Youth Service Provision

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I apologise for being late for the debate. I was in the Chamber for the autumn statement, desperately bobbing up and down trying to be called, which took rather a long time. I am sorry to have missed the opening speech, and congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing the debate. It is a privilege and pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who knows an awful lot about the subject. I was interested in her speech, which was largely non-political, with the exception of some comments about cuts. I will say something about those in the context of my local authority.

I used to serve as a local councillor and I used to be—and still consider myself to be—a schoolteacher, so general issues to do with young people are of considerable interest to me. I am interested also because one of the local authorities in my constituency has made a significant change to youth services in recent years, from which I think we can learn a lot, and perhaps paint a slightly different picture from the doom and gloom scenario in many local authority areas. I was a councillor through a Labour Government, and year after year, youth services seemed to be cut or reduced, or become less significant. Even at a time of increasing local government expenditure, which happened in some years, it was a service that still seemed to come under the hammer for efficiency savings or cuts. Of course, there is variation in that from authority to authority.

We hear a lot about cuts to the youth service, and that was happening in North Lincolnshire until we came to office in 2011 when we took the council away from the control of the Labour group and made the political decision to increase the youth budget.

[Lisa Nandy]

Given the problems that the hon. Gentleman outlined about non-statutory services becoming poorer and less of a priority in times of trouble, does he support a statutory youth service?

[Andrew Percy]

I am open to debate on that. I do not have a particularly strong view one way or the other. Provision for young people is something that local authorities should just want to make, because it is part of their core function. If we have local democracy those decisions should be for local councillors, and if they do not choose to provide those services local people have the option of throwing them out. Young people can play an important role in that if more of them vote. I always say to young people that the reason they do not have a free bus pas when pensioners do can be seen from the turnout figures.

I have been painting a rosy picture up to now.

[Alex Cunningham]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. It is his debate, after all.

[Alex Cunningham]

If the hon. Gentleman is not in favour of youth services becoming a statutory responsibility of local authorities, does he accept that perhaps we need to make sure there is specific funding—an increase first, and then specific ring-fenced funding for the delivery of youth services in local authority areas?

[Andrew Percy]

I am always wary, Mr Davies—and as a fellow Yorkshireman I should have mentioned that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship—of this place telling local authorities what they should or should not spend their budget on. I remember the Connexions budget, which was ring-fenced to local councils. It was ring-fenced funding for a couple of years, at which point it simply passed into the revenue budget of local authorities. The extra funding we got for Connexions, which we had to spend on it in the first year or two when it came from central Government, did not continue because it became part of our main revenue budget.

[Alex Cunningham]

I chaired a Connexions company across the whole of the Tees valley. That was not money vested in the local authority; it was vested in the Connexions company, which was there to deliver, and it had no other option but to spend the money on direct services.

[Andrew Percy]

I do not know what the situation was, but I remember in the city of Hull, when we had it, although there was pump-priming from central Government we eventually ended up picking up some of the expenditure on Connexions. [Interruption.] I will have to. If the hon. Gentleman wants to contact me afterwards we can try to sort it out. I was on the council for 10 years. There are many things I remember well and some I choose to forget. This is one that I remember; we debated it in the council chamber. I will happily be corrected afterwards.

On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point about whether we should be mandating how local councils spend their money, there are countless examples. Connexions may be an example of where that happened after funding was made available by the previous Government. Bus passes are another example of where local authorities got some money and were told that they had to provide something. The money from central Government disappears off and local authorities ended up having to absorb it in their revenue budget. My answer to his question is that I would be nervous. It is something that local authorities should choose to provide, and if they do not provide it, they can be held accountable at the next election.

[Bill Esterson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I came in late, so it would be rude of me not to give way.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman used the phrase “Government money disappears off,” which has certainly happened on a grand scale under this Government. Does he agree—this is the point Opposition Members have all been making—that investment in youth services prevents the costs of social failure, one way or another, especially preventing young people ending up in prison? Does he support the general principle of invest to save, quite apart from the benefits to young people?

[Andrew Percy]

I will not rehearse with the hon. Gentleman the reason why there are spending reductions for local government, which would have been implemented by whoever was in power. Let us not pretend that there is some sort of alternative nirvana in which local government budgets would be increasing. Regardless of who won the 2010 election, local government budgets would be reducing, so let us nail that myth.

