George Freeman, has written to schools in Norfolk to promote the benefits of this summer’s National Citizen Service (NCS) programme and to urge Norfolk’s 16 year olds to get involved after completing Year 11.

Speaking about the Service, George said “Too often politicians do our young people down. Teenagers are entering adulthood at a time when unemployment and national debt is sadly very high. I believe we owe it to the next generation to provide the very best opportunities to help them to develop their skills and confidence and encourage them to be responsible members of their communities. This summer the Football League Trust will be providing the National Citizen Service to Year 11 students across Norfolk and I hope their schools and families will support them in seizing this fantastic opportunity.”

The NCS will offer 30,000 young people across the country and a variety of backgrounds the opportunity to stay away from home for two weeks, and take part in a packed schedule of adventure and personal development activities. The residential weeks are followed by a three to four week community element, where young people will develop social action projects to benefit their area. The NCS is being delivered by a range of organisations across the country. In Norfolk the providers are the Football League Trust.

George attended the Norfolk County Cross Country Running Championships at Easton College on 28th March to cheer on his daughter, Ruby, who was competing. She came first in the Breckland Division and 15th overall.

George said, "This is a great example of Norfolk's very best coming together to celebrate the teamwork and competitive spirit of our youngsters. It was a joy to watch them running for glory in the spring sunshine."

On Sport Relief Day last Friday 23 March George visited Ashleigh Infant School in Wymondham to see pupils receiving awards for their sporting talent. Head Teacher, Annie Catlin and Teacher, Mrs Lacey commended pupils aged from 5 to7 who had shown particular commitment, improvement and talent at their chosen sport. The winners, Nathanial, Erin, Sophie, Lois, Izzy, Denver, Amy, Lydia, Megan, Max and Lewis gave demonstrations before being presented with certificates. There was a wide range of sports including gymnastics, dance, football, taekwondo and ballet. George also met Chair of Governors, Shaun Newby, as he toured the school.

George said “I really enjoyed meeting teachers, parents and children at Ashleigh Infant School and particularly seeing children with a real flair for their chosen sport. I think it is so important for schools to encourage participation in sports from a young age, particularly competitive sports, and to reward children who excel.”

George and Norwich City College Principal, Dick Palmer, have joined forces with Sir Richard Branson to praise the creation of a £10 million nationwide Youth Enterprise Loan Scheme pilot to support entrepreneurship amongst young people through small, low interest loans, announced in the Budget last Wednesday.

Sir Richard Branson, who has recently met both men to discuss support measures for young entrepreneurs, has campaigned for this type of initiative on behalf of Virgin Media Pioneers, an online community of thousands of young entrepreneurs founded by Virgin Media. The Virgin Media Pioneers community wanted to challenge the convention that a young person could easily get a loan to study business, but not on equal terms to start one.

George pledged his support for the new Government initiative, saying, “Norfolk needs a vibrant, diverse, rural economy where businesses can get established and grow. It is great news that South Norfolk is one of the top ten areas in the country for the most number of start-up businesses. This new pilot scheme – and the Government’s wider Apprenticeship Programme - shows that the Government is really serious about helping to support school leavers to prepare for the world of work and develop the practical and entrepreneurial skills they will need to compete in the modern economy. I was delighted to have the chance to meet Sir Richard Branson and tell him about The Norfolk Way Young Enterprise Bursary scheme I set up for local school leavers who show a flair for business. We need to publicise Norfolk’s great potential as a small business county.”

Dick Palmer said “I welcome all efforts to encourage, support and, crucially, provide the finance for enterprising young people to start up their own businesses. City College Norwich is proud to be playing our part by leading the way, alongside the colleges in the Gazelle group, in the transformation of Further Education through entrepreneurship."

Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, said: “This has the potential to transform the prospects of thousands of young people. The entrepreneurs of today will be the job creators of tomorrow so I’m delighted that the Government has listened to those at the very start of their careers. The country is full of gifted and enterprising people so this pilot, which crucially has business mentoring and support at its heart, will help prevent a lost generation of talent.”

Speaking ahead of today’s New Anglia LEP annual conference George has congratulated them saying:

“I am so pleased that the New Anglia LEP has decided to focus on life sciences over the coming year. More than 11,000 people already work at the Norwich Research Park. The NRP will continue to lead the country to economic recovery with its global reputation for scientific expertise.

The announcement in the Budget last Wednesday that the NRP will benefit from the Government’s £100 million fund, will help to attract even more businesses that appreciate the potential value of our bioscience and agricultural technology for new export markets. With its new strategic direction, the New Anglia LEP will play a critical role in fostering first class business opportunities for life sciences in this region and this will maximise the value of the Government’s investment.”

