The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ():...Through
the plan for jobs, we have also announced a series of measures to
protect, support and create jobs, including our £2 billion
kickstart scheme and a doubling of the number of
frontline work coaches, which will be important in this situation
in particular...
(Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) [V]: Mr Speaker, thank you
so much for the opportunity to ask this young Minister to take a
message back to No. 10 and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As
someone who worked in retail as a young man, and as a Co-op Member
of Parliament, I know about retail. We have a workforce facing
redundancy and hardship at Christmas. What we want from this
Government is a strategy and leadership, not crocodile tears. A
fifth of young people have lost their jobs. With 20,000 jobs, the
kickstart programme has hardly touched young
people’s lives. Will he get on with it and take that message back
to No. 10?
: The hon.
Gentleman talks about me being young, which he can do many times
over, but as he says, retail is largely staffed by young people
and those on comparatively low pay, so there is so much we can
do. The strategy comes not just from Government but from working
with the sector. The Retail Sector Council can take a long-term
view, but we can also work with retailers on the short-term covid
response. This is something for all of us to tackle.
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