Youth Unemployment

Debate between Baroness Hughes of Stretford and Lord Freud

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the call in the report by the Commission on Youth Unemployment published on 6 February for action to address youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the Government share a number of the concerns raised in the report produced by the Commission on Youth Unemployment. We are already taking action to address youth unemployment and have a clear strategy to support young people into work.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. However, as he will know, the analysis in the report not only scotches the myth that youth unemployment is being driven up by immigration or the minimum wage; it demonstrates clearly that the Government’s measures, welcome though they are, are wholly inadequate to deal with this rising crisis and prevent another generation of young people, as well as the country, paying a terrible price. Will the Government respond specifically to the report by front-loading the youth contract to double the number of job subsidies this year, extending the work programme beyond the 10 per cent only of young people who are currently on it, and bringing in a specially targeted approach for those 600 hotspots that, the report shows, now have double the national average of youth unemployment?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the noble Baroness might have been interested in one of the annexes in that report that indicated that actually there is concern about the national minimum wage. The point that she makes is towards the end of the report. There are a lot of measures to solve youth unemployment. I will pick up some of those that the noble Baroness mentioned. The first one is rebalancing the youth contract, to which she referred. We are already front-loading the wage incentives that we are introducing in April. We are doing more than the average in that period. We are trialling a community action programme for people who have been through the work programme, and we are looking at how we work in areas in an equivalent way to the youth employment partnerships.