I am rapidly trying to remember the hon. Gentleman’s question, which was on whether there is value in investment. I think there is value, but it can be provided in a number of ways. Indeed, who is providing such bespoke support, particularly to at-risk young people, varies between localities. There is no doubt, because the evidence is very clear, that if we intervene early on young people who are at risk of following certain pathways, we can prevent those outcomes—that is what we all want. I broadly agree with him, although how we provide it should not be mandated in one particular way.

That brings me neatly to North Lincolnshire council. We went through a painful process, because following the “Positive for Youth” Government guidance in July 2012, the local authority decided to consult young people on how it should provide its youth services. In so doing, the local authority spoke to 2,000 young people, who told us that the service they had been offered, which in many ways had not changed since the old Humberside youth service of 40 years earlier, was not necessarily delivering what they wanted it to deliver. That became controversial. Some youth workers did not like it, because different providers were brought in. Indeed, in the initial proposals there was a gap between what would happen to the core, traditional youth worker roles and the new provision. Questions were asked about whether we would lose something. Eventually, the local authority came to the sensible position of retaining a number of fully qualified youth workers in an outreach role across localities, and a range of other provisions was provided across various localities with an increased budget of £194,000, which is not insignificant for a small authority.

Young people told us that they did not necessarily want everything to be sport-related, which often happens with youth services and youth provision in the broader sense. People often think, “We’ll just put goalposts up and give kids a football, because that’s what they really want.” But that is not what a lot of young people want, so street dance is now being provided by a brilliant organisation called Street Beat. We have Grasp the Nettle, and we even have cooking classes. Of course, street sport is provided throughout the summer months, and indoor sports are provided in the winter months.

We have been able to base those activities in 20 centres across North Lincolnshire, including all the existing youth centres, which the council decided to retain and, in some cases, improve—the youth centre in Broughton in my constituency will shortly be moving. We now have new providers offering a range of services, including the Duke of Edinburgh award programme, in a number of new centres. There are new operators in places such as Winterton, Brigg, Epworth and Crowle. Attendance in Broughton has increased by 63% since youth services were provided in this different way, which was controversial in many respects, but the figures speak for themselves.

The local authority also talked to disabled young people about what they wanted. The responses were very interesting, because they wanted bespoke services for disabled young people to be part of the mix, but they wanted mainstream provision to apply to them, too. I pay tribute to Scunthorpe United, which does a great job of providing disabled youth services. I also pay tribute to Daisy Lincs, which is a great local charity headed by Julie Reed from Crowle. Daisy Lincs does a brilliant job with disabled young people.

I will now describe where we are at in my area and across North Lincolnshire. Before the changes, we used to have three sessions a week in Winterton; we now have five. We used to have eight sessions in Brigg; we now have nine. On the Isle of Axholme, which I represent, we used to have three sessions; we now have nine. The number of sessions increased by 49.5% between 2012-13 and 2013-14, and the attendances speak for themselves. There were 31,215 attendances in 2013-14 compared with 22,800 in 2012-13, so providing services in a different way and delivering them with extra funding has made a real difference. The biggest thing we found was that 85% to 90% of young people simply did not engage with the old youth service provision, which was working very well for a certain group of young people, but it was not working more broadly. It could be argued that some of the new provision, because it is based around themes such as street theatre, may not be picking up some of the important issues that the hon. Member for Bolton West so eloquently outlined. That is why outreach services are being retained.

We know that the picture is painful for many local authorities, but in North Lincolnshire, by putting in that extra money and providing services in a different way, based on what young people told us they want—there were some protests from youth workers—we have been able to deliver a positive change.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman is giving the same message that Opposition Members would give. If more resources are put into the service, and if the service is modernised, better services can be delivered for more young people. Surely that is the message: we need more resources for youth work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

Local authorities may simply provide what they already spend, but we took the decision to reverse the cuts of the previous council administration. We put new money in, but we provided the services in a different way. If I had one criticism of my time as a local councillor and of my time working in this process, it is that some of those closest to the service do not necessarily always understand how society and young people have changed and how the provision needs to alter too. In my profession as a teacher, the pastoral support offered to young people now is very different from the support that was provided to young people even—when did I go to school?—10 or 20 years ago. The provision is very different, so schools pick up some of it, and there are other services, too. Nothing can exist in stasis. Money may be part of the answer, but we can do things differently. We can get positive outcomes even with a declining budget, which my other local authority faces because it made different decisions. The general message is that provision for young people is vital.

[Alex Cunningham]

It is not statutory.

[Andrew Percy]

I have already explained the answers to that one. I apologise once again for being late and will end there.