Contribution
I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for T-levels. I thank Harrison Willmott, a sixth-form student and work experience student, who helped research some of the figures for my speech today. He is sitting in the Gallery. I also welcome today’s positive growth figures—the highest quarterly growth in the G7 and the highest real-terms growth in over four years, as well as falling unemployment.
However, there are moments in a nation when a challenge becomes so large and so deeply rooted that it ceases to be merely a policy problem and becomes a test of national purpose. I believe that is where Britain now stands on work, skills and opportunity, because across our country, but particularly in communities such as mine in Bishop Auckland, a generation of young people are growing up under pressures that no previous generation quite faced in the same combination. Those young people have lived through covid and a youth mental health crisis, and they face rising housing insecurity, economic anxiety and a labour market that is changing faster than institutions have adapted. One in seven 16 to 24-year-olds in Bishop Auckland are not in education, employment or training.
I recently visited Dene Valley and Shildon, a deprived part of my constituency that has the highest child poverty rate in County Durham. I met locals to listen to their views about regeneration, and senior citizens with long memories told me stories about a time when these villages were buzzing, with their own swimming baths and the best sprung dance floor in the area. It was a time when people could leave school, and go straight into apprenticeships in the mines, railways or brickworks. It was hard graft, but there was secure work and dignity. The closure of the pits, the wagon works and other industries left deep scars on our community and, in some cases, intergenerational poverty.
I know the effect on a community of seeing thousands of jobs disappear, which is why I welcome this Government’s commitment to British Steel in the King’s Speech. I thank the Government for the work done to save 700 jobs at Hitachi in nearby Newton Aycliffe, and I also thank my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour the Member for Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (Alan Strickland) for leading that campaign.
Britain’s NEET rate is significantly higher than in many comparable economies, and the consequences are not temporary. Research has shown that prolonged youth unemployment scars earnings, confidence and opportunities for decades. A young person disconnected from work at 19 can still feel the effects in middle age. This is not simply an economic failure; it is a moral failure. If we do not act now, we risk writing off the potential of an entire generation precisely at the moment that Britain needs their talents the most. When they were in government, the Conservatives hollowed out the very systems that help young people find their place, and they talked endlessly about opportunity while cutting away at the ladders that create it.
Ensuring good jobs for our people is a fundamental duty for everyone in this place, so I welcome the ambition set out in the King’s Speech that will help to sustain and create new industries in the north-east, strengthening Britain’s energy security, expanding infrastructure, supporting the defence industries, accelerating the building of social and affordable homes, and creating opportunities through growth.
When I look across the area that I am so privileged to represent, I see real opportunities: new industry around lithium in Weardale; geothermal energy and other types of renewable power to get us off the fossil fuels rollercoaster, creating energy that we build and keep, and creating local jobs; the potential for house building and regeneration in the Dene Valley area; defence jobs, with fantastic employers such as Cook Defence Systems in Stanhope, PGP and Teescraft already in the area, so we can become an eco-centre for the defence industry; new jobs in healthcare; and jobs for a generation of trained counsellors, educational psychologists, and speech and language therapists who will be in our schools thanks to this Government’s commitment to special educational needs.
The King’s Speech also contained plans to strengthen our relationship with Europe. That matters, because it is not all good news. We have lost jobs in my community in Barnard Castle. Pharmaceutical jobs moved to Austria, on the other side of the boundary.
We need to be honest: too many businesses I speak to tell me they struggle to find the skills they need in the workforce. We cannot deliver the defence manufacturing jobs without technicians, fabricators, engineers and advanced manufacturing apprenticeships. We cannot deliver clean power and energy resilience without electricians, retrofit specialists, geothermal engineers, heat network installers and construction workers. We cannot build the homes this country needs without skilled tradespeople. We cannot compete in a world transformed by AI and advanced technology if millions of young Britons are left without the skills or confidence to participate in the future economy. The great challenge of this decade is not whether good, honest work will exist; it is whether Britain will equip its people to do it. That requires us to rebuild the skills pipeline in Britain that has been neglected for too long. The answer is strengthening partnerships between FE colleges and local businesses.