Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Jarvis Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

The Spear programme was one of the first organisations to go through an evaluation with the data lab a few years ago. I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that the findings from that were really positive, and I am delighted that his constituency is located in one of the youth guarantee trailblazer areas. As we have reiterated several times, it is crucial that we do everything we can to help young people into work and address the issue, which we inherited, of people not in employment, education or training.

[Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)]

T8. Many young care leavers living in supported housing want to increase their hours at work but find themselves caught in the benefits trap. YMCA Eastleigh tells me that this is impacting care leavers in my constituency. What recent discussions has the Minister had with Cabinet colleagues on reforms to the tax and benefit system to make work pay for young care leavers?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

There is a problem in the interaction between housing benefit, which provides housing support for people in supported accommodation, and housing support in the universal credit system. That interaction does cause difficulties, and I think that is what the hon. Lady is referring to. We are looking at that at the moment. We are talking to other parts of government and working with people such as YMCA and Centrepoint to look at the problem and what we can do to fix it.