Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
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“I beg to move, That this House has considered the proposed visitor levy in England. It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford. It is also great to see the Minister in her place; we have a very highly regarded Minister to respond to the debate. She is a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Minister, but she will be responding on behalf of the entire Government, as Ministers always are when responding to debates in Parliament.”
“However, while they are here, they spend money not just on their travel and accommodation, but on their food and beverages, their purchases and activities, and on all those things they are paying tax and contributing to the Exchequer.”
“That is one of a number of worries I have about this proposal; I am grateful to the hon. Member for putting it in such a rational and straightforward way. I was coming on to say that international inbound tourism scores even more highly because, counterintuitively, tourism into this country is an export. In classical Keynesian economics—if I may appeal to the Government side of the House in that way—it is an injection into the circular flow of the economy. It is not spend that is displaced from some other activity; it is a net increase in economic activity in our country, which means that it is a net creator of jobs. For the Exchequer, tourism is particularly attractive because tourists are on average very low users of public services.”
“Of course, that is particularly driven by London, which is a very high-value market, but overall, tourism is our third largest services sector by export earnings, and comparable to goods sectors such as automotive and pharmaceutical. We do inbound tourism well, then; but tourism is also a competitive market and the reality is that we are not doing as well as we used to. We are doing well, but worse. Over the last 30 years, the UK’s market share of world tourism has tumbled. It has come down by something like half.”
“Britain is also the birthplace of more sports than most of us could name if we were prompted to do so in 60 seconds. There is also the draw of screen “on location” sites, as we have recently seen in the “Starring Great Britain” campaign, west end theatre, live music and much more. There is also the small matter of the English language—and believe it or not, even the weather actually acts in our favour. The fact that so much more of our inbound tourist infrastructure is indoor means that our tourist season is much longer, and we have considerably less seasonality in our tourist numbers, than many of our competitor nations. All those things help to explain our success. We are the seventh or eighth biggest country in the world by tourist arrivals, but we are even higher—third in the world, in fact—for tourist receipts.”
“I do agree; the hon. Member makes some very good points about national insurance contributions, which I will go on to talk about further. He also makes some very good points about looking at the set of taxes as a whole—we cannot just look at a bed tax or a tourism tax without thinking about all the other taxes. However, if I may, I promise him that I will come on to those matters later. Inbound tourism is something that we are rather good at as a country. How could we not be, when we have great cities such as London, Manchester, Edinburgh, York, Bath and Brighton, as well as the lakes, the Peaks, the moors, the dales and the beautiful South Downs, part of which I have the privilege of representing? There is also our literary heritage, not least Alton and the village of Chawton in East Hampshire, the home of Jane Austen.”
“Governments of all sorts and all flavours have acknowledged the importance of tourism, verbally and in writing. I will not go through all the sector deals and so on that there have been through the years. We now have, or at least anticipate, the visitor economy growth strategy from the current Government. However, I do not think—and I am not making a party political point here, because this applies to multiple Governments—that any Government in this country in my lifetime have ever given attention to this sector commensurate with its importance and potential.”
“I do not know if the hon. Gentleman heard the earlier intervention by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who made the point—quite rightly—that we cannot look at a single tax in isolation. I will come on to discuss that point, and I will invite the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) to look at the maths on what happens when we add up all the taxes together and compare the cities that he has just mentioned with cities in this country. We have lost market share, and it turns out that reaching the big target that the Government now have, to reach 50 million arrivals in the next few years, will involve—believe it or not—us losing more market share. Therefore, the great big ambition is for us to lose share of the global market for tourism. We should be much more ambitious than that.”
“Will it include holiday camps, static caravans, scout camps, school trips, pilgrimages, hostels, homestays or sleeper trains? We do not know the answers to any of these questions right now.”
“The Government have also cut the marketing budget for VisitBritain by 41%. On top of all that, they now propose to bring in a bed tax. What is that bed tax? We do not know. It could be many things. It could be per room or per person. It could be a fixed percentage of the room rate, a fixed amount or tiered fixed amount. If it is a tiered or fixed amount, what amount? In truth, however, whatever amount is set initially is probably pretty irrelevant. Let us not forget that air passenger duty started at a rate of £5 and £10 and now ranges between £15 and well over £200. Will children be discounted or exempt? The consultation talks about giving powers to a mayor; what about places that do not have a mayor? What will the scope be? Will it include sleeping in a tent?”
