Youth unemployment is a cost we can’t afford

As youth unemployment tops one million, in Scotland it has hit 100,000, its highest since records began. This is higher as a percentage than the rest of the UK.

Youth unemployment has been a concern of mine ever since I worked with unemployed young people during Mrs Thatcher’s recession of the early eighties. I saw then the scars it could cause, leading to a permanent loss of earnings and poor health.

A variety of explanations have been offered for the recent disturbances in England with government anxious to claim that disaffection is not a plausible explanation. 

Of course violence and looting can’t be excused but it’s worth reflecting on the recent report from the Runnymede Trust which identifies a new breed of disaffected youngsters - precariats characterized by weak economic position and stagnating mobility with no respect for a society that materially excludes them.

Back in July I proposed a 10 Minute Rule Bill with an affordable series of measures. It includes an employment and training programme financed through a tax on Bankers’ Bonuses, a comprehensive careers guidance service, Apprenticeship Training Agencies to help small businesses, and a National Insurance holiday for those small businesses that do take on a young person. 

My bill passed its first reading by a majority of 206, rather more than the Coalition’s majority, because most MPs know perfectly well that a civilised society can’t sustain one in five young people on the dole. 

The UK employment minister Chris Grayling has sought to blame the rise on the eurozone crisis despite the fact that youth unemployment in Germany, Netherlands and France is actually lower than in the UK. Previously he blamed the rise on students. They actually represent a fraction of the total.

For many students a job is essential to supporting their studies and nearly a third of those who graduated in 2007 are still without a full time job. Youth unemployment has accelerated as government cuts begin to bite; 100,000 people stopped working for the public sector between March and June of this year. 

The government is scrapping the Connexions Service and in one of their earliest acts of vandalism, they cut the Future Jobs Fund and the Education Maintenance Allowance. 

Of course we can’t blame all of this on the Coalition. In Scotland, where the SNP claim to be pursuing different policies, things are the same. It’s true that rising youth unemployment predates the present government and one reason is the size of the youth cohort. 

There’s a bulge of young people which will affect the figures for about 10 years but that’s not a reason to ignore the plight of this generation. 

Instead of action this government seems obsessed with scams. A classic is the requirement for graduates to gain experience through unpaid internships or Job Centre directed activity. In my own constituency I recently read of a young woman, a geology graduate, ordered to earn her JSA by gaining experience stacking shelves in Poundland.

Real jobs will only materialise when there is a plan for growth but in the meantime is it right to sacrifice our youth in pursuit of an ill conceived deficit reduction gamble? In one of life’s ironies the present Higher Education Minister wrote a fascinating book (The Pinch) extolling the virtues of the contractual obligation which one generation owes to the next. 

I often wonder how he feels supporting policies which strip the young of their future. Failure to tackle this problem will have consequences far beyond the indignities being suffered by the present generation of 16-25 year olds.