Labour Market

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to trade stats with the noble Lord but, hey, why not? If he looks carefully, as I am sure he has, at the most recent set of local labour market data, he will see that employment is up to record levels, economic inactivity is down, wages continue to grow and we have a healthy number of vacancies in the labour market. However, he raises an important point about the skills needed by employers at the moment, and the fact is that the labour market is changing.

The noble Lord mentioned graduates, the most recent data for which show that there is still a strong graduate employment market and that graduate employment is still above average. I do not want to send out any messages that degrees are not worth having. Graduate employment is important. However, there are signs of the beginnings of changes in that market.

What the Government are doing is not just for graduates but for all people, as we risk too many young people being left behind if they do not have the right skills or opportunities. As the noble Lord may know, Skills England recently published a report providing an assessment of the Government’s priority skills to 2030. It gave a detailed analysis of future employment needs across 10 critical sectors, aligned with the industrial strategy and the plan for change. I hope he will appreciate that moving adult skills into the DWP strengthens the Government’s focus on the importance of a highly skilled workforce and accompanying economic growth. The DWP has a lot of experience of helping to retrain and reskill workers; that focus will make the difference in future.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister just said that salaries are increasing, but starting salaries are at their weakest in years, according to the KPMG and Recruitment and Employment Confederation report from yesterday. I quote:

“Shrinking demand for staff and concerns around payroll costs dampened rates of starting pay in August”.


Will the Government now finally commit to reforming the provisions in the Employment Rights Bill, so that they genuinely support both businesses and workers, rather than adding to their costs?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, if ever a Bill was set to be relitigated on a weekly basis, this House is the place to do it. The Government remain committed to our Employment Rights Bill. We believe that having appropriate rights for workers increases productivity and strengthens the labour market. On the broader point, unemployment is dipping down and there is a range of reasons for that. One is that the labour force is growing, and we know that people are moving from inactivity to looking for work. Our challenge, as we face the global headwinds we do, is to make sure that we invest in infrastructure and create jobs across the country. Crucially, when there is any tightening in the labour market, the people who struggle are those farthest from the market. Our job is to make sure that we upskill people and invest in every part of the country, and that the jobs that are there go to the right people. There is a healthy number of vacancies out there. Our job is to make sure that everybody has the chance of a good job, moving on and progressing in work.

Armed Forces: Transition to Civilian Life

Lord Sharpe of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I would need to write to the noble Baroness about trauma support because I will need to get the information from the MoD. However, I can give comfort to her and to the whole House: women do very well when it comes to employment after their service. They have good specialist skills such as transport, logistics and medicine, and the support that the DWP gives takes account of individual circumstances and is individually tailored.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, Dr Hugh Milroy, the CEO of the exemplary military charity Veterans Aid, tells me that the current resettlement system is out of touch with the cost of living today and that he has seen this cause genuine hardship for people with otherwise good prospects. I was surprised to find that the individual resettlement training costs grant available to all leavers with six or more years’ service and all medical discharges is set at £534. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that it is time to modernise the system by providing access to an innovative financial empowerment model, perhaps like the student loan system?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am happy to tell my noble friend that while the grant is set at just over £500, the training that it can purchase can be worth thousands of pounds. The Career Transition Partnership contract-funded courses are prepaid by the MoD and it offers other courses as well. Other financial support schemes, such as the enhanced learning credits scheme, can provide up to £3,000. Further financial support of up to £175 per year can be made available through the standard learning credit scheme and the publicly funded further education/higher education scheme provides service leavers with all sorts of support for up to 10 years to a value of up to £9,000. If we need to repackage that, I will be happy to take it back to the department.