“The hon. Gentleman is a wise man, and he anticipates a point I will come to very shortly. Under the previous Government, candidly, there were increases to air passenger duty, rises in visa charges, the introduction of the electronic travel authorisation at a price of £10, and of course the loss of VAT-free shopping for tourists. The new Government are not just carrying on with those things, but adding cumulatively to those costs at a significantly greater rate. They are doubling the price of the ETA, which will now be £80 for a family of four. In fact, ETAs and visas are now both considerably above European price levels—considerably so, in the case of visas. On ETAs, unlike others, we do not give even a discount, let alone an exemption, for children or for people over 70.”
“Mr Efford, that really was my next sentence, because there are questions about short-term lets, and about second homes in Cornwall and so on. On the short lets issue—whether rents are being pushed up is sometimes another concern with short lets—this levy is not going to solve that problem. The Government will need to do something structurally different if they want to address those short lets questions.”
“Even then, we would still get the problem where hotels over quite a wide area pay it but the events, attractions, extra policing and so on all take place somewhere else. That might apply in Hartlepool, for example, as has been mentioned. It will certainly be the case in London—a hotel in Brent Cross is not going to feel the benefit of some extra things being put on in theatreland in the west end. Of course, though, the money will not be ringfenced. Even if it is nominally ringfenced in year one, do we honestly believe that in year five it will still be ringfenced? Of course it will not.”
“I do agree. My right hon. Friend and I have been in multiple debates in the main Chamber talking about exactly those issues, both for tourism and for the wider hospitality sector. There are some arguments in favour of an overnight visitor levy, some of which have come up already. The main one is summed up in the sentence, “Visitor levies provide local government with a financial incentive to grow the visitor economy.” That has truth to it, and there is definitely an argument for making hospitality more hospitable through more investment in the visitor economy—in facilities, events, policing and so on. The sector needs more money going into sales and marketing if we are to realise our potential, so there might be an argument for this measure if the money were truly ringfenced—if it were only being spent on truly incremental items.”
“The Government say that they want economic growth, and this is a sector that can deliver it. I estimate that keeping on the path of the world growth rate for tourism rather than being below it would be worth between 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points extra in our economic growth every year. We have the capacity: it is true that some places, and certainly some individual attractions, are very busy, but it is not true for the country as a whole. Even in London, our biggest market, hotel penetration—the ratio of hotel rooms to the resident population—is still below that of Rome, Amsterdam or Madrid, for example. We score highly on cultural aspects, but low on value, which means that we are losing share to countries that take tourism very seriously and are actively trying to grow it.”
“The one thing that has kept us just about competitive is not having a bed tax on top of all those other taxes. To conclude—as you will be pleased to hear, Mr Efford—the levy is a bad idea from the point of view of the cost of living; it would add over £100 to a typical holiday for a family of four. It hits a sector that has already been hammered by national insurance contributions and business rates—a sector that is absolutely vital for employment, particularly for tackling youth unemployment, that is all about small business and that is important for seaside communities. I ask the Minister, and the Government, to think of the growth opportunity and about what international tourism can do for us. It is a growing global market that is largely AI-proof and plays to our strengths.”
“In fact, after—strangely—Bhutan, the UK is in the highest category for total cost when we look at all the taxes, charges and policy costs imposed on tourists. That means that although we score very highly on international comparisons of attractiveness, we score 113th out of 119 for price competitiveness for tourists. Some will say—some have said already—“All these other countries have a bed tax.” Yes, they do, but they do not have a VAT rate of 20%, which is the crucial point. Typically, VAT rates are about 10% across European countries. Amsterdam is the exception: it has just put up its VAT rate on hotels to 21%, but it seems that it is trying to reduce the number of tourists coming in, so that is not an example we want to follow.”
