Welfare Reforms and Youth Unemployment

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and a particular pleasure to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Walker. I could not agree more with almost everything he said. I declare my interest as a retired member of a farming family in Somerset, and I will talk about rural youth unemployment.

Our rural youth has special problems, mostly to do with transport and the distances involved. The great question for the rural young is: how do I get to a job without a set of wheels? There is no other way to get to a job at 7.30 am in a place that is 10 miles away without your own set of wheels. But how do I get a set of wheels without the money from my first job? It is a Catch-22. The simple answer is that you lend the youngster a moped. There used to be hundreds of these Wheels to Work schemes around England doing just that. After a short training session, the youngster was lent a moped free of charge; after six months in work, they had to give it back and get their own set of wheels. The scheme was funded by local authorities and the DWP, but then local authorities ran out of money, as we all know, and the urban-based DWP simply did not get it. It did not get the fact that these schemes cost less per head than the social security benefits otherwise payable to these youngsters, who if they had been helped into work would probably never trouble the welfare state again for the rest of their lives. Sadly, nearly all these Wheels to Work schemes have died.

These schemes help youngsters get to training courses, and that is a problem in itself. Technical colleges can be 15 to 20 miles away, so now most aspiring youngsters have to cadge beds from their fellow pupils living in the town, sofa-hopping until their welcome runs out. Sometimes, it is easier just to launch yourself into some sort of self-employment. Rural England has twice as many self-employed people as a percentage than urban England, and some counties—my own county of Cornwall, for instance—have five or six times as many. We are an enterprising crowd, but we could really benefit from help, training and advice.

I came across a scheme at Loch Lomond, which I think should be replicated all around the country. Youngsters applied to the national park authority, which organised tuition classes, paid for by the youngsters themselves. It was simple stuff, such as budgets, cash flows and marketing, but important if you want to earn your own money by mending bikes or computers, fitting IT routers or cleaning windows. Helping a percentage of the rural workforce to earn their own money rather than draw the dole must make a difference, both to them and to the Treasury.

Small rural family businesses have always tried hard to give local youngsters a start in life. These businesses have always been and felt part of their community, so it is ingrained in their ethos. But whereas in 2020 employing a 21 year-old cost £17,000 per annum, now, in 2026, it costs £29,600, and no small business can afford to employ an untrained 21 year-old at that price. Who loses? The 21 year-olds, of course. Just when they are on the springboard of a working life, it collapses beneath them. The other loser is the Treasury, because it has to pay benefits to these now unemployed 21 year-olds, as opposed to receiving probably their lifelong payments of tax.

I will stop there. We are an enterprising lot in rural Britain. We have many more businesses per head than the towns. Our youngsters would love to join this world of work, but they need that extra help to enable them to do so.