Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for introducing this debate at a time when over 1 million young people are NEET.

In 2009, I was appointed Employment Minister in the teeth of the global financial crisis. The Prime Minister was clear: my job was to prevent the scarring effect of long-term youth unemployment and to get the headline rate to fall in time for the 2010 general election. When I told the then Permanent Secretary at the DWP that this was my task, he told me that to do so would defy history and was impossible. He was wrong. We rapidly rolled out the future jobs fund to give young people who had been on benefits for more than six months real paid work, rather than a life on benefits. It created some 150,000 jobs, and the department’s later evaluation found participants far more likely to be in unsubsidised employment two years on, and a net benefit to society of around £7,750 for every young person who took part. With determined focus, we can tackle impossible problems.

The future jobs fund was, of course, scrapped by the incoming Government in 2010 before they published the evidence that it had succeeded. This Government inherited 872,000 young people—more than one in eight—who are NEET. The number is rising much faster today. The Milburn review tells us that the cost of NEETs is £125 billion a year, which is more than our entire schools budget.

The attainment gap between poorer children and their peers stood as wide as it did three decades ago, and a generation’s mental health was left to fray: close to 1 million children were referred to mental health services in a single year, yet fewer than a third were seen. Tens of thousands were waiting over two years, many reaching crisis before anyone had reached them. Apprenticeship starts for young people fell by more than 40%. The entry-level rungs of the ladder were pulled away for over a decade, and artificial intelligence is now removing the very junior roles that are a way in. This is not a blip. It is not about NI and the minimum wage; it is structural and it was many years in the making. We should all hold our hands up.

This crisis begins in our schools. We need a curriculum that develops and challenges all young people. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Baker: I would love us to end the national curriculum at 14 and build a single 14-19 phase with genuine academic, technical and applied routes; and a space for local content, designed with employers, that fits with local industrial strategies. What the Minister is achieving post 16 is important, but it needs a better experience in key stage 4.

We must also change school behaviour by introducing accountability measures built on destinations—on whether a school actually lowers a child’s risk of becoming NEET, as suggested in the Milburn report. When we reward only exam results, we should not be surprised when the system loses sight of the child.

Behind the headline figure of 1 million are 1 million lives. These young people have not given up on work or on learning. They have not given up on the hope of a better life. The only question that should trouble this House is whether we have given up on them. In 2009, we did not. Let us resolve that we will not now—that we will stop building exam factories and start, once more, to build hope.