Young Jobseekers

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People (Justin Tomlinson)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of my near neighbour. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing the debate. I pay tribute to the fantastic work she has done through her Norwich for Jobs project and as chair of the APPG on youth employment. In fact, it would be an undersell to say she is a real champion of young people on a whole range of issues. The number of Members from both sides of the House who have come to support this constructive and proactive debate is a good recognition of that. I am sure her APPG will be packed on 18 November with a whole host of new, eager Members of Parliament wishing to support her. I also congratulate her on the digital debate last night, which I cast my eye over during the multiple votes. Ninety seven engagements and more than 1 million people reached is fantastic. The core messages about a personalised approach, commitment both ways, resources and mentoring are important points that I will pick up on. It is a credit to her that those people chose to engage.

I want to put on record my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), and the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), for taking the time to pay credit to the hard work in their respective jobcentre networks. Jobcentre Plus staff right across the country do a huge amount of good work and are often not recognised for it. I was impressed by what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) said about the Drop Inn centre. I want to put on record the appreciation of all Members here for the fantastic work that volunteers at that centre are doing. I am sure many of us have similar organisations in our constituencies, and they all make a big difference to people.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green), particularly for his point about careers advice, which I recognised. I remember saying at school that I fancied being a Member of Parliament in the future. They laughed and said, “You have no chance.” He also mentioned speculative applications. When I ran my own business for 10 years, the majority of the jobs I offered—predominantly to young people—were on the back of speculative applications, because I was impressed that people had taken the time to do that. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) made an important point about Young Enterprise, which I have been a huge supporter of. I was proud to lead the campaign to get financial education into the national curriculum in the previous Parliament. It is one of the key building blocks for young people who want to start up a business and is something I certainly support.

We have made big progress on youth employment. We know that youth unemployment can have significant and long-lasting negative impacts on young people’s life chances. The Government are committed to tackling youth unemployment, and we have a strong record so far. Over the past year, of all the EU countries, only the Netherlands has seen a larger rise than the UK in the number of young people in work. That is something we should celebrate. OECD figures show that 71% of non-students aged 20 to 24 in the UK are in work—the second highest number of the big EU economies, just behind Germany, and above the US and the EU average. Excluding those in full-time education, youth unemployment has fallen by over 200,000 since 2010 and is lower than before the recession, and 85% of all 16 to 24-year-olds are in work or full-time education. The employment rate of young people who have left full-time education has risen to its highest in over 10 years at 73.9%—hon. Members will be pleased to know that that is it for the stats for the remainder of the speech.

We want to go further—we can celebrate where we have got to, but all the speeches have highlighted the need to go further—and I am delighted with the announcement of the youth obligation, which is a positive step that builds on what we have done. As my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North has said, we have made positive steps but we should go further. From April 2017, we are introducing the new youth obligation to support young people aged 18 to 21 on universal credit who find themselves out of work. Those young people will be given the support, skills and experience to motivate them into work, fulfil their potential and make a contribution to their community by getting on in work without slipping into a life on benefits. I think everybody across the House would support that.

Crucially, that will be from day one. Young people will participate in an intensive period of support, learning job search and interview techniques and doing structured work preparation. It is important for them to have that support from day one, while they still have that enthusiasm —it is about not allowing them to slip further away from securing meaningful work. After six months, they will be expected to apply for an apprenticeship or a traineeship, to gain work-based skills that employers value, or to go on a work placement to give them the skills they need to get on in work. Once fully implemented, we expect 400,000 young people a year to participate in the youth obligation, which will make a considerable difference to increasing youth employment further.

Many Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Kensington (Victoria Borwick) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham) in particular, have highlighted the importance of apprenticeships. Again, we would all echo that: they are a valuable route into the world of work, providing experience and vital skills, and are an important part of our approach to youth employment. We have pledged to create a further 3 million new apprenticeships in England in this new Parliament. The jobcentres network will be an important part of helping to signpost, promote and encourage young people to take advantage of that, building on the 2.3 million starts in the last Parliament.

In addition to apprenticeships, we provide a range of employment programmes for young people to support them into work, including traineeships for young people who have not achieved a GCSE grade C or equivalent—so, a pre-apprenticeship—work experience for eligible unemployed young people or sector-based work academies, so each local community, as part of our devolution, can identify opportunities and look to match those as they come forward. On average, around 2,000 young benefit claimants are starting government work experience or the training element of a sector-based work academy every week. The evidence shows that that is making a difference.

