Employment: Young People

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the figures the noble Baroness quoted are very distorted by the training allowances, which got people off the long-term measure. I will not go into a long song and dance about it, but those figures were the result of a very distorted comparison. I have quoted the real figures—the ones that matter—to this House on a regular basis. When you look at youngsters who are both workless and outside full-time education, that figure rose through the longest boom we have seen in our history because of structural inability to get those youngsters into the workforce. There was neither adequate education nor routes into the workforce. We are turning those figures round—and they are the real figures.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

May I ask the Minister how we monitor the success of these training schemes and apprenticeships? How many are effective in providing long-term, standard employment when their training or term of apprenticeship comes to an end?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it is vital that we have routes that lead into long-term, sustained employment and into being part of the economic life of the country. It is a bit early to look at the apprenticeship figures yet, because they are long term, but if you look at the work experience figures, nearly half the people on work experience were off benefits 21 weeks after starting a placement. That is more or less the kind of figure we saw with the Future Jobs Fund. The difference is that this work experience cost one-20th of what the Future Jobs Fund cost the previous Government.