Youth Unemployment

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an enormously important point. It is sometimes at the point that young people finish school that they are lost to education or employment. That is why we will also put greater responsibilities on to schools to ensure the destinations of their pupils. We will deliver an automatic guarantee and automatic enrolment for young people into a college, and we will improve the risk of NEET indicators to identify earlier those young people who might end up not earning or learning.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, given that the poorest families in this country cannot afford for their children to do endless training courses, what work is being done to make sure these lead to full-time, proper employment that pays those families who are sending their young people to endless government training courses?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The training courses that will be provided as part of the youth guarantee will not be charged for, and neither will the improved training that we will provide post-16 or apprenticeships, where young people will be earning at the same time as they are learning. If the noble Lord is making a point about the cost of living pressures on young people then I wholly accept that, but our responsibility is to ensure that those young people, through the new, free opportunities provided by the youth guarantee, are set off on a life that will enable them to build a good and high income for themselves and their families.