Lord Allen of Kensington

The government will publish our Industrial Strategy alongside the multi-year Spending Review in Spring 2025.

Great British Energy has potential to support the creation of high quality, well-paid jobs, and help to rebuild UK’s industrial heartlands. It can promote employment opportunities through the projects it supports, domestic supply chain opportunities it creates, and within the company itself.

More widely, jobs will be at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy, supporting growth sectors to create high-quality, well-paid jobs across the country. We have also set up the Office for Clean Energy Jobs which will support developing the skilled workforce to deliver the Clean Energy Superpower Mission.

Employers are able to benefit from a number of high-quality apprenticeships to support the development of management skills, including level 5 Operations Manager and level 6 Chartered Manager (degree), and starts on these standards have increased in recent years.

There were 10,710 starts on the level 5 Operations Manager apprenticeship standard in the 2023/24 academic year, which is a 9.6% increase compared to the 2022/23 academic year, and 2,860 starts on the level 6 Chartered Manager (degree) apprenticeship standard in 2023/24, which is a 9.1% increase compared to the 2022/23 academic year.

The government is committed to spreading opportunities and economic growth supported by a strong skills system.

This government has an extremely challenging fiscal inheritance. There are tough choices that need to be taken on how funding should be prioritised in order to generate opportunities for young people that enable them to make a start in good, fulfilling careers, and the department will therefore be asking more employers to step forward and fund a significant number of level 7 apprenticeships themselves outside of the levy-funded growth and skills offer.

The department is taking advice from Skills England, who engaged with employers and stakeholders, including the Chartered Management Institute, on funding for level 7 apprenticeships, including the level 7 Senior Leader standard, over the autumn, and the department expects to make a final decision on affected apprenticeships shortly.

Learners who have started these apprenticeships will be funded through to completion.

The Skills England Bill will be introduced as soon as Parliamentary time allows. The Bill will transfer functions from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to Skills England, and will be an important part of steps taken to establish Skills England in phases over the next 9 to 12 months.

This government wants young people in all parts of the country to gain workplace skills and to explore career opportunities. In 2024/25, the department is investing approximately £30 million through The Careers and Enterprise Company to support secondary schools and colleges to improve their careers programmes in line with the government’s careers framework, the Gatsby Benchmarks of Good Career Guidance.

92% of secondary schools and colleges are part of a local Careers Hub that connects educators to employers and apprenticeship providers to improve practice and target support to local priorities. There are over 3,200 fully trained Careers Leaders who implement, coordinate and quality assure careers programmes. Over 400 leading businesses and 4,000 business professionals from across all sectors help schools and colleges to deliver high-quality careers education.

Advice is also available to young people digitally via the National Careers Service. The website helps young people, aged 13 to 18, start discovering their careers options. It includes around 800 job profiles. Young people can access information and advice via webchat and a telephone helpline which is supported by local community-based career advisers. The National Careers Service website can be found here: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/.

This is supported by the Skills for Life campaign, ‘It all starts with skills’, which promotes a range of priority skills programmes to young people, including apprenticeships, T Levels and Higher Technical Qualifications. Bespoke support is also provided during the exam results period. Get Help with Exam Results Careers Advice will be available from 15 to 31 August.

The government wants to go further to break down barriers to opportunity and give all young people the best life chances. According to a report from the Children’s Commissioner, more than 1 in 3 children report that they do not know enough about good jobs available to them as they get older and leave school.

The department will open the doors to more employers by delivering two weeks-worth of high-quality work experience. This year, the department is piloting new approaches to workplace experiences that will benefit more than 25,000 young people across the country. The three models being tested are virtual workplace experiences for schools in coastal and rural communities; breaking down barriers to high quality workplace experiences for disadvantaged young people; and targeted workplace experiences focused on roles in future growth sectors.

Young people need support to capitalise on these workplace experiences, reflect on what they have learned and set future career goals. The department will train 1,000 careers advisers so that young people can get the expert advice they need.

This government will work closely with schools, colleges, employers and careers advisers to make sure all of our young people can achieve and thrive.

The Youth Guarantee in England was launched as part of the Get Britain Working White Paper, for all 18–21-year-olds, to ensure that they can access quality training opportunities, an apprenticeship or help to find work. This will start with eight trailblazers which are launching this spring.

