Youth Unemployment

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

First, long-term youth unemployment has not changed a lot. What changed is that youngsters were put on training programmes and, when they came off them, they were called newly unemployed. The underlying position has not changed very much in terms of long-term youth unemployment. I am not saying that that is not a real problem but I am saying that it has not grown as much as one might think, looking at the raw figures. Clearly we need to help youngsters in long-term unemployment, and one of the things that the work programme is specifically designed to do is to get support for youngsters on an individualised basis.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to improve careers advice in schools so that young people can be helped into appropriate employment?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are making it a statutory duty to ensure that schools take up their responsibility to provide careers advice, so that it is supplied at the point it should be, right where it is best received. Existing provision has been much too patchy.