Justin Tomlinson MP plays 'dragon' at the Stratton 1st Scouts' entrapreneur event
Justin Tomlinson MP today secured a Parliamentary debate on how to encourage young entreoreneurs, getting young people to start their own businesses.
Opening the Westminster Hall debate, Justin Tomlinson MP delivered a speech on how we should be encouraging this, drawing on his own experiences as a former small business owner, and on Swindon's schemes to get its young people interested in business.
I called for this debate on encouraging young entrepreneurs in order to focus our support for business on the next potential generation of wealth creators. During my time as an MP, I have focused much effort on supporting businesses. That is based on my experience of owning my own company and the regular business and retail forums that I organise in Swindon. I myself was a real wheeler-dealer when I was at school—if someone needed football stickers, comics or school lockers, I was their man. I want that type of young entrepreneurial flair to be promoted and supported.
I note that in the debates on business and enterprise, we often do not focus on encouraging young people to consider, as a career path, setting up their own business. When I go round talking to young people in schools and colleges, I find that they are incentivised by incredibly popular television programmes such as “The Apprentice” and “Dragons’ Den”. When I ask them to put their hands up if they would be interested in setting up their own business, the hands shoot up. In many ways, that is the perfect time for people to start their own business. Once people are a bit older and have children and a mortgage, they have a lot to lose. For a young person with a good idea, often the worst that can happen is that they will blow their savings.
When hands are thrust up into the air enthusiastically to show that those young people are keen to follow in the footsteps of those they have seen on “The Apprentice” and “Dragons’ Den”, I ask a follow-up question: “How many of you will take this up as a career?” Immediately, the hands go down, there is a deafening silence and tumbleweed rolls across the room. I ask why that is the case and it transpires that they simply do not know how to turn those ideas and that enthusiasm into setting up a business. It is crucial that we change that, because just over 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed and 25% of graduates cannot find work. Many of the graduates who do find work do not necessarily use their degrees; they do not necessarily work in the areas in which they gained their qualifications. In addition, we as a nation are seeking to rebalance the economy.
Those are clear reasons why we should be supporting young entrepreneurs. I am delighted that the Government are right behind that. The decision to create 40,000 business mentors is key. I will come on to that. We have also had the exciting announcement of the £10 million pilot of an enterprise loan scheme that will give young people access to finance in a similar way to the student loan concept.
With regard to schools and colleges, I want as many schools as possible to encourage entrepreneurial opportunities. That can be done in a variety of ways. For example, there are a number of courses that schools could offer students. Those courses include the ifs School of Finance certificate and diploma in financial studies and the finance baccalaureate being piloted at King Edward VI college in Stourbridge, backed by the Royal Bank of Scotland. They are examples of where young people can do courses to encourage entrepreneurial flair. In some schools, that could be an appropriate way to encourage it.
We should also get schools to embrace the opportunities given to them by the fantastic young enterprise scheme. That gave me my first proper taste of running a business while I was at school. I understand that 250,000 students a year have the chance to try their hand at making money. I want to encourage every school possible to take that up and give their young people that brilliant opportunity. We should give students the chance to do that and we should also support them by getting lots of mentors who are connected to the school to support the young enterprise scheme. For example, a simple letter could be sent to all the parents saying, “Are any of you business people? Can you come and help with the young enterprise scheme?”
I have seen a number of young enterprise schemes in action—partly when I was a student myself, but also while visiting schools and colleges since becoming an MP. I have only one slight issue with some of the schemes that I see. They are set up so that young people raise money from their friends. They sell goods to their friends—they know what their friends want to buy—and they sell them in their friends’ environment. That means that they can cash in a favour, as it were. They can say, “Look, I’ll go to the cinema with you on Friday if you’ll buy my T-shirt off me today.” That is great, but I want young people to have more real-life experience, so I have struck up a deal in my constituency with the Blunsdon indoor market. That is a challenging market environment in which price is key and the customers are very savvy about haggling.
New college, in the South Swindon constituency, which many of my local students attend, is involved. The young people will take their young enterprise business and have three days of trading—a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. They have to comply with strict rules. If they have not set up their pitch by 9 in the morning, they lose that day’s trading. They get only a table, so they have to dress that table up, but of course if they get too carried away with that, they will have no money left and will not make a profit. They have to do research to see which products are already being sold, where the gap in the market is and what they can do. They have to stand on their own two feet—and trade on their feet all day long. They have to be able to do mental arithmetic, because the customers will haggle. This is something in which the local media are particularly interested. I am delighted to say that the market will then identify the businesses that do well and say to them, “You can come back in the summer holidays at a discounted rate.”
That scheme could be the first door opening to young people starting their own businesses. The owner of the Superdry clothing company started on a market stall and is now turning over £165 million a day. The Mary Portas high street review said that every town centre should have market stall days, although there are not enough market stall traders. I have now asked Swindon borough council to identify which retail premises in the town centre it cannot lease out at the moment in order to look at giving short-term leases to allow young entrepreneurs just to dabble. Those types of short-term contract can always be found in office blocks. People pay a little more rent, so they would do it only short term, but it enables them to test the water. We need to see the same in retail. I hope that the concept involving New college and Blunsdon market will be a success and provide a model for others to follow.
Turning to universities, I did a business and marketing degree. There were 350 of us and, to the best of my knowledge, I am the only one of those 350 who went on to set up their own business, which ultimately employed people, which is what this country needs. That is in part because 29 of the 30-odd modules that I did focused my mind on how to be good on the corporate ladder. My work placement year was spent in the corporate environment. Entrepreneurial risk taking and flair was in a way educated out of me.
On that point, my old university was Oxford Brookes and I am delighted to say that having met some Virgin Media pioneers—I will say more about them later—they showed me some of their peer-to-peer mentors and I stumbled across Rebecca Hunter, the vice-president of the Oxford Brookes society for entrepreneurs. This scheme has been set up at a number of universities across the country by NACUE, the organisation highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). It is a fantastic scheme. I spoke to Rebecca last night and asked her how it works. She told me that there are 3,000 people on the mailing list at Oxford Brookes university and 600 people attended the events last year. It is about business mentors coming in and giving people practical advice. The best part is that a number of the students involved in the society are already operating their own businesses. Some are doing so to pay for their university costs and some are setting themselves up for their lives post university. That is absolutely fantastic, and I would urge as many universities as possible to make time available for these things and to encourage people to do them. When it comes to the work-placement years, we should look at how students can run their own businesses, rather than simply be a marketing assistant in a sandpaper department, as I was.
I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the number of fantastic outside organisations that are doing their bit to support young entrepreneurs. I do not have time to mention them all, so I will pick just a few. Perhaps surprisingly, the first is the Scouts. My fiancée, Jo, and I had the pl