“The Government keep describing this higher multiplier as a way of ensuring that online retailers are helping to pay for lower rates bills for other businesses. To keep us within the bounds of parliamentary language, let us call that “creative framing”. According to my calculation—by the way, it is very difficult to get an answer out of the Treasury—some 91% of the businesses and buildings that are subject to that higher multiplier for business rates are not to do with online retailing. Many hotels are among them; again by my own estimation, 1,100 hotels will be paying that higher multiplier for business rates. The levy applies to everybody but, turning to the additional costs of international travel, air passenger duty is already the world’s highest departure tax. ETAs are a new cost for tourism in this country.”
“I now turn to the arguments against the levy, some of which we have heard already from colleagues from multiple parties. This is a sector already dealing with big cost increases from national insurance contributions. For businesses that rely heavily on flexible labour, dealing with the Employment Rights Act 2025 is genuinely difficult—and then there are business rates, which we have not yet talked about. Yes, there has been a reprieve for pubs, but there are two things we need to know about that: first, it is only for pubs, and secondly, it is only a temporary reprieve. It does not help cafés, restaurants or many other parts of the hospitality sector; in particular, it does not help hotels. As you know, Mr Efford, there has been a change in the structure of business rates with the higher multiplier level.”
“However, if it is to happen, will the Government write into primary legislation the thing that I am sure they will say verbally to a lot of colleagues, including Labour MPs in seaside towns and parts of the country that need inward investment? I am sure they will say, “This will all be for extra stuff.” Let us see that in a piece of legislation before this Parliament. In the absence of that, I am sure that what will happen—maybe not in year one, but in year three or five—is that central Government allocations of funding to local authorities will be made on the basis that they could have implemented an overnight visitor levy. In practice, it will become impossible for a mayor in any one area to say, “I’m not going to impose that levy,” because the budget will assume it.”
“I certainly do. On the issue of incrementality—I suspect other colleagues will make this point during the debate—there is only one way to guarantee that the money will truly be ringfenced and used for incremental activity, sales and marketing spend, which is to write it into primary legislation. In these debates, people often have a list of five or six questions to put to the Minister. I do not have five or six questions; my one question is whether she will write into primary legislation that the money must be ringfenced. For the avoidance of doubt, I am arguing against this levy in principle. I think we should be making it more attractive to come to this country.”
“Just hold the Government to that. To the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard, I also say this: the only way she can guarantee that is to see it in black and white on a Bill that becomes an Act of Parliament. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the proposed visitor levy in England.”
“Yes, London is unique, but for people who want to come and do high-end shopping and go to cultural things, there is also Paris and Milan. I have only two asks. First, I ask the Minister to talk to colleagues and other Ministers, as she said she would, to consider the growth opportunity from this sector, and to calculate how many people would have to be deterred from visiting for the new tax to be value destructive, just in terms of the tax take from the VAT on hotel stays, food and beverages, attractions and everything else, quite apart from the overall effect on the wider economy and job creation. My second ask is to everybody else, especially Labour MPs. We will all be told repeatedly that this tax will be ringfenced, earmarked and reinvested into the visitor economy, so that it will bring more people in and create more jobs.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Efford, for presiding over proceedings. I thank everybody who has taken part in what I think has been a very good discussion in this two-part debate, and I thank the Minister for her considered response. Broadly, there are three main objections to this new tax. The first concerns the cost of living, the second concerns adding costs to a sector that has already withstood a lot of costs, and the third concerns international competitiveness. I say gently to a couple of colleagues who spoke that they cannot just wish away the law of the elasticity of demand. Yes, it is true that the Norfolk broads are unique, but on the international market, there is also the Loire valley and the Black Forest.”
“I had a load more to say—perhaps another day. Thank you for calling me.”
“To be fair, the existence of a real interest rate in both the Browne plan and the Cable plan was intended to make the system more progressive. None the less, it has become clear over time that that system needs to change. It has also become clear that, with all the pressures on young people and graduates at the present time, including unemployment, now is not the time to squeeze them further on the repayment threshold. In the short time available, I will talk primarily about apprenticeships and degrees. In particular, I want to focus on the necessity of concentrating on quality apprenticeships.”