The Department understands the negative effects of unemployment can be particularly pronounced for young people and can have longstanding implications on their future earnings potential and life chances. This is why DWP have a particular focus on ensuring young people are supported into employment whilst also recognising their needs will vary depending on where they live and their own individual circumstances.

To support the government’s target to build 1.5 million homes this parliament, DWP are supporting an industry-led, cross government communications campaign to raise the profile of the construction sector. The three-week campaign launched 3 March with a particular focus on encouraging young people to consider construction as a career of choice. We are promoting the industry, connecting our customers to jobs, apprenticeships, and opportunities within it, including an emphasis on improving workforce diversity and increasing the number of construction teachers.

In the coming months, the Secretary of State for DWP, will be co-hosting a construction industry summit with Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Department for Business and Trade, inviting key employers and representative bodies. This will build on our commitment in the Get Britain Working White Paper to explore how we can best work with employers to address their recruitment needs. DWP officials are members of the Cross Government Built Environment Working Group which is responsible for ensuring a coordinated approach to increasing the size and skills of the construction and built environment workforce, including on-site trades and wider skilled professions.

From April 2024 to 31 December 31 we have delivered 10,220 SWAP starts in the construction helping jobseekers to develop skills to match the needs of the construction labour market.

Through our Strategic Relationship Team, we have agreed a working relationship with many construction organisations and continue to deliver bespoke packages to support their recruitment needs. The Department has a long-standing partnership agreement with CiTB with a shared agenda to recruit people into the construction sector. We are currently developing a new partnership agreement to forge closer working links and key activity to support both policy and operational connections between the organisations.

We are progressing with the delivery of our proposals through:

• Transformation of jobcentres to support people into and on in work.
• Work with local areas to tackle economic inactivity.
• A Youth Guarantee for 18-21's in England to benefit from education, training or help to find work.

We have secured £240 million of funding which we will use to develop tests and trials for the digital aspect of the new national jobs and careers service, to introduce trailblazers to tackle economic inactivity in England and Wales and offer support for the development of local Get Britain Working plans.

No such estimate has been made as the relevant information is not available.

Society is grateful to those who have served in the forces to defend our country. As well as a State Pension, many overseas veterans will receive an occupational pension which is up-rated in line with the consumer price index.

The UK's policy on the up-rating of the UK State Pension for recipients living overseas is a longstanding one. The UK state pension is payable worldwide without regard to nationality and is uprated abroad where we have a legal requirement to do so.

We are committed to tackling poverty and reducing mass dependence on emergency food parcels. The latest Households Below Average Income statistics show that 3% of all individuals had used a food bank on at least one occasion in 2022/23. For children this figure is 6%. This is unacceptable.

On 30^th July, the Secretary of State held a food poverty roundtable with experts and charities to better understand the priorities in this area. We are already taking steps to tackle poverty, including free breakfast clubs in every primary school so children don’t go hungry, protecting renters from arbitrary eviction, slashing fuel poverty and banning exploitative zero-hours contracts. Good work is the foundation of our approach, and our New Deal for Working People, including ensuring that the minimum wage is a genuine living wage along with reformed employment support, will mean that many more people will benefit from the dignity and purpose of employment.

In addition, we have extended the Household Support Fund for a further 6 months from 1 October 2024 until 31 March 2025. An estimated total package of approximately £500 million will be provided to enable the extension of the Household Support Fund, including funding for the Devolved Governments through the Barnett formula to be spent at their discretion. This means that Local Authorities in England will receive £421 million to support those in need locally.

Alongside this, the Child Poverty Taskforce has started urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy in Spring and will explore all available levers to drive forward short and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty.

Government understands the negative effects of unemployment can be particularly pronounced for young people and can have longstanding implications on their future earnings potential and life chances. This is why in our plan to get Britain Working we will introduce a new Youth Guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 to ensure that they can access quality training opportunities, an apprenticeship or employment support. This will sit alongside a new national jobs and careers service to help get more people into work, work health and skills plans for the economically inactive, and the launch of Skills England to open new opportunities for young people.

Currently through the Youth Offer, we provide labour market support to young people aged 16-24 claiming Universal Credit through a range of tailored interventions to help reduce the barriers young people may face, bringing them closer to work or education.

Jobcentre Plus School Advisers target support to young people that schools have identified as being at greatest risk of not being in work or education, or who may be disadvantaged in the labour market.