Office for National Statistics Labour Market Data

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am pleased to welcome the noble Baroness’s welcome for the defence deal. It is vital. We talk about repairing and improving the country’s infrastructure, and here we are talking about the defence infrastructure. It is a source of many high-skilled, high-paid, good-quality jobs across the whole country, including in Northern Ireland. At this point in time, the defence of our country is foremost in our minds, and this deal shows that we are very serious about it.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, one of the most worrying figures of all, in the most worrying of areas, is the increase of economic inactivity and people who are not required to look for work or who are not even searching for it. Given the impact on young people, which I know the Minister is very concerned about, why does he think that this figure and others are going up on this Government’s watch?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

It is important to understand what we are doing through our youth guarantee trailblazers in England to tackle inactivity and to solve the problem of the number of NEETs, which across the House we want to see solved. Through eight youth guarantee trailblazers in England there has been an expansion of youth hubs to more than 360 areas. The youth guarantee gateway being rolled out in jobcentres provides 16 to 24 year-olds on universal credit with a dedicated session and follow-up support to help move more people into work, training or education. That means that there are 300,000 more opportunities to gain workplace experience and training, including up to 150,000 work experience placements and 145,000 employer-designed training opportunities, such as the sector-based work academy programmes. It is important to give young people that start on the ladder of gaining work experience and an understanding of what the world of work is like. That is the way that we will tackle the problem of NEETs.