Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on introducing this debate so well. I am conscious that a lot of statistics have been thrown around. I was genuinely surprised to hear the figures given by the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Knight, and I am curious as to where they got them from, because they are not what the ONS says. The ONS says that in 2001, seasonally adjusted, which is the preferred figure being used, there were 833,000 NEETs. By March 2010, that figure was 1.128 million. In June, it was 1.074 million. When the Conservatives left office in May 2024, it was 935,000, and by that June it was 921,000. We have seen a disaster in what is going on, a lot of which is due to the policy, sadly, put in place by this Government, thinking that it would do more to help jobs, which has in fact killed off growth and jobs.

Let us give them some credit: there are more people working now than before. That is true, and I am not surprised, given the rise in population. I support most of the changes that have been made to the apprenticeship schemes and the apprenticeship levy. I welcome the fact that a lot has been moved out of education, which showed no interest in young people and what they would do in the future once they had left school, and is now with the DWP. That has been a good move. But let us not shy away from this: unemployment is up and NEETs are up.

We need drive. I was very proud of my record at the DWP during Covid. Working with my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott, we got the unemployment rate down to a record low since 1974. We had the lowest figures on NEETs and youth unemployment. That was not done by accident; it was done by drive and making sure that different parts of government worked together and were working in the areas. That is why we tried to enhance our working with not only mayors but also councils through our Jobcentre Plus network.

Universal credit was designed to make it so that you would be better off in work than not working. It was always estimated by Sir Iain Duncan Smith that it would cost taxpayers more, because it wrapped six benefits into one. But the underlying principle was that you are better off working than not, and that was still true until recently. What has happened recently is that, thankfully, we got rid of tax credits. I understand the incentive there. The thinking was that we would subsidise low pay through tax credits. I do not think that was the right approach, but I understand why it happened. But the way that was designed meant that, if you worked a minute over 16 hours, you would be worse off. So, big employers redesigned their work systems so that people basically had 16-hour contracts, and it has been difficult to shift that.

UC allowed the opportunity to do so, but the reason why it is now more of a challenge is that we have a quarter of a million families with a household income of over £40,000 who will now get free school meals. There are a number of incentives not to come off benefits and a huge number of incentives not to go full-time. There are definitely still challenges, which I appreciate the Government will continue to try to tackle, in the availability of childcare all year round, not just when schools are sitting.

We will debate PIP next week, so I will not devote much time to that. All I will say is that, with the cost of living challenges, a lot more people started applying for benefits who did not do so before.

To go back to the beginning and education, we can see the difference that happened in the United Kingdom. When the Conservatives came in, working in partnership in the coalition, there was a big drive by my noble friend Lord Gove and Nick Gibb on phonics—getting into the foundations and the basics. When I first visited schools, I was astonished to find that the poorest-performing school in my constituency offered 50 GCSEs, and it wondered why it was struggling. Let us get back to the core of what will give a young person the opportunity to grow and contribute to our great country.