Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Lord Mohammed of Tinsley Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for securing this important debate. I looked at the list of speakers and thought this was going to be a fantastic debate about our children’s future. I do not want it to be about how bad one side or the other was, because that will not help any young person. I have always been passionate about young people—I will return to that—and I will always fight for them. I did it before I arrived in your Lordships’ House and I do it now. Earlier this month I spoke about helping young people gain work experience in your Lordships’ House by coming in to assist us. This week, a fantastic A-level student from north London, Oliwia Pietrusa, helped me draft my speech and did some of the research for it.

A lot of speakers will follow me, so I will restrict my speech to two bits: NEETs—young people not in employment, education or training—and primary schools. As we have seen from the recent Milburn review, young people are being devastated by the side-effects of a lack of government intervention. Research by the House of Lords Library showed recently that 1.012 million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in employment, education or training. As the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, reminded us, Alan Milburn warned of a rising “lost generation”. The real issue now is about the system. Is it obsessed by ticking boxes? Are we just pushing our young people to chase qualifications but not finding destinations for them, by which I mean long-term, secure jobs? We are missing a proper participation system that guides our teenagers from the classroom into a career.

We also need to support schools that are struggling, which brings me on to the issue of the Government’s target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers. In my opinion, that completely ignores the challenges of primary schools. There has been a massive drop in primary school trainees. I am worried that falling rolls in primary schools are putting pressure on teacher recruitment and that the drop in primary school pupils will make its way through to secondary schools. There is a challenge there. We can see that happening here in London in particular, where places such as Lambeth and Hackney are now seeing pressures in schools. In open evidence to the Public Services Committee, we heard from one head teacher who said his school was closing.

So there is a real issue around how the Government looks at the funding formula, because it is based on pupil numbers rather than the actual cost of running schools. It is a huge issue, and not just a London-based one; it also affects rural and coastal communities. We are not going to be able to build a strong economy if our school system is hollowed out.

I have some questions for the Minister. We know from Milburn and House of Lords Library research that over 1 million young people are NEET now, and we are going to get Milburn’s recommendations. First, can the Minister confirm that the Government will fully fund all the recommendations from the Milburn review? Secondly, what will they do about tackling the drop-off in primary school teacher trainees? As I said, if we do not fix this problem now, it will follow through. Both Milburn and the fantastic work that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has done on tackling the issues around white working-class boys not achieving their potential identified that these issues start at a very young age. Finally, as I am running out of time, can the Minister please comment on the funding formula, which is causing huge issues for our primary school children and schools?