Andy Wood, Chairman of New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership said, “Norwich Research Park will form part of East Anglia’s life science triangle, which also includes University Campus Suffolk in Ipswich and the equine industry in Newmarket.

This will provide a really exciting opportunity to help to grow jobs and remove barriers to growth in the life science sector in the LEP area, in addition to our priority sectors; energy and tourism.”

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George supports and encourages people to think about the ‘Live Below the Line’ challenge. This charity campaign requires you to live for 5 days on just £1 a day - a stark reminder of the challenge of global and domestic poverty.

This scheme is a great way to develop awareness and raise money for some important charities working to improve the lives of everyone living below the poverty line. Currently, 1.4bn people live on less that £1 a day- completing this challenge will be harder than you think!

Click here to sign up and learn more: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk

George Freeman welcomes the “historic” Budget which paves the way for long-term economic recovery and he particularly welcomes the GlaxoSmithKline announcement of a major £500 million investment in the UK.

George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con): I congratulate the Treasury team on a Budget that I believe will come to be seen as an historic Budget that will put Britain back on track for sustainable economic recovery. I want to say something in the time available about the problem we inherited, because it bears repeating, about the challenge we face and about the opportunity that I believe we can and should be optimistic and ambitious in tackling. The problem has been well chronicled, but the views and ignorance displayed by Opposition Members in this afternoon’s debate suggest that we need to repeat it for them.

We have inherited from the Labour party the worst deficit and debt crisis in this country’s peacetime history; a structural deficit that would have been a crisis alone; an annual deficit from Labour’s historical explosion in public spending; a crisis in the situation with debt as a percentage of gross domestic product; and interest payments that are set to rise, if we have not tackled them, by £76 billion a year—£1 in every £4 the Government spend. As a result, there is a deep fiscal crisis, with tax increases and restraint on public spending hitting every family in the country, and a legacy of rising unemployment because of the credit crunch and bank financing for small businesses. Most powerfully of all, and most damningly after 13 years, there was the unsustainable economic model—a labour boom fuelled on cheap credit and cheap immigrant labour and a consumer boom that Labour knew was unsustainable. Worst of all, perhaps, there is a deep crisis of trust and confidence in political economy and in the belief and faith that the Government can do anything about it.

The challenge is to restore some credibility and confidence, first, in the capital markets through the coalition’s programme for tackling the deficit, and secondly in the boardrooms and businesses of Britain that are the only true mechanism for sustainable recovery. There is also a need to restore credibility and confidence in relation to the entrepreneurs we will need to take the risks to drive growth and the citizens and consumers of this nation so they can have faith again. That requires a new economic model, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor spoke passionately about yesterday—a model for sustainable recovery. We cannot borrow and spend our way out of a debt crisis.

Recovery needs to be sustainable not just in terms of avoiding the mistakes of boom and bust. We must produce the things that people around the world want to buy and we must have a clean economy in terms of resources and the environment. Recovery needs to be sustainable in the sense that our public services must be financed in a sustainable way. Every pound that we in this place claim as government money has to be earned by citizens and businesses and taken from them, and we should never forget it. At heart, that means that the coalition’s programme for a rebalanced economy must shift from over-dependence on the public sector to the private sector, from London and the south-east to the cities and the regions and to the real businesses of this country that can drive sustainable growth. I congratulate the Treasury team on keeping interest rates low, paying off the debt and supporting business. We have the most competitive corporation tax regime.

Mr Bain: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Freeman: I am going to plough on if I may. The move on the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p has set a clear direction.

Angela Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman at least acknowledge that a significant proportion of the private sector jobs created are part-time and in that sense are doing much less than he suggests to drive growth in the economy?

George Freeman: If my constituents were given the choice between a part-time job in a sustainable private sector business or a full-time job in the public sector that was not sustainable, I know which they would choose.

More than 600,000 new jobs have been created in the private sector since the election.

Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con): Will my hon. Friend welcome with me the measures for the video games industry, which are so important to Brighton and Hove, protect jobs in this country and stop them going abroad?

George Freeman: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point with which I entirely agree.

If I had only one small complaint about the Budget it was that, for reasons I well understand, the Government were unable to do anything to relieve the pain of rural fuel prices in areas such as my constituency, where the cost of living is an acute problem. I urge the Government to look at what might be done to relieve the effect of fuel prices on the rural economy.

I said that I would touch on why I believe that this country can begin to be optimistic about our future. The Government have begun to set out a credible and coherent plan for long-term economic recovery based on a model of trading again around the world. There is a high rate of growth in the emerging nations—the so-called BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China—and with the pace of globalisation and the explosion in those markets, if this country can set out a model of producing and selling the things that those countries need, we will be on the road to a secure recovery.

