Conservative MP Helen Whateley has accused Labour of damaging job prospects for young people by increasing taxes and red tape on businesses, arguing the Government’s new youth jobs guarantee is distracting from the wider problems facing the labour market.

Speaking to GB News, Ms Whateley was challenged over Labour’s scheme to support 90,000 young people into work over the next three years, with the first cohort reportedly having started working at Boots. She said the scheme was welcome in principle, but argued that Labour’s wider economic policies were making it harder for businesses to hire young people.

“Labour has taxed businesses, added to red tape and reduced the opportunities for young people,” she said. “They’ve literally destroyed job opportunities for young people under Labour.”

Ms Whateley pointed to the number of young people currently out of work, arguing that there were now around one million young people not in employment alongside tens of thousands fewer vacancies across the economy. She said businesses were telling her that higher taxes, increased costs and additional regulation were affecting their hiring decisions. “They’ve got a choice between an experienced person or a young person, they’re going to pick the experienced person,” she said.

She argued the Government was effectively using money raised through higher business taxes to fund work placements arranged with big businesses, rather than creating the conditions for businesses to hire young people themselves. “What the Government is literally doing is it’s putting up taxes on businesses and then it’s spending some of those taxes on work placements, particularly with big businesses it’s reached agreements with,” she said. “I welcome work experience, but actually what young people tell me again and again is they really want real jobs.”

Her alternative was to cut taxes and regulation so businesses could expand and create permanent positions. “What the Government should be doing is backing business, getting out of the way so that businesses can create jobs and give real opportunities to young people,” she said.

The discussion also turned to whether conscription could help tackle the youth employment crisis, particularly as Britain faces a more uncertain security environment. Ms Whateley rejected the idea that compulsory military service was the answer, although she acknowledged that a weaker jobs market could lead more young people to consider careers in the armed forces.

“When it’s harder to get a job, you will see more young people applying to get jobs in the military and applying to join the military,” she said. “But I wouldn’t say that is the big state answer to the problem.”

Instead, she argued that the Government should focus on economic growth and creating opportunities in the private sector. Ms Whateley said she had spoken to young people who had worked hard, gained qualifications and repeatedly applied for jobs without success, and blamed weak economic growth, high business taxes and the cost of employing young people for limiting the opportunities available to them.

“That’s the way for our country to be more prosperous and indeed more secure,” she said, arguing that a stronger economy would also give the Government greater capacity to fund defence.

She later doubled down on her criticism of Labour’s youth employment scheme, describing it as “a classic Labour approach to a problem” because it relied on Government spending rather than allowing businesses to create jobs themselves. “Rather than having that kind of circular way of the Government choosing how to spend people’s taxes on placements with big businesses it’s reached agreements with, much better to have lower taxes on businesses so businesses themselves can create the jobs,” she said. “The answer is low taxes, lower Government spending and more opportunities that the economy creates for young people.”

Ms Whateley was also asked about Meta’s landmark child safety settlement in the US, reportedly worth around £13 billion and described by some as social media’s “big tobacco moment”, and whether similar measures should be demanded in Britain as the Government considers tighter restrictions on social media use by under-16s.

Ms Whateley said the effectiveness of Meta’s commitments would need to be judged over time, warning that teenagers were often adept at getting around default settings and parental controls. “We will see whether what Meta is committing to makes a difference,” she said, adding that the company had “certainly been very slow” to act, which she said was a sign the social media industry had not yet been made to properly confront the harms its platforms cause young people.

Ms Whateley said Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch had been “really leading the argument” for tougher measures to make social media safer for children, and argued that the Government needed to take a more robust approach.