Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Baroness Sherlock

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend; he makes a really important point. It just is not helpful to anyone if we start getting caught in false binaries. We need to work with the grain of what employers need and support them in doing it. They want to hire whoever is best for the job. Our job as a Government in this sort of setting is to work out what it will take to help those young people who most need the help to be the person the employer needs, by getting them the skills they need, getting them in the right place and getting them work experience.

The reason why we have the particular incentive of £2,000 for SMEs to take on 16 to 24 year-old apprentices as new employees is because we know they face additional barriers and costs. We also know that the sector is likely to take on young apprentices. Apprenticeships have spread very wide, and many are prone to taking on young apprentices. We want to lean into the grain of what they naturally do anyway, take away some of the barriers they face in doing that and support them in doing what they want to do anyway, which is good for them, good for the young person and good for the economy.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, like other noble Peers, I warmly welcome this Statement. I notice an emphasis on technical skills in the Written Statement and the Statement the Minister has made. I declare an interest: I have been married to somebody who has been a professional social worker all her life. I am interested in what we are doing to encourage young people into the caring professions, be that youth work, nursing, educative support, or social care, because it seems to me that this serves not only their good but also the good of our society.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate makes a very important point. The Government have done quite a bit of work in different sectors. As I have said at the Dispatch Box before, we have done quite a bit of work in social care, looking at how we develop schemes, skills and sector-based work programmes to make sure young people can both be given the skills and also encouraged to go into the sector. This can be a really rich and rewarding career, as his wife has found out, and as I know from people who work in the sector. Initially, people may not immediately see it as an opportunity. Once they get in there, if it is a good fit and if it is right for them, it is astonishingly rewarding. They transform lives. To be given the opportunity not just to change their own life, but in doing so, to change the lives of other people, is wonderful. I therefore assure him that the Government will carry on supporting that.

Graduate Jobs

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Baroness Sherlock

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, one thing I want to say to any students or graduates out there is that the evidence shows that graduates are more likely to be in work, to be in higher-skilled work and to earn more. Graduates continue to experience higher lifetime earnings, and they are nearly three times as likely to be in high-skilled employment than non-graduates. Having said that, the most important thing is that young people get appropriate advice to choose the forms of study that suit them. This is not a message to say that people should leave school and go straight into work. We are increasingly going into an era when employers will need skills, especially in a world where AI could automate some activities but it could also augment others. We need people to have the skills, so I am with him about the need to get the right people going into the right kind of education and training. On the question of HE funding, the HE sector clearly needs a secure financial footing to face into the challenges coming down the track. We have therefore acted to increase tuition-fee caps for all HE providers in line with forecast inflation, but future fee uplifts will be conditional on those providers achieving a higher-quality threshold through the Office for Students.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the replies that the Minister has already given and for the work the Government are doing in this area. To pick up on the question of apprenticeships, what are the Government doing to promote graduate internships? In an economy like that of the north-west, which depends on small and medium-sized enterprises, those are a vital way into work. Specifically around healthcare, the noble Baroness will be aware of the Jisc report from November 2025, which says that six out of 10 first- degree employment is in the area of health, social care or education, so how can the limited hiring, particularly of nurses, be addressed?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, on the question of internships and apprenticeships for those who are going into specialist areas, the DWP has been working to find internships or work experience opportunities for young people. We all know from the number of requests we get from them that it is an awful lot easier to get internships if you have money and connections. One of the challenges for us is to make sure we create opportunities for work experience and internships for those who do not have those things. We are doing a huge amount of work specifically with the one in eight young people who are not in employment, education or training, of whom some will be in the north-west—they are around the country, but they are more likely to be in areas of deprivation. So, we are looking at how we can support that. At the other level, for example for young people who have been on universal credit for 18 months looking for work and not getting it, at the end of that we will give them a guaranteed job for six months to make sure that they have that experience of work.

On the question of professional apprenticeships, the Government are prioritising young people but that includes apprenticeships up to level 7 for those who are under 22 when they begin. The right reverend Prelate mentioned nursing; sometimes they will be post-degree, but they will often be level 6, and there are young people who qualify as solicitors or accountants, for example, through the apprenticeship route. Again, we are interested in where we can grow jobs. I read an interesting World Economic Forum report about the areas that are growing, and one of the growth areas is nursing.