Youth Service Provision

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Lisa Nandy

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that, and it is one of the reasons why I congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North for situating this debate in the wider context of what is happening to young people. Transport costs are the key thing that young people always raise with me and, I am sure, many other Members, and it is important that we think about that when we consider services for young people.

There are some other startling examples of local authorities doing something really exciting. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole is right to acknowledge the impact that the cuts have had but also to say that this is not just about funding. For example, I think that many Members will be aware of a project in Lambeth that I have heard about and seen for myself. Lambeth took the huge amounts that it was spending on young people through various budgets and put it into a trust, which anyone in the community over the age of 12 could join. It was weighted towards young people, so that they retained control, and it gave the community the power to take real decisions about how services were commissioned and delivered and what they looked like. My understanding is that that project has been a remarkable success. It points to a key feature of successful youth services; the most successful ones are those that involve young people in commissioning, designing and delivering them, where possible.

However, we know from our experience of looking at youth services that what works in Lambeth does not necessarily work in Liverpool. That is why I have said that there needs to be a clear minimum offer from this Government. Labour is clearly committed to that, but not to prescription about on how it should be delivered. Labour Members have previously said that we are open to strengthening the statutory duty to provide youth services, and I have listened carefully to the contributions by hon. Members on that point, but I think we must recognise that, on its own, a statutory duty is not enough. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, we already have a statutory duty, limited though it is, and it is not being fulfilled around the country. Labour is very attracted by the possibility of introducing a duty to ensure that young people are involved from the outset in designing and commissioning youth services, and we wonder whether the Minister might share that aspiration; if he does, perhaps he will say something about it today.

There is also a clear need to ensure that young people can hold the people who make these decisions to account. That is one of the reasons why Labour is committed to introducing votes at 16. I hope that the Minister will listen to that argument and consider carefully how young people can hold their elected politicians to account for their decisions if they do not have the vote.

I should also mention briefly concerns about the work force. I want to be fair to the Minister, so I will say that some of the problems in the youth service work force predate the coalition. In 2008, a survey by the National Youth Agency found that a third of councils were not investing at all in the professional development of youth workers. That was really worrying then, but I dread to think what the figure is now, several years after the huge cuts that we have had. Can the Minister tell us? There is a real risk that we will run down the quality of our services and then turn around and say to young people that those services are not worth saving in any case.

There is no question that the last four years have been absolutely horrendous for this sector, and I do not want to lose sight of that. We have lost good, skilled staff, and many more are under significant strain, dealing with low pay, job insecurity and the prospect of redundancies. This really matters, because as my hon. Friends the Members for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and for Stockton North said, behind the loss of all those youth workers—2,000 of them during the last few years—is a story of broken relationships. I once worked with a young person who had grown up in and out of care. He was 18 when I first came across him and he told me that the only consistent adult in his life since he was 11 had been his youth worker. When we lose good, skilled staff, we break that link and that bond, and the damage is irreparable.

Regarding the National Citizen Service, I say to the Minister that although I support many of the things that my hon. Friends have said, and I myself have also had a parmo with some of the young people from Redcar who have taken part in NCS, it is no substitute for long-term, ongoing youth services provided all year round. It is a short-term intervention and it is very expensive. If we come to power in May next year, we are not planning to make the same mistake that this Government did with the v scheme, and simply tear something up because another party has established it, but we are very concerned about the cost of NCS. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North drew a parallel between the amount of money that the German Federal Government spend on year-round youth work and the money that this Government spend on short-term interventions.

The other thing to say is that young people spend 85% of their time out of school, yet each year local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than they do on providing services for young people outside the school day. We need to get a bit of a grip on this, because when this Government agreed to protect ring-fencing for school funding they did not do the same for additional activities. They abolished ring-fenced grants for—

[Alex Cunningham]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lisa Nandy]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will not give way, as I have only a couple of minutes left and I wanted to make some last points.

As I was saying, the Government abolished the ring-fenced grants for additional activities. They inherited spending of £350 million per year on those activities, which equated to about £77 per young person aged between 13 and 19. A previous Minister responsible for this area said that that equated to

“large slugs of public money”.

I hope that the current Minister will take the opportunity to reject that view and tell us that he thinks young people are worth at least £77 of our money per head.

Over the past four years, Ministers have passed on responsibility to the very same local authorities that they are hammering with budget cuts. Frankly there was only ever going to be one result, because at the same time the money that helped to sustain youth services was put into an early intervention grant, which was also used to fund Sure Starts and services dealing with teen pregnancy, substance misuse and mental health, before being cut again by up to 40%. I say to the Minister: what sort of message does that send to young people about our commitment to them? If my hon. Friend the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East were here, he would say that this approach is so short-sighted, particularly given all the issues about child protection and children in the criminal justice system that we have discussed.

I also wanted to say to the Minister that some local authorities have cut way beyond the average. Have he or any of his colleagues ever considered using the powers that they have under the Education Act 2006 to intervene where they see youth services being cut disproportionately and the statutory duty that exists in that Act not being met?

In 2011, the Minister’s predecessor as Minister for Civil Society said,

“we are working with our strategic partners to gather information about what is happening on the ground”.

Has that happened and has it been published? What discussions has he had with local authorities?

This is not simply a question of money; it is about priorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, quite rightly, that the emergence of a significant youth service can be traced back to post-world war two and “In the Service of Youth”. It was a time when the country was facing the most significant financial challenge in its history. This is not just a question of what we say to our young people; it is about what sort of country we want to be. Do we want to be forward-looking, confident, ambitious and invest in our young people, their talent and energy, or do we want to watch the sad disintegration of the services that they rely on over the next few years? I know what our answer is.