Young Futures Hubs

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend deserves very great credit for the work that she has done in leading the way to the model of Young Futures hubs in the way she described. She is also right, of course, that to bring together the services that need to create and contribute to Young Futures hubs, we need cross-government working. That is why colleagues across government, from the Department for Education through DCMS, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, are all involved in thinking about the development of the Young Futures hubs and the Young Futures prevention partnerships as well.

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, in my over 30 years of youth and community work, I have watched Governments of varying stripes bring in similar initiatives. Would it not be better to spend this money on organisations that already exist, such as FE colleges, schools and nurseries? You would get a bigger bang for your buck, and they already have the relationships with the young people. Surely that is a better way than starting something new that will take years to get off the ground and be effective. Of course, you could spend that money to ease the cost of parenting—those are environments where there is much more impact on children’s outcomes in future.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that all the places that he talked about will have a role to play in supporting young people with mental health issues, who have had very difficult starts in their lives, helping to keep them out of crime. I hope I can reassure the noble Lord that the point about Young Futures hubs is that they will build on the success of existing infrastructure and provision. This will not be a completely new building or completely new provision, but it will be a new approach to making sure that all the services that I have talked about in previous answers can be brought together successfully to support young people. That is what the early adopters in the eight hubs will look to ensure is as successful as possible.