Yesterday morning saw a panel, which included MPs David Willetts and Stephen Timms, expounding the benefits of community volunteering for young people.

They were speaking at an event organised by V, a charity which advocates a national programme of community service as one method of mitigating the adverse effects of the recession on young people, but stops short of suggesting that the service should be compulsory.

V is currently seeking funding for the provision of 30,000 additional volunteering places, evidencing the desirability of this with YouGov research which suggests that three-quarters (72 per cent) of employers agree or strongly agree that volunteering can have a positive effect on an individual’s career progression.

However, when I asked her whether community service should be required of all young people Hannah Mitchell, who works for the charity, argued that "to make volunteering compulsary is a contradiction in terms". That may be so, but with the young hit so severely by the recession – consituting 38 per cent of all unemployed people according to a Labour Force survey - would it be such a bad thing to insist that all school-leavers acquire skills, expand their horizons and fill spare time with participation in some kind of community activity?

The Liberal Democrats have really seized the bull by the horns on this matter, with Lynne Featherstone promoting a compulsory “universal gap year” to “fix Britain’s teenagers”.

The undertaking of such a programme would require tremendous resources and planning, but if the youth unemployment, and associated social consequences, of the 1980s are to be avoided, government initiatives must go further than the Graduate Talent Pool, and spending of the Future Jobs Fund must be extremely wise.

(Picture: David Willetts MP, Shadow Minister for Universities and Skills, and Professor David Blanchflower, former Bank of England Monetary Committee Member, share a joke at yesterday's meeting)