Barry Sheerman MP

An ongoing area of interest I have is the perennial problem with NEETS. (That is those Not in Education, Employment or Training). When people aged between 16 and 25 do not fall into any of these categories, it presents a real challenge as a lot of these people will move into long-term unemployment. The new government proposals offer a number of measures to tackle this problem, they will make mentoring more available to school-leavers as well as extending Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA’s), which provide up to £30 a week, through to all forms of educational training. 

This reminds me of a Private Members Bill I introduced earlier this year which aimed to give this kind of help to young people upon leaving school. I said that I wanted to give them what wealthier people have- a personal trainer and a life coach! I believe that all young people post-16 should have a mentor who keeps an eye on their educational training and how they are getting themselves ready for their future. What we can see from the Leitch report earlier this year is that the number of unskilled jobs in our economy is rapidly diminishing. This number is estimated to fall as low as 500 000 or 600 000 in the by 2020 and this will have major implications. We need to think about the number of unskilled people coming out of our educational system. This is the big challenge that the Government is trying to address with today’s announcement.  Another issue that I have been involved with over the past few weeks is the campaign on runaway children that Helen Southworth, the MP for Warrington South, has been very involved with. There are a large number of runaway children in most constituencies, many of whom are not documented as there is no central register, and it is therefore very unclear what happens to these children. Helen and I have recently been to see the Prime Minister about this and a two day quasi-Select Committee enquiry into it has been held, the report of which is coming out soon. This is a good campaign and I think we are eventually going to get there. I led a campaign on the subject of young people being drawn into underage prostitution around five years ago and in that case we had to push very hard to get the law changed but we eventually managed it and I believe we can achieve something similar with this campaign.               

I thought Gordon Brown’s speech was very different to the sort of performances we’d got used to with Tony Blair. It was different but I think just as good and I liked the much simpler, down to earth approach.

Welcome to my first ever blog! It forms part of my newly redesigned website. I thought a blog would be a good way to keep you up to date with my work and activity in Westminster and Huddersfield. I hope it will give you an insight into the kind of work I do and let you know the issues and campaigns I have been working on recently.

I thought I’d start with my thoughts on this year’s Labour Party Conference. This conference was as busy as ever. I always attend a lot of fringe meetings, either to speak or to listen to debates on a range of different issues. This year I gave speeches at seven or eight fringe events.

We made the mistake of agreeing to breakfast meetings on the Monday morning – it involved getting up before dawn and walking through what seemed like a typhoon towards the conference centre, I arrived at the meeting very wet indeed!

This was an interesting conference for me as I covered a wide spectrum of issues, focused on the broader remit encompassed by the new Department of Children, Schools and Family. I spoke at a breakfast meeting on protecting children from violence, a lunchtime meeting on skills in the energy sector and finally an evening meeting regarding the efficiency of personal carbon trading, organised by IPPR.

The next day my meetings ranged from funding for higher education, to how to prevent deaths on the road and improve road safety and finally, how to support and help people with mental health issues get back into employment and training.