Apprenticeships Week -Visit to Palazzo Restaurant

On Friday I visited Palazzo restaurant in Royston, to support National Apprenticeships Week. Palazzo has a good record of taking apprentices and the Manager, Laura Hadley-Charter, has herself undertaken an apprenticeship. I was able to meet Apprentice Chef Stephen Cook and talk to him about his apprenticeship, which he is enjoying, before he cooked a delicious three course Italian meal. He has certainly come a long way over the last few months and he is my tip as a future “Master Chef”. Stephen is soon to move into Royston which will make life easier for him and I certainly wish him well for the future.

The photograph shows Stephen Cook, me, Cathryn Henry from the National Apprenticeships Service and Laura Hadley-Charter.

Today’s figures on Youth Unemployment

Today’s figures on youth unemployment are shocking. Almost 1 million young people are looking for work in the UK. This is much higher than in 1998. Our young people should not become strangers to the World of Work. The loss they suffer is not just the lack of money from wages, but also the sapping of morale and aspiration.

Locally youth unemployment is almost double what it was a year ago. Conservatives propose to reward small and medium sized businesses for taking on new employees and to improve the quality and number of apprenticeships. We need a stronger response to the recession too with a sound approach to public spending and an effective loan guarantee scheme to help business survive. Let’s hope we have a better year in 2010.

Opening of the All Weather Pitch for Royston at Meridian School

What a treat it was today to meet the great Peter Shilton on the opening of the All Weather Pitch for Royston at Meridian School. It was also kind of him to keep the fixture on the same day as Sir Bobby Robson’s Memorial at Durham Cathedral. Peter played England football for 8 years under Sir Bobby, often as Captain, but he explained that he had played a testimonial at Newcastle 2 days before Sir Bobby’s death and felt he had said farewell with happy memories of a great manager.

Me with Peter Shilton

School Head Mike Firth explained the decade long battle to secure the funding for the Pitch and thanked Johnson Matthey Sports and Social Club and the PLC for all their help in getting the project going with substantial funding. It was noteworthy that JM’s busy CEO Neal Carson – of (let’s not forget) a major FTSE 100 Company – personally attended the launch today. In fact it was a real Royston occasion with many leading figures – councillors, including F John Smith, Council Leader and 50 years a Royston councillor and County Councillors Hunter and Hill, as well as Royston FC chief Alan Barlow.

The students are loving the new facilities and Peter Shilton spoke of the huge improvement in the quality of all weather surfaces, since the early days when as a goalie he had to dress up with Michelin Man-style padding in the early days. I asked him who should be the current England Keeper and he politely explained that he is still available for selection to add to his 120 caps. So, watch out David Beckham, you may face a moving target in trying to overtake Peter!

Spot the ball competition

The money for the new Pitch came from the Football Foundation and the Brian Racher Trust as well as JMSSC. I think the Foundation do a great job in improving facilities and I know the late Brian Racher would be pleased too. The facilities in Royston have been transformed in recent years and our sport is now well catered for – long may it last. What’s next – perhaps a new football ground?

Peter Shilton with leading Royston figures

Office Intern Rachel blogs on the Budget

Rachel the Intern

Today my office intern writes her reaction to today’s Budget from the House of Commons. Take it away Rachel:

“To have the opportunity to sit in the House of Commons and watch one of the most important events of the year, especially now due to the large-scale economic down-turn, was certainly something of an experience. The two things that interested me most were the large increase in borrowing and the new money the Chancellor plans to spend on young people. Just having more new 6th form places available isn’t going to bring the numbers that the Government want to see because young people are asking what this extra education will be worth at the end of it. Most of the people I know who have applied for EMA have had to wait for months to receive the benefits, if it’s not encouraging people now why will it encourage more young people after this Budget? Overall it was interesting to see the party debates over the Budget.”

Train to Gain Wake up Call to Government

The April CBI Skills’ survey is a Wake up call to Government pointing to a lack of quality in their flagship “Train to Gain” programme, which should be making more of an impact on businesses. In the House of Commons I raise regularly the need for the right quality of training and support.

Local employers tell me how vital it is to use the recession to train our workforce, because the jobs of the future will require higher levels of skill. This is true for those both in and out of work. Employers want more out of staff training during the recession to help their businesses survive.

The April CBI/Nord Anglia education and skills survey, ‘Emerging stronger: the value of education and skills in turbulent times’, shows that in response to the recession, over half of employers (51%) say that they want to target their training more effectively to “ensure they are better placed for an upturn when it comes.” (CBI’s Director-General, Richard Lambert)

42% of employers using Train to Gain say it has delivered ‘no impact’ for their business, and three-quarters rated its training brokerage service as ‘poor’ or at best ‘mixed’. While Employers support the principles behind Train to Gain – skills advice and access to funding for their staff on nationally accredited training courses – it is clearly not delivering.

Recent government figures on the performance of Train to Gain show the biggest increases in employer demand was for Level 3 training. This brings me back to the point I have made regularly in the House of Commons, that quality of training is vital. Apprenticeships used to be at Level 3, but many have been downgraded by Government to Level 2. Yet, it is the Level 3 qualifications which reduce job risk and bring higher pay.

So, the message to Government is -Wake up and raise the quality of training and “Train to Gain”.

“Back to the Future” for apprenticeships

I have been saying for some time in the House of Commons that the Government needs to wake up to the realities of the recession when it comes to employment policy. Many current policies are designed for the recent world of jobs’ growth and plenty, not the current reality of rising unemployment and sparse vacancies.

A key to this is to realise that short-term job losses in the recession will hasten the long-term process outlined in the Leitch Report by which unskilled jobs are lost. We need to use the recession to ensure that our workers are better trained and skilled, particularly in the new business areas which will expand, such as new green businesses.