“It is an honour to be the final Back-Bench speaker in this debate. I do not feel like I am at the back of the queue; I am just not at the front. It is good to see some Liberal Democrats with us today. We know that student finance is a particularly important subject for debate in the Liberal Democrat party. In fairness, though, the Vince Cable plan, sometimes also known as plan 2, is not only about the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives were also in government at that time, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. We shared responsibility. The whole thing was largely based on the Browne report, which had been commissioned by the previous Government under the other Brown, who somehow managed not to mention it during the course of the 2010 general election.”
“The reality is that the number of apprenticeships first grew like crazy under the previous Government as a result of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and then it came back down following our reforms to make the apprenticeships higher quality and more exacting. In 2010, the 280,000 figure was still lower than the 340,000 that we achieved in government. Now it looks like the Government are set on restarting that rollercoaster by reducing the standard of apprenticeships.”
“First, in 2012 we introduced the minimum length of one year. We then had the substantial package of reforms in 2017 to make sure that there would be 20% of time off the job and to introduce the apprenticeship levy. It included the move from frameworks, which were sort of tick-box standards in many cases, to proper standards that would be designated and designed by employers and would have a proper end-point assessment to guarantee that that person had learned those occupational standards. And yes, of course the number of people on apprenticeships then fell. The Government amendment says that they want to reverse the decline in apprenticeships under the previous Government.”
“I will, but I will start by telling my hon. Friend about the lack of quality in some previous apprenticeships. I draw the House’s attention to the 2012 National Audit Office report on adult apprenticeships. I have time for only a couple of very short excerpts. The number of apprenticeships had increased dramatically in the three years up to 2012. The vast majority of apprentices were over 25. One in five apprenticeships lasted fewer than six months. Only one third of apprenticeships were at an advanced level, compared with something like 60% in France. In a separate study, there was the amazing discovery that, at that time, one in five apprentices—and this was to rise even further—did not even know that they were on an apprenticeship, so poor, thin and flaky were those courses. So, yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, we reformed the system.”
“There is nothing wrong with eight-month training courses, just do not call them apprenticeships. Call them something else so that we maintain the standard, brand and integrity of an apprenticeship. The Government say, “We are doing all these things. We are reducing the standards and making it easier to access the cash and pass the course, and we believe that we may be able to grow the numbers.” I should actually apologise to Labour Members, because I think it insults their intelligence when they are given a piece of paper and asked to read something that says: “We believe that with our plan the number of apprenticeships will grow.” Of course it is going to grow—it could not fail to grow. The point is that it is not a like-for-like increase in the number of apprenticeships. Madam Deputy Speaker, I know I am out of time.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but we need quality apprenticeships. That is why I regret the fact that the independent Institute for Apprenticeships is being dissolved to be replaced by Skills England, which is not independent, does not have guaranteed business involvement in setting standards, and has now been moved from the DFE to the Department for Work and Pensions. I regret that the Government are watering down end-point assessments, and I regret most of all that the new minimum length of an apprenticeship is eight months, down from 12 months. By the way, a 12-month apprenticeship is already short by international standards, and it is now being reduced even further to eight months. Try telling a German captain of industry that an apprenticeship can be done in eight months.”
“Thousands of households in East Hampshire are off grid. They face much bigger swings in energy prices, and of course when their tank happens to run out is a matter of chance. For them, the statement will be good news, but how will the Government ensure that take-up is maximised among vulnerable and low-income customers, as is done for pension credit? How will the support be communicated to them? For all the questions about how the scheme will be administered, what message should we take back to constituents about what the criteria will be and how much money will be available? It is right that local authorities have discretion, but there has to be some sort of consistency so that people know what to expect. The Minister has talked about guidance being sent to local authorities. Will it include that?”
“On the point about the upheaval along the way, whatever the end state is, I promise that in year one, there will not be a saving. There might eventually be something to look forward to, but we have enough economic troubles that I find it stunning that the Government should be considering entering into something that will make their fiscal task harder, at least in the short term and possibly in the long term. I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions that have been answered in the name of the Minister before us today. Those answers have all been elegant, but they have not been illuminating. The charitable explanation came from her hon. Friend the Member for Crawley: maybe the Government just do not know what the data are. That might be true. It might also be true that they have a working assumption, but we are not being told.”