Last year saw the publication of the foresight report, which set out how the world population is rising to 9 billion, which will drive huge demand for life sciences such as food science, biomedicine and energy and environmental science. The Government have set out over the past 18 months a long-term strategy to unlock that science and research base and tackle the problems of sustainable development around the world. That is a sustainable model for us as well as for other countries.

There is a huge opportunity for the UK to trade on our great strengths and to unlock the power of the City and financial services sector to back and build the companies and businesses of tomorrow in the sectors of tomorrow. So I support—it is worth repeating—the measures that the Government have taken, especially in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, including the Green investment bank, new sources of finance for infrastructure, the enterprise zones, the competitive tax regime and the £20 billion of credit easing, allied with the reforms to welfare, schools, universities and science and research. The Government are setting out a modern industrial policy for a modern innovation economy. Will it work, I hear you ask, Madam Deputy Speaker? Well, it is already working. The programme has been welcomed by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Even the BBC’s business editor last night said that the Budget had had the most positive response of any Budget he could recall. If any more proof were needed, today one of the world’s great businesses, GlaxoSmithKline, announced a major £500 million investment in the UK, directly citing yesterday’s Budget as a reason. It is an historic Budget that will put us on track for a long-term recovery.

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On Friday George joined other Norfolk MPs, MEPs, councillors, and parliamentary candidates to answer questions from school children about politics, education and the economy. The event was organised by Parliament's education service to engage young people in politics and increase their understanding of current affairs.

Pupils from four schools in Norfolk including Wymondham College "speed dated" each politician for about 5 minutes, asking them a variety of questions such as "what's the best bit about your job", "how long will the recession last", "should university fees be cut" and "should schools in Norfolk do English Baccalaureate instead of A levels".

George was hugely impressed by the range of questions put to him by the young people, adding after the event:

“It showed that, whilst young people are often disengaged from mainstream party politics, they are profoundly interested in the issues that are shaping their lives and so it is important that politicians from all parties and every level of government make ourselves available in a way that works for young people.”

Last week George accompanied four Norfolk sixth form students on a one day visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The trip was organised by the Holocaust Education Trust as part of their ongoing project to give students the opportunity to learn about the events that took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the second world war. Wymondham College students, Alicia Shortman and Kathryn Norton and Dereham Sixth Form students, Lewis Long and Ross Perkins joined others from across the East of England to visit the sites.

The group from Norfolk, which also included Norwich South MP, Simon Wright, first visited Osweicim, the town where the Auschwitz death and concentration camps were located and where before the war, 58% of the population was Jewish.

Students then visited Auschwitz I to see the former camp's barracks and crematoria and witnessing the piles of belongings that were seized by the Nazis. Finally they spent time at the main killing centre of Birkenau where the day concluded with candle lighting and a period of reflection to remember the 6 million Jews, and the Roma, Sinti, gay, disabled, black people, and other victims of the Nazis killed in the Holocaust.

The Lessons from Auschwitz Project visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau was preceded by a seminar in the UK where participants were introduced to Jewish life in Europe before the War. Following the visit, the students attended a seminar to reflect on the visit and discuss their personal responses to it. The fourth part of the project requires all students to pass on the Lessons from Auschwitz to their schools and wider community. In this way, as many young people as possible benefit from the Lessons from Auschwitz Project.

Government funding has enabled the Trust to facilitate regional visits to Auschwitz, as part of its Lessons from Auschwitz Project for thousands of students each year.

On Friday George visited Ormiston Victory Academy in Costessey where he met the Principal, Rachel De Souza, the Director of Science, Lucy Austin and the, Director of Teaching and Learning, Ben Rogers. He also met many of the students as he visited classes, particularly students wanting a science related career. Students in the wildlife garden persuaded George to take a look at their recently opened bee hives.

Speaking during the visit George said:
“If we are going to unlock the full potential of Norfolk’s young people and equip them to succeed in the increasingly competitive global economy, we need more of the leadership, vision and ambition that Rachel and her team here at Ormiston Victory Academy are showing. In particular, we need to inspire and equip our youngsters with the maths and science skills that they will need if we are to build a high skilled economy. Specifically here in Norwich, we need a new generation of scientists and entrepreneurs to unlock and develop the value of the Norwich Research Park.

Of course excellence is infectious and it was wonderful to see in every classroom, on the playing fields, and in the award-winning wildlife garden, the energy and ambition of the pupils and staff.”

Rachel de Souza, Principal of Ormiston Victory Academy, said “Staff and students were delighted to meet Mr Freeman who works so hard improving science education in Norfolk. Maths and science learning are our highest priorities; we are determined to raise standards as far as we can.”

Photo: George Freeman, Rachel de Souza and OVA pupils in the wildlife garden