Welfare Reforms and Youth Unemployment

Debate between Baroness Blake of Leeds and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Rainow, for this debate. Its urgency is exemplified by Alan Milburn’s important review of young people and work, which, as people have said, is brimming with shocking and scandalous revelations. Not only are 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 not in work or education, but 61% of NEETs are not even looking for a job, and Britain spends more on health and disability benefits for that age group than it does on apprenticeships.

Of course, there are lots of factors stacked up against the young, some of which we in Parliament are responsible for, including the counterproductive jobs tax that we have heard about and the consequences of uncontrolled mass migration distorting the labour market. However, we should be wary of suggesting that these are insurmountable external problems because that could fuel an exaggerated sense of grievance or fatalism among the young and a sense that there is nothing they can do to get a job and it is not their fault.

I agree with Alan Milburn that what is at stake is,

“more than an economic crisis, it is a moral one”.

However, I am a bit disappointed that the review does not dig deeper into reasons and solutions for why so many young people are detached from the world of work. I agree with the review’s argument for a participation-first welfare system, but the barriers to participation are not always external.

The moral question is why so many young people are alienated from participating per se, and why there is a seeming rejection of the work ethic. On this, I am definitely at odds with the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Leicester—it is not the first time I have been at odds with the Church, but there we go. In another recent report, Inside the Mind of a Young NEET, the authors note that

“Many young people told us they wanted to work but felt they could not immediately cope with 35 or 40 hours a week”—


cue a slew of proposals to offer part-time supported work opportunities, trial shifts and so on to help build confidence. But is that not pandering to low expectations and creating new dependencies? Do we not need to interrogate why past generations of young people grasped full-time work as an opportunity, a rite of passage to adulthood? Today, so many, too many, feel themselves unable to cope.

Similarly, employers report that it is younger employees who are most keen to work from home. They cite everything from travelling to and from work being too stressful, to anxiety arising from being forced to spend so many hours with strangers they have nothing in common with—otherwise known as fellow workers. Then there is the boss and work discipline; strict time-keeping and the expectation of productive outcomes are characterised as oppressive or even bullying. Rather than challenge such low levels of resilience, HR departments and policy experts attempt to reshape workplaces to accommodate demands.

Of course, I am generalising and caricaturing, a bit at least, and no doubt Alan Milburn would scold me, because he worries that it is too easy to tell the NEET story as being about a generation that is less resilient and more snowflakey. Perhaps I am victim-blaming, but I work with young people at the Academy of Ideas who I think are fantastic, and they and I share some worries about their generation. I fear that we, the grown-ups, are facilitating the internalisation of a victim narrative in the young, infantilising them and institutionalising a self-justification for non-participation—that they are too fragile to cope with the rigours of working, just too vulnerable to take responsibility for transcending challenges.

In this climate, it is unsurprising that one growing, normalised explanation for NEETdom is psychological illness. There is a well-documented huge surge of allegedly debilitating mental health conditions such as depression and neurodivergence. We accept these accounts of distress uncritically, and even without medical diagnosis. When we heard last year that 63,000 students went straight from university on to long-term sickness benefits, we might note that recently, Oxford University agreed to give 25% more exam time to students who said that they had ADHD, without any formal diagnosis. The university explained that seeking diagnostic documentation is an onerous administrative burden and a barrier to inclusion of disabled students.

I used to work in mental health, and back then we worried about the stigma of disability labels. Now, in an era of identity politics embraced by many politicians, identity labels afford privileges and entitlements, so the young are desperate to acquire medical labels and we reward them. Policymakers have also encouraged pathologising the ups and downs of everyday life. We have medicalised social media use as addictive, and academics issue trigger warnings on classic texts to prevent students suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from exposure to difficult or offensive content.

In fact, many of the worst habits exhibited by the young in relation to work can be traced back to us. Let us not forget, in lockdown we taught the young that health trumps everything—work, school and the economy. For me, welfare dependency is the tip of the iceberg. I am glad that we are examining the tip, but we have a lot further to go.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

I remind the House that this is a time-limited debate. Any extra time Members take will be taken off the Front-Bench response.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Debate between Baroness Blake of Leeds and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Friday 23rd January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I am sure that the noble Lord and others will find other ways of asking the same question. I refer to my earlier answer.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I honestly believe that noble Lords are asking this question in good faith. I reiterate to the Minister—maybe she can think about this and come back—that we are being asked to make a decision about a huge change in healthcare provision, staffing and money, and the nature of what the NHS is. We are not trying to catch the Government out. We simply want to understand. Nobody could vote for this—even if you supported it, you could not vote for it. Can the Government please tell us, even if not now, what the implications will be if we vote for the Bill?

The Labour Government would say that the NHS is the most important, precious jewel in the crown, that nothing should damage it, and that we had to sacrifice an awful lot to save it only recently. I do not then want to vote for a Bill that is going to upturn the nature of the NHS inadvertently because the Government say they are neutral and cannot tell us otherwise. That is a big risk—risking the NHS, so that they do not have to answer. Even if the Minister cannot answer, we have to have that question answered; otherwise, we cannot seriously be asked to vote for the Bill.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I repeat that I am happy to write to noble Lords further on this point. I do not think that Members are going to move away from this point, so I am very happy to do that.

The noble Lord, Lord Gove, asked whether the assisted dying help service could be set up through statutory instrument, and I am happy to write to him to clarify that point. I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, on the point of the constitution. That is the most straightforward way to deal with this.

With the undertaking that the Government will write on the points that have not been addressed, I hope noble Lords will understand that, on the areas that I have not raised, we cannot confirm that the amendments are workable. That is the point I must make. With those comments, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.