“Friend—who set out that it is really quite difficult to find material savings unless it is at a big scale. So many of the proposals that are coming forward are not at that scale—often for good reason, because it is difficult to create a meaningful identity in such a big area. There will, however, be some economies of scale. If bin collection is taken from the lower tier and put into the unitary, it should be possible to do that on a lower unit cost. There will also, however, be some diseconomies of scale, because some things will come from the upper tier and be moved into a smaller unit of geography, creating a diseconomy. I have no idea what the balance of those two things is, but we seem to be launching into this massive change—wholesale reorganisation—without knowing.”
“Whatever the pros and cons of different forms of local government, there is always a difficulty in the short term. Whenever anything is changed or reorganised, as anyone who has worked in business knows, there will be a great argument for, for example, moving the sales force to a regional level or back to a national level. Along the way, however, a lot of cost is incurred and effectiveness is eroded because people’s attention is moved from the key task in hand to what is happening in the organisation. Buildings have to be sold and redundancies made. All sorts of things affect operational effectiveness. There is then still the question: what, ultimately, is the balance in terms of cost saving? I think that we are all grateful to the hon. Member for Crawley—I will call him my hon.”
“Member expressed the opposite view, but my fear is that in this new set-up, there will be the risk of more encroachment on to rural areas, because in the dominant urban areas, they will see less physical constraints for more sprawl out from those urban settlements. The other point that I am not sure has quite permeated the public discourse is about identity. People often identify with the county and the town or village they are in. We have not yet given names to any of the new unitary authorities that might be created in the county of Hampshire, but they are almost certainly going to end up being, to some extent, artificial constructs—in the same way that, back in 1974, a lot of new identities were created, which was sometimes a difficult thing for people to deal with.”
“One of the reasons this matters so much—previous speakers have raised this point—is the very high-cost items that will go into these new unitary authorities, principally adult social care and the high needs block, or SEND. In order to fund those costs for people at either end of the age scale, we need quite a lot of people in the middle. We need working-age adults contributing, and businesses contributing their taxes as well. The hon. Member for Crawley talked about housing. One of the points that has not yet quite registered with everybody is the way that housing development planning will change. It will be on a different level, which will be further away—more remote—from the areas that are affected and could involve quite a lot of rebalancing of where housing goes. The hon.”
“There are two big things going on at the same time that quite often get conflated: the creation of mayoralties and the bringing together of different local authorities at unitary level, which we call local government reorganisation—LGR. The two things often get conflated, but today we are talking primarily about the second. I will be honest: we can make arguments in favour of unitary authorities, in favour of two-tier authorities, and in favour of three tiers—we can make all sorts of arguments—but if we are going to have this change, how we divvy up and carve up areas makes a huge difference. In my area, East Hampshire district council and Hampshire county council have been working hard on putting forward a good proposal.”
“It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I commend the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) for bringing this important subject to the House today. It is great to see MPs from across the House here in Westminster Hall, although with 400-odd Labour MPs and quite a few in the south-east these days, we might have expected more than one to come to speak in favour of this flagship Government policy—it is not entirely apparent to all of us why it is a flagship Government policy, but there we have it. Let us be frank: the hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) made an unconventional pitch to the Whips Office, but it was a pleasure and privilege to hear his very well reasoned and well thought-out case, obviously based on many years of experience.”
“As with many projections, some things are more uncertain than others. Typically, in business, revenues are really hard to project, but costs are a lot easier. Can the Minister share with us what the costs of the reorganisation are anticipated to be?”
“If colleagues across the House think back to their first job, perhaps washing up in a restaurant or working shifts in a shop, they probably did not know at the start if they would be working exactly the same number of hours every week and so on; it turns out that a lot of us probably had our first opportunity in the world of work through a zero-hours contract. It will be true for people even after the Employment Rights Act—those with such a contract will have some extra guarantees included in nit. However, it will also be a bigger deal, from an employer’s point of view, and it will add some risk to taking on young people. What will be the balance for employers and employees? It is, for Ministers, a leap of faith.”
