Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report Debate
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Darren Paffey
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
Darren Paffey Excerpts(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)
It is pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) on securing this very popular and important debate.
The Milburn report shows that we have to change how we talk about young people out of work and education. As has just been cited, 84% of those who we call NEETs do not want to be out of work. They do not lack potential or desire; they lack opportunity. That is the problem we have to fix. The report also shows that disconnection begins long before the age of 16, in school. Sadly, I see that in Southampton, where persistent absence has been creeping up year on year.
I very much welcome the push in the curriculum and assessment review to make school more engaging—to broaden the curriculum so that there are more hooks, including, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) said, in the humanities. If we allow children to switch off at around 14, they are far more likely to be out of education and training at 18.
Southampton has also shown some great opportunities that work. Safe New Futures is a local charity that works with long-term unemployed young people, combining mental health support and group cognitive behavioural therapy with job-ready skills and vocational training. When I visited, one young person told me that, after an incredibly difficult period, the course had given them the confidence to enter the world of work and pursue their career. Half of the NEET participants in that scheme go on to find work. Saints Works, which is run by Saints Foundation—the charitable wing of our excellent football club—combines skills growth and mentoring, and then in-work follow-up support once someone has got into a job. We also have a young adults employment hub, which brings the council, jobcentre work coaches and youth workers under one roof.
None of those are national schemes; they are all local partnerships that know their young people by name, and that is the lesson I hope the final report draws. My question to the Minister is this: when we respond to the final report, will there be sustained funding for local programmes like these that are getting the work done?