces, with younger residents’ needs for homes they can afford. By its very nature, the planning process divides people in that way.

[Jim Shannon]

I have noted in the hon. Lady’s contribution a negative view of how young people are responding to the political process. I want to ask her about something I have seen in my constituency: the number of people who took the time to come to vote, feeling that they wanted to be part of the process for the first time. Does she think we can learn from those people and use their example to encourage others to come along, too? Is that not the way forward?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I see no reason to disagree with what the hon. Gentleman sets out.

What we see among this generation is that they have a different way of doing their politics. It is less about the traditional forms, as the turnout figures might suggest, and increasingly more about different techniques and methods. One such technique, which I was going to discuss, as I know it is of detailed interest to you, Mr Speaker, is the use of the internet and the facets of digital democracy. Your Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy was absolutely right to look into that, and into the ways in which our lives are enabled—they are sometimes just sped up—by the internet and the ways in which politics must keep up as those things change generationally. It is extremely unusual for this generation not to be able to do something online and for that reason I have argued, as others have done, that we ought to consider moving voting online. Such a project will take 10 years to get right, given where our starting point would be, but it would signal our intention to move democracy to where people rightly are. It would say, “There is every type of welcome here for you, however you choose to do your community activity.” We ought to be able to say that proudly about this place.

Let me draw to a conclusion. I began with the economy, I have mentioned housing and I will throw in one more policy area, which is transport. By its very nature, transport deeply interests those who want to get about and who want to begin their lives. As a 16-year-old in rural Norfolk, transport was what got me interested in politics, because I could not get from my village to anywhere where I could see friends or do anything else that would help me live my life as I chose. Transport is crucial from a social point of view, from a growth point of view and from an economic perspective. I am delighted that in the Conservative party manifesto we have committed to completing the Norwich in 90 project, a piece of work that I and others have led locally. Transport, jobs and housing will secure the economy for a future generation. I am proud and pleased to support this Gracious Speech.

Cyber-security

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Encryption is obviously important, but it is for businesses to decide what level of encryption they want to operate. These are obviously delicate matters, but there is a lot of technology here, and I am happy to say that Britain is very good at it.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

It has been an enormous privilege in this Parliament for me to serve with my right hon. Friend in his team at the Cabinet Office doing exactly this work. Will he update the House further on what he continues to do to keep our critical national infrastructure safe?

[Mr Maude]

I am hugely grateful to my hon. Friend both for what she says and for the incredibly important work she did, particularly in taking the message about the need to strengthen cyber-security defences out to the business community, which she did with her characteristic energy and clarity. So far as the critical national infrastructure is concerned, a huge amount of work is already under way to continue to ensure that we understand the vulnerabilities. Obviously, the critical national infrastructure is not primarily owned by the state—it is in private sector hands—so we need to understand the vulnerabilities and work with the owners of that infrastructure to ensure that the defences are as good as they can be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The Government are conscious that as part of the move to IER we must make efforts to maximise the register. To do that, we have allocated £4.2 million to 363 local authorities and partnered with five national organisations. We will obviously take a look at what is happening in Wales, but we are already taking steps to maximise the register.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

10. Having stood in his shoes, I support my hon. Friend’s work on registration. Does he agree that the time has come to consider updating our voting methods to include online and mobile options, in line with the way in which an entire generation lives its life in other spheres?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is a good point. It is worth noting that the move to online registration, which the Government introduced, represents the biggest modernisation of our electoral registration system in more than 100 years. However, registering to vote is very different from actually casting a vote online. Currently, if there is an error, we can check it, but if someone voted online and there was an error there would be no mechanism for checking it. So that is a step we will not be taking at this moment.

Youth Employment

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. Along with my hon. Friends the Members for Braintree (Mr Newmark) and for Redcar (Ian Swales) and the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash), and with the support of others, I asked the Backbench Business Committee to support a debate on youth employment. I am grateful to the Committee for its support.

The subject of this debate is not unemployment but employment. We want this debate to be a positive one. We would like to promote what we can do in our constituencies to help get young people into work. Many hon. Members run jobs fairs, information campaigns, apprenticeship drives, work experience programmes and much more in their constituencies. This debate is an opportunity to celebrate the success of those programmes and share the ideas behind them so that hon. Members can perhaps return to their constituencies during the summer recess with the opportunity to do more to help local young people. I am grateful to the Million Jobs campaign, which has supported this debate, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree will speak more about it.

