Funding for Youth Services

Debate between Alex Cunningham and Stuart Andrew

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) for securing this important debate, and all other Members for their extremely passionate contributions.

I recognise the importance of youth services. As the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said, more than 85% of a young person’s waking hours are spent outside school, and it is during that time that thousands of youth workers and volunteers make a tremendous difference to young people’s lives. The unique nature of youth services—one that builds a long-term, voluntary relationship with a trusted adult—is incredibly important. Youth services have been proven to have positive impacts on young people’s wellbeing, confidence, social skills, political awareness and citizenship, and they can help with the development of specific skills.

I am glad that a number of Members mentioned our important work on loneliness. As the Minister responsible, I know how important it is that we look at loneliness, particularly for young people. In fact, this week—it may even be today—we are launching our latest campaign, which is targeted at helping young people who are particularly affected by loneliness. We are particularly looking at the issue of stigma; loneliness is part of life, and it is fine for somebody to admit that they are feeling lonely and seek help.

Last year, I had the privilege to visit the Lift youth centre in Islington, where I saw at first hand how transformational youth services can be. I spoke to youth workers who had previously attended the youth centre themselves and were so inspired by their own youth workers that they had entered the profession themselves. I also spoke to a number of young people, who definitely put me to the test when it came to table tennis. They told me that the youth centre gave them a safe space to meet friends, try new activities and speak to trusted adults. The impact of such activities, safe spaces and trusted relationships cannot be underestimated.

Ensuring that all young people have access to youth services is a top priority for me and the Secretary of State, but before I turn to the details of Government funding, it is important that I set out the wider context. A wide range of youth services operate in this country, funded from a wide variety of sources. UK Youth estimates that there are 8,500 organisations involved in delivering youth services, with a total expenditure of up to £2 billion. I thank them all for what they do. In addition, much of the funding delivered through our public bodies, such as Sport England, Arts Council England and the National Lottery Community Fund, benefits young people, although it is not formally counted as youth service spending.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am a big fan of what the lottery has achieved in so many parts of the country, and it supports many sports clubs in my constituency. Despite those clubs’ work and outreach, many of the most vulnerable children never get the opportunity to go to them, and nor can they afford the small subs. Does the Minister agree that we need greater outreach from clubs that are benefiting from the money that we all spend occasionally on a lottery ticket?

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I was going to come to later but will touch on now. One of the important things we are doing in the Department is our sports and physical activity strategy, which looks specifically at people who are not particularly active or engaging. We have established a taskforce that brings together the national governing bodies of various sports, which have a huge network that includes grassroots sports organisations up and down the country. The taskforce will see what more we can do to reach those who are not participating for a variety of reasons, one of which may be the cost.

As colleagues have said, local authorities play a key part in delivering youth services. That is reflected in their statutory duty to provide sufficient leisure time activities and facilities in line with local needs. Some areas have faced challenges in meeting that duty. In recognition of the pressures, the local government settlement was increased to more than £64 billion this year, and an additional £500 million will be dedicated to ensuring the continued provision of crucial services and early intervention for communities, in particular for children and young people.

We are also committed to ensuring that disadvantaged young people have holidays that are full of experiences and opportunities. We are providing £200 million a year to local authorities and their local partners through the holiday activities and food programme. Through our reforms to social care and family help, the Government are investing in new approaches that will see spending rebalanced towards more preventive measures. I want youth services to contribute to and benefit from those reforms.

We are also taking further steps to support local authorities to uphold their duty. As was mentioned, we recently updated the statutory guidance that underpins the duty for local youth service provision so that we can support local authorities to better understand their duty and how to deliver it. We are also funding a peer review programme, which provides local authorities with the opportunity to learn from each other and share best practice. By working alongside organisations in the community and voluntary organisations, local authorities can secure high-quality youth provision that meets the needs of the young people in their areas. The programme is working especially well in areas that have developed local youth partnerships, which we are continuing to support.

I am keen to find solutions to some of the problems that have been highlighted today. That is why I recently met with the Young People’s Foundation Trust, which brings all the local organisations together and does joint bids for grants. That eases the burdens mentioned by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I want to roll that work out, so that we have effective local provision.

[Stuart Andrew]

I have regular conversations with colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up. That is why I was mentioning the local youth partnership work. The response from local authorities up and down the country to the updated guidance we gave them was very positive, and in some areas the sharing of best practice is going extremely well. I want the valuable work of bringing people together to share best practice to be rolled out across the country.

We also have an ambitious goal: our national youth guarantee that, by 2025, every young person will have access to regular out-of-school activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer. That came as a direct request from young people themselves; we contacted thousands of young people to ask them what their top priorities were, and those were the ones. That is why we are investing over £500 million in services to deliver that ambition, which builds on a £1 billion investment in England since 2015. Our funding is designed to complement the existing provision that local authorities and dedicated voluntary and community organisations are already providing.

We want to level up opportunities and ensure that every young person has somewhere to go, someone to talk to and something to do, as the hon. Member for Nottingham South said. We are creating and redeveloping up to 300 youth facilities through the youth investment fund. More than £250 million has already gone out of the door, supporting 226 organisations, to give thousands more young people access to opportunities in their community. We have also reformed the National Citizen Service programme into a year-round offer, with 120,000 young people taking part last year and thousands more already taking part this year.

We recognise the benefits of greater join-up between formal education and the youth sector. We are working with the Department for Education to expand access to the Duke of Edinburgh award in schools and communities across the country. More than 400 new organisations have already started delivering the programme, giving more than 30,000 young people the opportunity to challenge themselves, support their communities and learn new skills.

In addition, we are supporting uniformed youth organisations to recruit more volunteers, as has rightly been mentioned during the debate, to increase their capacity sustainably. More than 7,500 young people already have a new place in an existing group or one of the new 250 groups we have helped to establish. We are also supporting more than 10,000 young people to take part in outdoor learning that supports their personal development, through the adventures away from home fund.

[Alex Cunningham]

I suspect the Minister is coming towards the end of his speech. I am concerned that we have all on this side raised the link between youth services and crime, so will the Minister address that before he sits down?

[Stuart Andrew]

I will certainly come to that in a minute. It pre-empts the rest of my speech, but I am happy to take that intervention, as I have reached that point now. Many hon. Members have raised issues of antisocial behaviour and crime. There were interesting points about addiction services; I will raise that with colleagues in the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care.

In partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund, we are providing £22 million to youth organisations to deliver additional hours of support and positive activities for young people in areas where they may be at risk of antisocial behaviour. We have already invested £3.7 million of the million hours fund, supporting more than 400 youth organisations. We are also continuing to invest in the #iwill fund, to create around 60,000 opportunities for young people to make a difference in their communities through social action.

We recognise that some young people need additional support to reach their potential. That is why we are investing in dedicated programmes, where youth workers build that trusted relationship with a young person, helping to steer them along the right path. We have put £2.5 million towards disadvantaged children and young people accessing green spaces.