Youth Unemployment

Lord Kempsell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am very grateful—that is a really great question. One of the challenges across government is that if we carry on doing things in silos, we will engage only with those who are already engaged with us, and that does not solve the problem here. We are doing a couple of things. Earlier on I mentioned the work that is going on in the youth trailblazers, working with local mayoral authorities to find innovative ways of identifying such people locally. We are also trying to strengthen early identification through better data sharing and better monitoring of attendance at further education; and a range of new “risk of NEET” tools—a terrible technical term—have been developed to try to identify those who may be at risk of becoming NEET before they get to that point. So we are working with that, trying to spot disengagement earlier and target support before young people become long-term NEET.

One of the other things we are doing, for example, is creating youth hubs—360 across the country—where we can work with partners in community spaces and bring together different kinds of support in a way that will not feel like it is simply engaging with the benefits system or a jobcentre. A jobcentre may be great for some but not for others, so by trying to find innovative ways of reaching people, identifying them before they become long-term NEET, and through good collaboration when people reach it, we hope that will make a difference.

[Lord Kempsell (Con)]

My Lords, what a disaster it is that under this Government we have 1 million young people in Britain who are not in education, employment or training—one in eight who cannot access the life opportunities which we in this Chamber all enjoyed. Will the Minister acknowledge this reality about that generation: that they want to work and to participate in education, employment and training? The Government need to think through this problem from that starting point. It is a generation full of promise—the one most conversant with the kind of technology we have been talking about in this debate.

Secondly, does the Minister acknowledge that with this intervention, which is effectively a state subsidy to employers to try to incentivise entry-level job creation, all the Government are really doing is trying to rebalance the negative effects of the harmful policies they have introduced, be it national insurance contributions for employers, the national living wage, or other measures that have depressed entry-level job creation? That is the change that has happened in the past two years.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I can only assume the noble Lord did not hear what I said in my opening speech. If he wants to talk about having a million people who are NEET, I point out again that in the three years running up to the last election, the number of young people not in education, employment or training rose by 250,000, up to almost a million.

I am not trying to make this anybody else’s problem; I am trying to make this a problem for us as a country. We were the people who stood up and said, “This is not acceptable”. One in eight is not acceptable; it is not in the interests of our country. Where I absolutely agree with the noble Lord is that young people want a future. Our job is to persuade them that they can have it, to show them that they can have it, to give them the skills to get it, and to give them the chance to get the jobs that will give them a foot in the door to go out there and do it. This Government are investing in that because we believe in and care about our young people. Even if the country did not—and we really do—the country needs them. We are an ageing society, and we need our young people. Without their gifts, talents and future, we all suffer. So we are doing this for them and for the country, and I am proud that we are.