First, I will briefly set out the national picture, and then I will share an example of my own. We will have the latest monthly employment figures tomorrow, but as of today, employment is at 30.5 million, which is up 345,000 on the quarter and represents a huge rise in the number of jobs created in the private sector. The net rise in employment over four years is 1.69 million. Unemployment is at 2.6 million, which is down on the quarter and over a four-year period. Long-term unemployment is down 108,000 on the year.

Youth unemployment is also down. Some 3.4 million 18 to 24-year-olds were in employment in the last three months, an increase on the previous year. In the same period, 677,000 people aged 18 to 24 were unemployed, a fall of 11.5% from the previous year. Of course, those studying are included in the figure covering unemployment, so not all of those 677,000 are necessarily seeking a job. Expressed as a percentage, our national unemployment rate is currently 16.5%.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I would not have intervened so early, but as she is mentioning figures and good news, I wonder whether she has noted that in Warwick and Leamington, youth unemployment has fallen by 67% since April 2010? That is obviously good news, but we need to do more. Does she agree that we should do whatever we can to encourage businesses to work more closely with our schools and colleges in terms of mentoring, work experience and careers advice to help give our young people an even better start in finding a job?

[Chloe Smith]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend on that point. He has helpfully set up the point about co-operation that I wish to emphasise in this debate.

Our national youth unemployment rate has hovered under 20% for much of the last four years; if we look across Europe, we see that our young people are significantly better off than, for example, those in Spain, where about half of young people cannot find work. They are also better off than those in Uganda, where I have just had the privilege of meeting young leaders from nine countries through the Democrat Union of Africa. I learned there that youth unemployment in Uganda is the highest in Africa; the African Development Bank says that it could be as high as 83%. Uganda also has the world’s largest percentage of young people under 30, at 78% of the entire population.

Youth unemployment is a blight for any nation, but most of all it is a blight on every young person who has a hope, a dream and something to offer. Those are not numbers; they are real people. It is a sapping experience to seek work and not get it. Unemployment is a crying shame for those who want to put education to good use and an appalling burden for those who want to work hard and get on without falling back on benefits.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I was one of the first MPs to hire, train and retain an apprentice. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a good way we can make an individual difference? Does she also agree that the statistics show that, for example, every single one of the 29 constituencies in the north-east shows an increase in the number of apprenticeship starts compared with the year 2010? The minimum rise is 60%; the maximum, in Bishop Auckland, is 143%.

[Chloe Smith]

I welcome those figures. My hon. Friend does well to point out how important apprenticeships are, and I congratulate him on offering one to a young person.

National policy, which the Minister will set out in more detail, ranges across the radical expansion of apprenticeships to the package of measures under the Youth Contract, which include incentives for employers to take on young people. Many organisations in the third sector also contribute enormously to encouraging young people throughout the country, some by means of formal contracts with the state. Campaign groups such as The Found Generation add to that. The Found Generation is youth-led and aims to tackle Britain’s youth unemployment and prevent a lost generation. It has recently published a report entitled “Practical Solutions to UK Youth Unemployment”, which I commend to hon. Members.

I will also mention briefly a couple of commissions with which I am involved. I chair the National Youth Agency’s commission into youth and enterprise, which is currently researching and surveying how we can all back young people to start out on their own.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. On youth enterprise, does she agree that schemes such as Young Enterprise have inspired many students over the years? However, it is vital to get entrepreneurs into schools. The entrepreneur Neil Westwood, who founded Magic Whiteboard and got funding from “Dragons’ Den”, goes into local schools in Worcester to give talks and inspire young people about what they can achieve by setting out on their own. Does she agree that that is a good model for others to consider?

[Chloe Smith]

I certainly do. It is incredibly important to have good role models available for young people. After all, by 2018 there will be more entrepreneurs in our labour market than public sector workers. Self-employment, entrepreneurship and micro-business are an exciting tectonic shift in our economy, and I am confident, from what I have seen with my own eyes, that young people will be at its heart.

I also contributed, as a commissioner, to the Industry and Parliament Trust’s recent report on youth skills. Local and regional policy is beginning to emerge through local enterprise partnerships. I particularly commend the detailed work done on skills by my LEP, New Anglia.

Policy is one thing, but local success does not rely on policy. It needs good leadership and a will to succeed, and it needs business, the community and parliamentarians to work together to help young people. I offer the example of Norwich for Jobs, a project that I founded. We set out in January 2015 to halve our city’s youth unemployment in two years. That meant reducing the rate of jobseeker’s allowance claimants from 2,000 down to 1,000. I am delighted to report that we have virtually achieved that, early. We expect new figures tomorrow to show that the youth unemployment rate in our city has dipped under 1,000. We have done it by asking businesses in our city to pledge to take on a young person. They sign a formal pledge and commit to a number of opportunities that they can provide over the months to come. We then connect young people with those opportunities through the jobcentre.

