Young Adults: Public Service Funding

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble friend Lady Massey for securing this important debate. I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that we have an entitlement to expect that more noble Lords should have made the effort to be here to contribute to the debate. None the less, that does not detract from the quality of the debate we have had.

Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide services and activities in their area for those aged 13 to 19, or up to 24 in the case of young adults with a learning difficulty or disability. However, evidence from the Local Government Association has highlighted reduced funding for youth services, youth offending teams and children’s care services over recent years due to budget cuts from central government. Local authorities really do try their best to meet their statutory responsibilities, but the Local Government Association reports that many councils have had to divert funding away from traditional youth services to children at risk of harm. Despite these measures, they increasingly overspend on children’s services. As a result, they face a huge challenge in providing youth services.

Councils were forced to overspend on their children services budgets by more than £600 million across England in 2015-16 and it is projected that there will be a massive funding gap of more than £3 billion by 2025. That gap was also highlighted in a recent report on children and young people’s services, published jointly by five prominent children’s charities, and referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. That report found that funding for local authority children and young people’s services had fallen by £3 billion between 2010 and 2018—a reduction of 29%. At the same time, local authorities’ spending on those services fell by £1.7 billion—a reduction of 16%—so we should pay tribute to our councils that have used various means of maintaining the best possible level of children and young people’s services, despite central government’s best efforts to force them to make even deeper cuts. That is the result of austerity policies and political choices by Tory and coalition Governments since 2010.

Adding to the negative impact of these cuts is the fact that funding and spending has decreased by a larger proportion in the most deprived areas, so although local authorities have a statutory duty to provide access to educational and recreational leisure-time activities for young people in their area, the Government are denying them the resources to do so in a meaningful or sustainable way. Statutory guidance on this duty emphasises the importance of access to services for all young people, particularly the disadvantaged or vulnerable. Would that this were possible. That guidance was published more than seven years ago, since when the financial constraints on councils have increased considerably. Apparently, a review of the guidance is imminent, and it is certainly overdue.

On children and young people’s issues, the most pressing problem is the rise in youth crime, largely the result of the lack of facilities for young people—as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Massey—allied to severe reductions in the number of police officers on the streets and in communities. This year, a report by the local government services union UNISON revealed that since 2012-13, across England, more than 4,500 youth work jobs had been lost with almost 800 youth centres closed. Just think of the number of opportunities to engage young people lost as a result. These teenagers are left with little to divert them in terms of creative or sporting activities and, all too often, that excess energy finds an outlet in criminal activity. That is not in any way to suggest that closed facilities are a justification for turning to crime, but they might at least point to part of the reason why it can happen.

As referred to again by my noble friend Lady Massey, a report published by the Children’s Society this month found that only 50 of 141 local authorities had a strategy in place to tackle child criminal exploitation. One of the society’s key recommendations for improving the response of statutory services to children being criminally exploited is for the Government to address the shortfall in children’s social care funding and allocate sufficient funding to allow the reinstatement of early help and early intervention services across local authorities.

It is instructive that around 85% of young people’s waking hours are spent outside formal education, yet it has been estimated that local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than on providing services for young people outwith the school day. This is not the debate to highlight budget cuts to school funding, or the fact that 16 to 19 education has been hardest hit by cuts since 2010, but they both play into the pressures on children and young people being considered today. Youth work can play an invaluable role in supporting young people as they make the transition from childhood to adulthood, but the Government surely need to be more aware than they appear to be of the impact of reducing funding for youth work. They must provide local authorities with the resources for greater investment in youth work, recognising that it plays a key role in promoting a multiagency response to tackling serious violence by providing diversionary activities and mentoring support.

Youth work can be most effective in helping young people who are from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds and do not have the same family or other structures to support them, because this can make it an essential element in tackling the problem of serious youth violence. In its recent report, to which noble Lords have referred, Barnardo’s found, having spoken to young people across the country, that reduced opportunities for them just to hang out contribute to rising crime and anti-social behaviour. What a sad indictment of the Government that is. They give local government the statutory responsibility for providing youth services but do not give them sufficient resources to enable them to do so. That desperately needs to change.

Local authorities also run youth offending teams, as other noble Lords have mentioned, working with young adults in trouble with the law and providing additional services including running local crime prevention programmes. A Written Answer given last month by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Edward Argar, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, revealed that there had been a reduction of almost 50% in funding for youth justice grants between 2010 and 2017. Because these grants are used to fund local authorities’ youth offending teams, such a cut is a terrible indictment of the Government’s claim to have a commitment to young people. I could barely believe that, when asked to justify the cuts, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson could do no better than to utter that they were made in the context of wider savings across the department. That is no justification at all. I invite the Minister to say what plans the Government have to restore funding for youth justice grants.

