Jacob Young

Jacob Young (born 2 February 1993) is a British Conservative Party politician serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities since 18 September 2023. He previously served as Assistant Government Whip between September 2022 and September 2023. He was elected as the member of Parliament (MP) for Redcar at the 2019 general election. He is the first Conservative MP to represent the constituency. Early life and career Young was born in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire as the son of Terrence Anthony Young and Elizabeth Anne Young. He grew up in a working-class family in Middlesbrough, and has six siblings. Young attended Macmillan Academy, and then studied at Redcar & Cleveland College and the TTE Technical Institute. After this, he obtained a Higher National Certificate in chemical engineering at Teesside University. Whilst at university, he joined the Conservative Party. He then trained as an apprentice technician and worked as a process operator for Chemoxy International Ltd. Young later became a lead technician for a petrochemicals company. Through his church, Young was involved in a food bank in Middlesbrough and a centre of the charity Christians Against Poverty. He described the approach towards poverty of the latter as a politically formative experience, "Christians Against Poverty was more about teaching people how to budget using the money that they had and how to pay back some of their debt over an extended period of time. That attitude drew me to the Conservatives – the idea that if you work hard and you want to succeed that you can."