Essentially, we have focused the city community on a common goal. We have tried to provide a common platform for the many organisations that help young people in Norwich, and sought to work together to share intelligence and get young people into work with the employers who are making that commitment. In order to do that, I brought together a steering group, to which I pay tribute. It included Jobcentre Plus, City College Norwich, Norfolk chamber of commerce, the regional media group Archant—it runs information about the campaign in the Norwich Evening News and the Eastern Daily Press—and scores of employers, led by Howes Percival, a local law firm. The employers that have signed up range from tiny firms such as our one-man-band plumber, who is now a two-person band with an apprentice who does his books and social media, to large local firms such as the independent Norwich retailer Jarrold, which took on the 1,000th young person in our scheme.

National and international chains have got involved too, including Marks and Spencer and KLM Engineering. In all cases, we are seeking additionality, to use the technical term—the extra jobs or opportunities that those firms could pledge on top of their existing programmes. All those firms know the benefit of taking on a young person. They are securing the future of their business and helping the community at the same time.

We count against the Office for National Statistics figures every month, using a measure of the young people attending Norwich jobcentre. That allows us to cover the travel-to-work area. We track the paid opportunities that are offered—jobs and apprenticeships—but we also encourage the soft opportunities such as work experience and mentoring. So far, there has been a commitment to provide 1,098 jobs and apprenticeships, with 1,032 young people going into paid work as a result. I stress that we believe in good faith that this activity is all additional, because we are counting against the opportunities offered. We also know that the total Norwich register has dropped and we review on-flow and off-flow every month.

We have had the benefit of a superb employers’ panel, as well as a young people’s panel, to advise us, and we will work closely in the months ahead with our partners’ panel, which is made up of all the organisations that are often more specialist in terms of getting harder-to-help young people into work. We have enjoyed praise from His Royal Highness Prince Edward, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, Ministers and the Bishop of Norwich. We know that we have achieved a good thing but we are not complacent because there is so much more to do.

I will sum up my contribution, to allow other hon. Members to contribute. Youth unemployment is one of the most important social and economic issues of our time, and we can do things about it locally. This process is about the many individuals who are looking for the job they ardently need in order to secure that all-important first chance to take home a pay packet and to gain experience. Their families, their communities, local businesses and parliamentarians can step up to help. Although we want this debate to touch on education, welfare and enterprise policies, we hope that it will focus on constituency best practice, including pop-up job shops, social networks and local campaigns. We hope that hon. Members will share the good work being done in their locality and learn from others, so that each hon. Member leaves with a set of actions for the summer recess when the latest school, college and university leavers look for their own place in the world of which they can be proud.

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[Chris Bryant]

They have improved dramatically, which is thanks largely to the Welsh Assembly Government and very little to the Government in Westminster—if we are going to get partisan.

There have been some important contributions to the debate. It is an enormous shame that we have lost the Minister who was here at the beginning. I gather he has gone off to Downing street, and we will discover later whether he has been promoted as much as he would like, but I wish him well. I say gently to the Government that it is naughty not only to shift responsibility for answering the debate, which was originally intended for the DWP, to another Department, but then, when we are three quarters of the way through, to hoik the Minister off to get some new employment—taking him out of a debate on those affected by youth unemployment when he does not look old enough to be out of that category. I have not even mentioned the Minister who is about to reply, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson).

[Chloe Smith]

On that point, I will spare the Minister’s blushes by saying that we all think young people should be in Government positions. However, I should also note that Backbench Business Committee officials asked me which Ministry I would prefer to respond to the debate, and I said it would be helpful for a Minister from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to reply, because the debate is about employment, not unemployment.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, the Minister for Employment is in the Department for Work and Pensions. Be that as it may, let us get on to the matter in hand.

The truth is that the economy is improving and Opposition Members are as delighted about that as Government Members. I say that because many Opposition Members represent seats where what this country has suffered economically over the past few years is felt even more aggressively and painfully than it is in seats represented by Government Members. I know there are pockets of deprivation in every constituency in the land, but the honest truth is that many Opposition Members deal weekly and daily with multiple levels of deprivation, some historical and some new, so we know the pain. We are therefore delighted that the economy is improving, although I sometimes feel quite angry, and I think my constituents do too, when the Government seem complacent about the situation we are in.

