Youth Guarantee Scheme: Evaluation

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, even when partly incapacitated, is always forthright in her questions—I wish her good luck with her recovery.

If it were the activities of this Government that were responsible for youth unemployment and the numbers of young people not earning and learning, we would not have inherited the frankly disgraceful levels of young people not earning and learning at the point at which we came into government. The difference is that, in our case, we have been to the Treasury; we have got from the Chancellor an investment of £1.5 billion into the youth guarantee, to help young people back into work, and to ensure that we can provide 50,000 more apprenticeships for young people. That is the effective way to ensure that young people get the opportunity to start their working lives in the way that we would all want them to.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a teacher, I am quite interested in how the Government will quality control jobs. Back in the day, when we used to do employment fortnight, those children who did not have direct access to parents or friends who had good places they could do jobs at ended up working in charity shops, which was all quite meaningless.