Youth Unemployment

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith]

My Lords, the International Labour Organisation has said that youth unemployment is facing the greatest crisis in a generation. The global crisis has added to youth unemployment here. As someone who taught in the Glasgow area in the 1980s, I saw young people leave school and met them 10 years later when they had partners and children, but they did not have a job. Is it not a crying social and economic shame that we do not do more for young people at this stage to ensure that they adapt to the workplace and play a full role in society?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, a point that I have made here in the past is that we have had a structural issue with youth unemployment for more than a decade, The number of youngsters inactive or unemployed has been growing steadily, right through to the end of the longest boom that we have ever had. My view—and the Government’s view—is that the best way to tackle that is to make sure that youngsters have education that gets them fit for the workplace. That is why this Government have taken on in toto all of Professor Wolf’s recommendations, because they deal with these core issues.