The truth of the matter is that we still have the highest ever number of people in part-time employment who would like to be in full-time employment, many of them women. That is a significant challenge, because the issue then is how people in work pay the bills. Under this Government, for the first time ever the problem is that the majority of those living in poverty are people in work. That must be a cause of shame for all of us. Youth unemployment is still stubbornly high. I fully accept that the numbers have fallen, and they have fallen in my constituency. However, they reached an absolute peak last September, and there is still a considerable way to go. I will talk about that a little more later.

I am glad that we have a flexible labour market, but I often worry that the flexibility is all on the part of those who are employed, and that the employer can sometimes exploit that to such a degree that there is unfairness in the market. That means that whether someone is on a zero-hours contract without wanting to be, or is on an exclusive zero-hours contract, or does not have enough hours because the number they are given depends entirely on whether they get on with the boss rather than on a contract, their working conditions will be kept pretty miserable—let alone the problems of low pay.

At the moment some 853,000 young people aged 24 or under are unemployed. Although the figures have fallen, the ratio of young unemployed people to adult unemployed people is considerably higher in this country than for all our competitors. In the UK there are 3.6 young unemployed people for every unemployed adult; in the EU as a whole there are 2.4 and in Germany just 1.6 unemployed young people to every unemployed adult. Many hon. Members cite Spain and Greece, where youth unemployment is high, but we should not underestimate the problem in this country.

As several of my hon. Friends have mentioned—not least my hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) and for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) who chairs the all-party group on youth unemployment—the recession in the UK has hit the young hardest. All the economic statistics show that they have had a harder time of it than anyone else, and today, although I do not suppose that anyone will notice because the great reshuffle will obscure it all, prices are still rising 2.5 times faster than wages. That has a dramatic effect on people who are on low wages, because they spend a far higher percentage of their wages on the basics of life such as eating and heating. In the past five years, the employment rate has fallen faster among 20-year-olds than any other age group. Real pay has also fallen fastest for the young. We must factor in housing costs and the state of the housing market. They were part of the problem in Spain and Greece: the housing market fell apart, contributing to high youth unemployment. Because of the cost of housing, young people have problems with personal social mobility and moving from parts of the country with no employment to places where there is employment.

We should never forget how those things affect people, including their long-term health. A young person who has been out of work for more than six months is twice as likely as anyone else to be taking antidepressants, and anyone who is out of work for six months or longer is six times more likely to have a mental health problem of some kind, which might make it difficult for them to get back into the labour market. People move further and further from the labour market. One of the most depressing statistics that I saw this year was from the Prince’s Trust Macquarie youth index, which suggested that 750,000 young people in this country said they had nothing to live for.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman just said that it was a sale that nobody wanted. It was in his manifesto—it was a commitment of the last Government. They are shaking—[Interruption.] They worked so hard, but they failed to do it. This coalition Government privatised Royal Mail, created thousands of new shareholders and have a great business working for Britain. We have seen it all from Labour this week. They are advertising for fresh ideas. People around the right hon. Gentleman are fighting like ferrets in a sack. Their top adviser—get this, Mr Speaker—is called Arnie and he has gone to America, but unlike Arnie he has said “I’m not coming back.” They are warring, they are weak and they do not have a plan.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Q2. It is as quick to go 225 miles over land and sea from here to Brussels as it is to go half the distance on the train to Norwich. Does my right hon. Friend agree that East Anglia needs investment in better, faster rail infrastructure and that the Norwich in 90 taskforce will bring benefits to businesses and passengers in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex?

[The Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and others for the work they are doing on the Norwich in 90 taskforce. This is a very important project. I welcome the interest shown by business leaders, local authorities and enterprise partnerships. East Anglia is one of the fastest-growing parts of our country and it has world-class companies and universities. Better transport will support and bolster that growth and I look forward to the taskforce report that I know she is working on. I hope that it will be used to shape the specification for the long rail franchise, which should start in 2016.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 29 January.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in this House I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Chloe Smith]

Figures now show that the UK economy is growing at its fastest rate since 2007, which is further proof that our plan is working. But there is a choice: stick with it, or abandon a plan that is delivering a better economic future and jobs for my constituents in Norwich North. Does the Prime Minister agree that the long-term decisions we are taking matter most for the future of Britain and our children? After all, who is an economic plan for if not the next generation?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that should be the test of the decisions we are taking—will they secure a better future, more stability and more peace of mind for our children and grandchildren? Last week we saw the biggest number of new jobs in a quarter since records began, and this week we see the fastest growth in our economy for six years. There should be absolutely no complacency. The job is nowhere near complete, but if we stick to our long-term economic plan we can see our country rise and our people rise too.