“Those on the Government Benches have been grimacing a little, but I do not know how many of them know that the proportion of people on zero-hours contracts has gone up since the general election of 2024. They are just a part of our economy. They are also heavily skewed towards young people, such as students working in sectors like hospitality and other seasonal occupations. About 40% of people with a zero-hours contract job are under 25. I myself was once a young person with a zero-hours contract—I just did not know it was called that.”
“Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), used to bring them up every week at Prime Minister’s questions, saying that they were an epidemic, ripping apart our country. At the time, the Conservatives researched how big a deal zero-hours contracts were, and it turned out that fewer than 3% of workers had a zero-hours contract for their main job. There were others who had one for a second job, including many working as bank staff in the NHS. There were also lots of students on them. It turned out that the average number of hours on a zero-hours contract was 25, and—here’s the bit that nobody could accept—the average job satisfaction of people on a zero-hours contract was higher than it was for workers overall.”
“Right now, we have the historical rarity—I am not sure it is unique, but it is certainly a rarity—that the ratio of youth unemployment to total unemployment in the UK is higher than it is in the EU. That is before we feel all the effects of the Employment Rights Act 2025; I am sure that some effects were there already, but we have yet to feel the full effect. That Act will discourage taking on new workers, especially new untested workers, and that is of course what youth unemployment is. Let me talk about one aspect of the 2025 Act: zero-hours contracts. These contracts have a special place in Labour mythology, which comes from the time when the last leader of the party, the right hon.”
“There is a fancy economics term for it: insider-outsider theory. That theory basically says that when there are economic troubles in a system that has very heavily regulated labour markets, very high levels of employment protection and the very heavy involvement of trade unions, all the help tends to go to the people in work, and it is those trying to get into work—the outsiders—who suffer as a result. Historically, our country has had more liberalised—although not totally liberalised—labour markets, which has meant that we have not had those problems with youth unemployment to the same extent as some of our near neighbours in Europe, and we have tended to recover more quickly when they do occur.”
“On top of that, we have the situation at the moment whereby sectors that disproportionately employ young people—in shops, restaurants, hotels and throughout retail, hospitality and leisure—have been particularly hard hit by the national insurance and business rates hikes. I said that youth unemployment usually tends to rise faster and be higher than overall unemployment. That is true, but historically it is not as true in this country as it is in the rest of Europe. There are exceptions—in Germany and the Netherlands, for example—but it is the case in southern Europe. After the crash under the previous Labour Government in 2007-08, there was talk of a lost generation in southern Europe as youth unemployment rates soared so high. Why should the situation in those countries be different from the situation in countries like ours?”
“Unemployment overall has gone up, but it is young people who have borne the brunt; the rate of increase has been almost twice as high for young people as it has overall. To be fair, that is usually the case—when there is rising unemployment, it is always young people who feel it first and hardest. Why? Well, as the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said, the first thing that employers do when things look uncertain or difficult is to stop hiring. A hiring freeze is the quickest way to cut down the payroll. Secondly, if companies have to let people go, I am afraid that redundancy is cheaper when it comes to younger people, so they sometimes deploy a LIFO rule —last in, first out. There is then the secondary effect that the more experienced workers can fill the vacancies.”
“There are many ways that we can express it, but none of them are good: youth unemployment is at 15.9%; it is up 10%; it is up 1.5 percentage points; it is up over 100,000 in the last year; it is at a 10-year high—higher than in the covid era. Let us be clear: this is not economic inactivity we are talking about; it is unemployment. The definition of unemployment is not about who is claiming benefits; it is about having had no income whatever—not having worked for a paid hour—in the reference week. It is about being available for work and actively looking for work. That is the number that has gone up. The increasing number of people who are both studying and seeking to work—for whom, by the way, zero-hours contracts are especially relevant—is a particular issue, and I will come back to that point.”
“My worry is that, with the increase in costs, it will be simply unaffordable for them to take on young people in nearly the same numbers. The same is true for pubs and many other employers. We are seeing the early effects of Government policy in today’s youth unemployment numbers, and I take no pleasure whatsoever in saying this, but I am afraid that they are going to get materially worse. I ask the Government to take that seriously and to act, not by delivering some short-term programmes but by rethinking their approach in order to make it easier and less costly for companies to take on young people so that they can start their careers and build their futures.”