Many newly unemployed workers are very employable and will be back into work quickly, but there are others who have not found job search difficult in the past, who will struggle, because their skill levels are too low in the new environment. Jobcentre Plus and the Learning and Skills Council need to integrate their activities as never before.

A particular problem will be how to keep newly-learned skills fresh while searching for work. Practising the skills is important. The government like to claim that the Conservative governments of the 1980s “did nothing” about unemployment. Whilst not all the employment initiatives were successful, it was a period when many new ideas were tried and it was the effective start of active Labour Market measures. Some schemes were simply overwhelmed by the numbers involved in the recession of the early 1980s and quality suffered, but many of the ideas tried at that time have been built on and improved.

I was therefore pleased to see that the Association of Learning Providers is putting forward a “new proposal to re-design a successful initiative utilised in a previous recession, update it and indeed improve and develop it to a significantly higher level of effectiveness.”

They are referring to the Community Programme, which they describe as “so successful in the early ’80s”. The programme created tens (probably hundreds) of thousands of real jobs, predominantly in the voluntary sector, undertaking tasks of general community benefit. Typical projects involved extensive work for the National Trust and other ‘environmental’ bodies, the development of previously unusable sites and buildings, gardening and domestic security installations for older people, etc.

They believe the availability of high quality, employer designed Apprenticeship training frameworks gives the opportunity to offer high quality, relevant vocational skills for unemployed adults, linked to programmes of general community benefit. This “upskills a large body of potential workers, ready for instant availability for employers when the economy picks up.”

I particularly like the idea that green business and energy saving skills, with their socially desirable benefits, could be taught and practised and this would be a direct investment into future profitable ‘green enterprises’.

I hope the Government will look at this innovative idea, even though it is a new take on a successful Conservative employment programme of the 1980s.

Teaching Our Children To Win

The Conservative Party has just launched its policy on Sport in the UK. The part I like the most is that we want to redesign the UK School Games to become a national Olympic Games-style event. Jamaica, a country which has long over-performed for its economy and population size, has just such an event for youth athletics called the VMBS Boys and Girls Athletics Championships. It’s a fantastic example of youth sport done well, and it’s attended by thousands of kids and lots of the country’s top athletes debut there. I hope a Conservative Government is able to begin such a competition here.

Its clear that after years of disastrous decline under Labour, the country’s approach to sport needs to be radically overhauled. Although we did well at the last Olympics, competitive sport at school has waned as children are taught that “it’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking part”. Well not at the Olympics its not, and certainly not in the real world of professional sport. If we want to start winning at international events like the Football World Cup, the Rugby Six Nations or the ICC Test Cricket matches, we are going to have to start teaching our children to win.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt sprints to victory

Support the FA Respect campaign with Ray Winstone

When I was younger, I was joint Manager of a youth football team in Southwark with Labour MP Clive Efford – of course, neither of us was an MP then, but we did try to keep up good standards of behaviour and particularly with the referee. Of course, this is not always easy with young players and the passion football generates. Later, I used to watch my son playing youth football for Royston Eagles and although our Royston parents were well-behaved, I did notice that some teams – naturally from outside North East Herts – had very difficult parents shouting and swearing on the touchline and setting a terrible example. Some were even openly rude to the ref. Now this may be standard fare at some grounds, but it has no place in youth football and I do think some senior teams could do a lot better.

I have always liked Ray Winstone as an actor and I think it’s great that he has done a video as part of the FA’s Respect campaign. Let’s hope it works.

Letchworth Youth Council Visit

Last night Letchworth Youth Council came to visit me in Parliament. I always enjoy visits from youth councillors and this one was no disappointment with the young councillors very keen and asking interesting questions: one was about Green Peace, which led on to us talking generally about the rights and wrongs of breaking the law as a means to a just ends. I argued that even if you agreed with some of the aims of a campaign, if everyone went around breaking the law we would be left with chaos. That was why democracy was so important. The discussion then turned to cycle safety, an issue which the Youth Council had recently been considering. We discussed the suitability of the roads around Letchworth for cycling. I supported their campaign for increased cycle ways. I feel that the Heritage Foundation did well to highlight cycling in their Milennium project for a cycle way around the Garden City and I well remember the excellent opening event with Kim Wilde, our local Pop Star and daughter of the legendary Marty Wilde.

I was interested, but not surprised, to hear that only one of the children rode to school in the mornings – we all agreed that more cycle paths would help, but that in a Garden City like Letchworth it was a difficult choice between narrowing the already narrow roads further, or cutting the distinctive grass verges and roadside trees back.

After our chat I then took the Group on a tour of the House of Commons, which ended up in the Chamber, listening to a debate on whether the UK Youth Parliament would be allowed to use the Chamber for their AGM. Some MPs felt this offended tradition, but I was one of the MPs who campaigned with the late Andrew Rowe for a UK Youth Parliament and am glad that it has developed so well. The vote was won, so they will be able to sit on the Green Benches for one day and who knows, perhaps some will return in the future as MPs. I hope so.

Buntingford Youth Council (From the archive)

After asking my Question to the Foreign Office Minister about Afghanistan (see speeches), I had a visit from 7 members of Buntingford Youth Council and Town Council Clerk Jill Jones. We met in a Committee Room in the new Parliamentary building, Portcullis House, and I explained about the debate that day on expanding Heathrow. We discussed lots of excellent questions on state education, student finance, the Smoking Ban and other points. Buntingford has had a good history with its Youth Council and I invite them to Westminster regularly. The group clearly enjoyed seeing Parliament in action.

I then showed the group round the ancient Westminster Hall, St Stephen’s Hall (original site of the Commons’ Chamber), Central Lobby and then arranged Gallery tickets so they could watch part of the debate. A good visit.