Richard Harrington MP and Mark Garnier MP: The economy needs a new generation of new entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses

Richard Harrington is the Member of Parliament for Watford and Mark Garnier is the Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest.

Our Westminster Hall Debate on Self-Employment arose from a discussion on how few of our contemporaries had gone into business following graduation, and in speaking to schools in our constituencies that little has changed. The economy, local and national, depends on a new generation of entrepreneurs looking to set up their own business, therefore we seriously need to address the reasons as to why they are not.

The debate was attended by around 30 Conservative MPs, all of whom had been in business before their election, showing that this is a real concern for many colleagues and needs further attention from the Government. On looking into this issue we found two main areas of discussion; how do we change the attitudes that prevent people from considering setting up a business and how do we create the right of environment to allow such business to prosper?

The current school curriculum for business studies, studied by around 60,000 pupils at GCSE, provides abstract understandings rather than practical experience of the realities of business. It is only through schemes such as Young Enterprise that students can achieve real experience. Not only are the current education courses irrelevant to the challenges and rewards of business, it’s also disengaging.

Mark Garnier MP: Young people should not be denied the opportunity to take part in shooting as a sport

Mark Garnier is the Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest.

On Friday, Thomas Docherty – the Labour MP for Dunfermline and West Fife – is proposing a Bill in the House of Commons that will set a minimum age for owning a shotgun certificate at 14. It is a piece of legislation proposed because Mr Docherty believes “our society is not comfortable with the principle of young children handling lethal weapons.”

Now, I don’t want to get into the semantics of what and what isn’t a lethal weapon – although it ought to be noted that in the hands of young children quite a few objects have the potential to be made lethal – but I would like to suggest that society is also uncomfortable with honourable members creating laws based on their own, heavily subjective, principles. In fact, I would like to go further and say that I think it very poor that Docherty has chosen to target young people who enjoy shooting, for a bill that is without any evidential or factual basis.

The genesis of Docherty’s Bill lies in a parliamentary question he asked last year which revealed that 30 children under-10 possessed shotgun certificates. Diving into the media spotlight, Mr Docherty was quoted saying “I see no reason why a child should be allowed to have unfettered access to fire a firearm.”