Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on setting and monitoring objectives to reduce the rate of 18 to 24 year olds not in education, employment or training; and whether he has made an assessment of the implications for his policies of the Youth Employment Group report entitled Securing a place for young people in the nation’s economic recovery.

We want to give young people the best chance to succeed, despite these challenging and unsettling times. We know that young people are likely to be disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

We welcome the work of the Youth Employment Group (YEG) and the contribution the report makes to helping our understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and what the government might do to mitigate these risks. I was pleased to meet YEG chairs in September 2020 and appreciated hearing from them how we can better support young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). We continue to work closely with the YEG as part of our stakeholder work.

The department is working with a range of partners including local authorities and key stakeholders to monitor the situation and, across government, to review the impact on young people NEET as the situation emerges.

As part of my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Plan for Jobs, we made a number of skills commitments such as a significant expansion of the traineeships programme, the introduction of high value courses for year 13 leavers to continue in learning, and payments for employers to hire new apprentices. Kickstart will also create high quality work placements for young people claiming Universal Credit who are deemed at risk of long-term unemployment. It will create more sector-based work academy programmes that will provide vocational training and guaranteed interviews for more people, helping them gain the skills needed for jobs in their local area. We will be monitoring progress and take up of these offers alongside NEET numbers.