Royal British Legion (Norwich)

Chloe Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Miss Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr Hollobone, for chairing this debate. This is an important topic, even though we have not yet been joined by too many other colleagues. I have had the pleasure of working with constituents in Norwich for the Royal British Legion since I was first elected. On Saturday, I will be doing what I have done for many years: joining Roy and Val Hill of the Sprowston Royal British Legion branch in their well-regimented but good-natured poppy appeal at the largest local branch of Tesco. I am sure that other hon. Members will have similar engagements in their constituency.

On Remembrance Sunday, I usually join hundreds of my constituents at Norwich city hall for wreath-laying and the “Last Post”, and then in Norwich cathedral. In the afternoon, I usually take part in a parade down Yarmouth road with the Thorpe St Andrew branch, led by the indefatigable Roy Robson and the town mayor. However, this year I unwisely chose the day before Remembrance Sunday on which to get married. I hope my constituents will forgive my absence this time.

In Norwich, the work of the legion is coming to the fore in an unfortunate way, which is poor timing, as this is the month before November. I want to use this debate to discuss the ways that we can best support this long-lived and courageous organisation. The Royal British Legion is of course the UK’s leading armed forces charity. It provides practical, emotional and financial support to all members of the British armed forces, past and present, and their families. Secondly, it actively campaigns to improve lives, and it safeguards the military covenant between the nation and its armed forces. By the bye, I am pleased that the Government have published that covenant, setting out the relationship between the nation, the state and the armed forces. It recognises that the whole nation has a moral obligation to members of the armed forces and to their families, and it establishes how they can expect to be treated. Community covenants are also being signed across the country, bringing military and civilian communities together.

Armed forces have long been based in Norfolk. RAF Marham, for example, has recently been the focus of an enormous community campaign, orchestrated by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). The Norfolk covenant builds on those relationships and local support and rightly aims to provide a more consistent approach.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The Royal British Legion operates in Ilford North as well as Norwich North. Does she agree that the work it does for the people who have served our country so well, and who should always be remembered, is irreplaceable, and that we should cherish such a great organisation and help it in every way we can?

[Miss Smith]

I certainly do. I am confident that my hon. Friend, like me and many other Members, wants to see the Royal British Legion succeed in Ilford, Norwich and across the country. I will come on to that, as well as how we might mark the centenary of world war one next year. Perhaps my hon. Friend will tell us how his region will mark that event.

Let me return to the legion’s purposes. It also organises the poppy appeal. It runs one of the UK’s largest membership organisations, and it is recognised as the nation’s custodian of remembrance. In summary, its mission is to provide welfare, comradeship, representation and remembrance for the armed forces community. We all pay tribute to this impressive and durable organisation. We are talking about a crucial cause, and it is given voice and action by many members and volunteers who have shown the highest courage in their service to this country.

We all want the Royal British Legion to be a strong organisation. As I have mentioned, next year sees the beginning of the world war one centenary commemoration. Another important event is the Normandy Veterans Association’s 70 years commemoration, which is championed in my constituency by some most wonderful veterans who are passionate about seeing it done well. All that is important work that we want the legion to sustain for today’s and tomorrow’s service people and their friends.

It is clear, however, that the legion faces challenges. Its accounts suggest that it runs at a deficit, and it has embarked on a major programme of modernisation and change called the “pathway for growth”. Its aim is to make the legion more visible, more relevant and more accessible to those members of the armed forces community who may require help, advice and support at any stage of their lives. I suspect that this is where the rubber hits the road. The Jubilee hall, which serves the Norwich branch and is a fine community hall, faces closure. The head of clubs and trusts at the headquarters says:

“The primary duty of the trustees in this case is to ensure that the best value is obtained from the assets placed in their trust in order that they can provide the maximum support to the objects of their trust. It was accordingly decided that the better option was to seek to sell the property for the best value which can be obtained from the open market.”

The local branch heard that news in August, and I sombrely noted that in one of their first phone calls afterwards, they contacted me as the local Member of Parliament. After two months, several public meetings, a local newspaper campaign by the Norwich Evening News, a generous underwriting offer from a local businessman, and some initial commercial negotiations, I am raising the story in Parliament, and I also have a petition from 617 local residents, which I shall present next week to the director-general of the Royal British Legion. I will explain to him the love that we in Norwich have for our Jubilee hall. First, it is the most visible base of the legion in the area. It is the size of a sports hall and it is emblazoned with the wording “the Royal British Legion” in brass letters a foot high. It is terrible to lose such an emblem.