The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) spoke about careers advice, which is an important point. We know that key to tackling youth unemployment is early intervention to ensure that young people get the help they need before they leave school, so that they can make a good transition between school and further learning or employment. That is why we are introducing Jobcentre Plus employment adviser support for schools and colleges. Working in partnership with the new Careers & Enterprise Company to build on the support that is already available, Jobcentre Plus employment advisers will provide 12 to 17-year-olds at risk of not being in education, employment or training with the advice they need on the local labour market, employment opportunities and routes into work experience, traineeships and apprenticeships. It is about providing that career path. Those who are heading off to higher education have the UCAS process—they choose their course and there is a clear path. This change is about stepping in for those who will not go down that route. It provides a real focus, and I am delighted to see it being brought forward.

Last month, the Careers & Enterprise Company launched its enterprise adviser network programme to connect employees from firms of all sizes to schools, through a network of enterprise advisers drawn from business volunteers. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) specifically mentioned a point about inspiring women into different roles. I went to see an organisation called Lady Geek in a school in London. It was looking to incentivise girls in particular to take up courses in information and communications technology, where women have only about 11% of the roles. Unsurprisingly, after a really interactive, fantastic demonstration, about 30 signed up do the GCSE straight away, so they will then go off to have brilliant careers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) talked about the need to target primary schools. That is the whole point of mentors. Most young people will be inspired at some point, and getting those mentors into all schools across the country to provide that inspiration is vital.

I also echo the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) made in praise the National Citizen Service. Of the things that the last Government introduced, I am probably proudest of that. It was introduced personally by the Prime Minister. Every summer, I spend many happy visits joining in and seeing children’s complete transformation into young adults, in terms of their confidence, team skills and public speaking. They are eminently employable at the end of that process, and I am delighted that we have extended its reach further.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North rightly highlighted the work of the YMCA report, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway) for her long-standing work with the YMCA. The YMCA has made some important recommendations, including, first, that each young person should be provided with a specialist youth work coach that remains consistent throughout the length of their claim. We have made changes so that they will have one work coach. That is incredibly important and it will make a difference.

Secondly, the YMCA recommended that each young person should be provided with the ability to participate in education or training lasting for more than 16 hours a week without their claim being affected. In certain circumstances, jobseeker’s allowance or universal credit claimants can participate in training and still keep their benefit—for example, when they are on a sector-based work academy or traineeship. For those on JSA for six months, when their jobcentre adviser or work coach identifies a skills gap that is a barrier to their moving into work, they can attend full-time training for up to eight more weeks. A claimant can also be in training for up to 30 hours a week on universal credit. Again, that will make a huge difference.

Finally, the YMCA recommended that each young person should be provided with the opportunity to receive in-work support from their work coach or a designated mentor when they transition into employment. That is key. As a lot of Members have highlighted, these are often entry-level jobs that do not have the highest pay in some cases. I remember when I was young, my parents would push me—many of us would have been pushed when we were younger—but not everybody has that, so providing support once young people enter work is incredibly important. It is about identifying how they are doing and the challenges they may need to address, or reminding them just how well they are doing and talking to their supervisors and employers and saying, “Look, are there further opportunities to progress?” I think that is really key. We are testing how this will work, but I take a particular interest in it because—as I know from my background, the school I went to and things like that—this is probably the single thing that will make a big difference.

I also pay tribute to the Norwich for Jobs project, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North talked about. It is an exemplary way of building partnerships. I had a Disability Confident event in my constituency last Friday, with hundreds of businesses coming along. Those do not have to be done by an MP; it can be local authorities, local enterprise partnerships or community groups. Businesses are willing to engage; we just need to make sure they know there are opportunities to do so.

In conclusion, this debate has been constructive and positive on all sides. There is a clear commitment to tackling youth unemployment, not only in our Department but across all Departments. To ensure that support for young people is joined-up, the cross-Government Earn or Learn taskforce has been set up, involving seven Departments and chaired by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General. The taskforce is determined to provide a coherent and joined-up landscape of intensive support from all Departments to tackle youth unemployment effectively and ensure that everyone can achieve their potential. I pay tribute again to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North for her ongoing work, and I very much hope she will engage in that taskforce. We can learn a huge amount not only from her personal work, but through that direct democracy—the ideas that have been fed in—and together we can make a real difference to young people, which we would all support.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered young jobseekers and the Department for Work and Pensions.