School exclusions play a significant part in young people offending. The recent Timpson review was a step in the right direction, emphasising the need for early interventions by schools to act on disruptive behaviour. It is welcome that, in future, schools will be forced to be accountable for the exam results of pupils they exclude, often through the nefarious practice of so-called off-rolling. The relationship between exclusion and the likelihood of a child being a victim or perpetrator of crime is not seriously in doubt. In March, the Education Select Committee heard evidence that excluded children are more likely to be involved in knife crime, a recent study of 4,000 students by the University of Edinburgh having found a clear correlation. Exclusion leads to increased risk, because schools are a relatively safe environment; if a child is excluded then they have more contact with individuals who can lure them into a gang culture.

The Scottish violence reduction unit has been much credited with reducing knife crime in Glasgow, a city I know well from previous political experience. That unit has also had success with campus police officers in schools, the main aim being to engage with young people rather than police them. This has created positive role models and it is encouraging to learn that the Metropolitan Police is now investing in this approach, with an initial 400 officers employed across London. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has come forward with the Young Londoners Fund, referred to by my noble friend Lady Massey. That major initiative plans to support 50,000 young Londoners aged from 10 to 21 through a raft of community projects. Last year, Sadiq Khan and Cat Smith MP, the shadow Minister for Voter Engagement and Youth Affairs, announced Labour’s plans for a statutory youth service. To deliver on this ambition, the next Labour Government will mandate a national body with dedicated, ring-fenced funding to oversee youth service provision across England. This body will work with local youth partnerships in every area to support service delivery across the country. I also commend the work of the London-based charity Khulisa, which offers a behaviour change programme designed for pupils in schools and pupil referral units. It is specifically designed for young people at risk of offending, exploitation and exclusion. The programme works on the basis that early intervention breaks the school-to-prison pipeline, exacerbated by exclusion, enabling young people to choose a safe and crime-free future.

I turn finally to a subject not mentioned thus far in today’s debate, that of young parents. Action for Children recently published an excellent, though concerning, report entitled The Next Chapter: Young People and Parenthood. From it we learn that there are nearly 450,000 parents in England aged 25 and under. With the growing expectation that parenthood comes later in life, young parents can come up against both negative attitudes and government policy that does not take account of their needs. The focus over the past 20 years has been on reducing teenage pregnancy and improving support specifically for teenage mothers, young fathers and their children. This new research shows that the poor outcomes and challenges faced by some teenage parents are also experienced by young people who become parents between the ages of 20 and 25. The report highlights the difficulties faced by young parents, particularly in education and training. The difficulties they face in gaining qualifications then naturally impact on their experiences of work and, consequently, their finances. Young parents are less likely to be employed than their peers, and only one-third are in skilled work compared with 53% of young people overall. The report found that nearly half of single young parents live in workless households compared with 18% of young people who are not parents.

To break down the barriers that prevent young parents accessing education, employment and other services, much needs to be done by government, but there is a legacy there. Young mothers value the opportunity to attend young parent support groups. These often operate out of children’s centres, offering the chance to meet other young parents and to engage with support workers who can provide advice and signpost other services. Almost every noble Lord who has contributed to this debate has mentioned Sure Start, but it has to be repeated that more than 1,000 of the 3,000-plus Sure Start centres created by Labour in government have closed since 2010. Young parents have been among the hardest hit in terms of the denial of previously available vital support services.

It is important that Care to Learn is extended to all young parents to enable them to maximise their chances of getting an education that enables them to work while raising their family. I look forward to hearing what the noble Viscount the Minister has to say about the recommendations of that Action for Children report. I do not expect him to do so today but I would be obliged if he would write to me about that, because there are several meaty recommendations in it.

In conclusion, I know that the Minister is about to say to noble Lords that, although he would be delighted to tell us what resources and support the Government intend to provide for children and young people’s services, it must await the spending review. Therefore, I will phrase my question to him in a different way. What arguments has he made, or will he make, to Treasury Ministers to secure funding to replace at least some of the cuts to young people’s services? Of course, it may be that by this time next week he will no longer be the Minister. On a personal level, I hope that he is, but can he please set out for noble Lords what he regards as the priorities for the funding of public services that impact on the life chances of young adults? They and their families deserve no less.