Secondly, it is more terrible to lose a supportive and friendly establishment for many legion members who depend on it. It provides a warm drop-in for those who want it. Every table is neatly decorated with tinsel or flowers, depending on the season, and it provides a fuller space when that is wanted as well. Thirdly, it is the kind of community hall that already has 500 bookings for next year. I would be interested to know of any community venue that can rival that. In fact, now I know where all the zumba classes in this country are taking place; they are taking place in the Jubilee hall in Norwich, if not in Ilford.

That wide spectrum of activities taking place in the hall is something of which we can be proud. The acting chairman and his team of volunteers at the Norwich city Royal British Legion branch are doing their utmost to achieve a sustainable business after some instability in recent years.

Last Thursday, a “save Jubilee hall” public meeting passed a unanimous vote to keep the hall open, supporting the setting up of a charitable organisation to take on the building. Members and non-members alike of all generations expressed great anxiety about the danger of closure, and wanted to bring back the building to its former glory. Local man Martin Wyatt has offered to underwrite the finances required for such work, and deserves thanks for his generosity. He and the legion committee are working hard to make the transformation a reality. They have secured free legal advice through a local law firm, so they plan to lodge charitable status as soon as possible.

I am pleased—I am sure that the Minister will join me in my pleasure—that the local Labour councillors see the value in the Localism Act 2011, and we all encourage the local authority to list the hall as an asset of community value; that could give us six months’ grace before any sale. Volunteers are delighted to have received a kind letter from the secretary of Her Majesty the Queen, who is of course the patron of the Royal British Legion.

Naturally, the next step is more commercial negotiations, which are not the business of Parliament. However, the hall was built with local funds, and the committee intends to maintain it for its original purpose, though it will broaden its remit to encompass fully the local community. As Mr Wyatt has said,

“we look forward to a completion of this transfer, whether by lease or sale, as soon as possible, and for a stress-free and happy running of Jubilee Hall for years to come”.

It is my hope that by raising this issue today, I have done a little bit to remind us in this great institution of Parliament about the work and the standing of that other great institution, the Royal British Legion.

Here comes the crunch, however. The legion must not leave its members behind; it must not neglect the people who make it a great institution. Now is the time for the legion to listen to its members and to its friends in the wider community. If its aim is to make the legion more visible, more relevant and more accessible, then it should listen and be visible in the Norwich community, and work constructively with local volunteers. We are all behind the legion and its wonderful volunteers, and we do not want the legion to waste that good will.

I said earlier that I would return to the topic of the year ahead. As you know, Mr Hollobone, 2014 will mark a momentous milestone in British history—100 years since the outbreak of world war one. The centenary offers a special opportunity to commemorate not the war and the bloodshed, but the dedicated men and women who sacrificed so much to protect the United Kingdom. It also presents a very important chance to educate a new generation of young people about the war, to ensure that the lessons of that extraordinary time are not lost.

As the Minister will no doubt remind us, the Prime Minister has laid out the Government’s plans to mark the centenary. He has announced that support will be available for projects and initiatives, large and small, in local communities across the UK, in the form of Heritage Lottery Fund grants. I hope to work with councils, heritage groups and charities such as the Royal British Legion to mark the centenary locally. It is a matter of shame, I am afraid to say, that the Labour administration at Norfolk county council has rejected that idea, telling me that it has a rather full diary at the moment. It would be a matter of sadness, and downright discourteous to veterans and serving members of the armed forces, if the Labour administration at county hall did not have the time, inclination or gumption to do this job properly.

I turn back to the matter at hand. I will leave time today for colleagues to express, perhaps, their interest in the work of the legion, and for the Minister perhaps to tell us a little more not only about the commemoration plans but about the way that he works incredibly hard in his brief to support charities. Perhaps he can suggest further ways in which the Royal British Legion can do its job and be supported strongly from inside this great Parliament.

In conclusion, I support the Royal British Legion in Norwich. I passionately want it to succeed for those whom the charity serves: veterans of past campaigns; those yet to fight; and, of course, those whom we remember as fallen, and of whom we will say again in November,

“Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.”

We all are friends and supporters of the Royal British Legion. My final message today is to those at the legion’s headquarters, if they are listening. I say to them, “Please remember your local members and friends, and save the Jubilee hall in Norwich.”