Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report Debate
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Joe Morris
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Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report
Joe Morris Excerpts(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
In the north-east, almost one in five young people—over 53,000 young people—are not in education, employment or training. Every week, whether I am in Haltwhistle, Haydon Bridge, Allendale, Bellingham, Prudhoe, Hexham itself, Throckley or any of the other 200 communities that make up my constituency, I meet young people who are being failed in different ways by a system that has for a long time failed to perform for them.
For a long time, constituencies like mine simply have not been part of the national conversation on this issue. Rural youth unemployment has been off the political agenda for quite some time. I think it was in 2012 when the Commission for Rural Communities warned that rural NEET numbers were rising fast and no one in government was taking overall responsibility for it. In my communities, this is a crisis that is rooted in decades of complacency and failure to take on the underlying factors. It is hard enough for young people to find a job at the moment without having to worry about a bus that may never arrive or a train that may not be on time.
I want to touch briefly in the short time I have—I would make a longer speech if I had time—on the requirement for post-16 travel support. We must make sure that any holistic system that comes forward works for the entirety of the communities it serves. In Northumberland, the post-16 support that does exist is targeted largely at the central Alnwick to Morpeth corridor rather than at west Northumberland. The Morpeth Conservatives who run the country council are largely occupied with making sure the system works for that corridor rather than being a holistic solution for the entire county. That is not something that happens by accident; it is due to the ongoing neglect of the west of the county by the county council.
Let me ask the Minister three further things. Will the system be rural-proofed from the start, will the Government look further at councils to bolster the post-16 travel duty, and will they back vocational and SEND provision closer to where young people live, even in rural communities where the headcount is naturally smaller?