A sharp decline in the number of young people having a Saturday job is contributing to their "bizarre attitude" to work in later life, business leaders have warned.

Kirsty McHugh from the Employment Related Services Association told MPs on the Work and Pensions Committee, which is investigating the effects of Brexit on the UK labour market, that 44 per cent of young people had a Saturday job in 1997.

That figure had dropped to 18 per cent in 2014 because, she reportedly said, schools were raising pupils' aspirations.

According to the Daily Telegraph, she told MPs: "It is not because EU nationals have taken the jobs, it is because of a big focus on working at schools, raising aspirations.

"They want to go into good jobs, they don't think they want to go into a job they see as a dead end."

Martin McTague, the policy director of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said the lack of Saturday jobs for young people affected their approach to employment.

"A lot of our members say that when they recruit someone who is academically well qualified, they have a bizarre attitude to the working environment because they're not used to doing it," Mr McTague told MPs, the Telegraph reported.

Director of human resources Andrea Wareham from sandwich chain Pret A Manager told the committee that only one in 50 applicants for its jobs were British.

"If I had to fill all our vacancies with British-only people I would not be able to fill them because of the lack of applications," she said, according to the Guardian.

"It takes a long time to change hearts and minds. We need to work with education, career services, with parents, to find ways to collaborate."

Kevin Green from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation told MPs there were fewer opportunities for young people to find work on Saturdays because of modern working practices.

"The structure of work has changed over the past couple of decades, where there is much more flexibility in terms of contracts, so people engage to work Saturdays, Sundays, evenings, weekends, and what employers are always looking for is continuity of employment," he said, according to the Guardian.

"So I think some of the Saturday opportunities are gone - you used to have people working nine to five, Monday to Friday and the only way of getting somebody to work a Saturday was to use students."

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