Government Policy (NEETs)

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

A number of right hon. and hon. Friends want to intervene during this debate. As I have told the Minister what I intend to say, I hope hon. Members will excuse me if I take my speech at a bit of a canter because that will, I hope, give colleagues the opportunity to intervene when they can. Given the interest in this topic, I slightly regret that I did not enter the ballot to have an hour and a half debate.

A report on young people not in education, employment or training produced earlier this year by the then Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families states:

“We accept that the term ‘NEET’ is imperfect. In particular, its use as a noun to refer to a young person can be pejorative and stigmatising. It is, however, a commonly used statistical category, and—in the absence of an appropriate alternative—we have accepted it as a first step in understanding the issues.”

A NEET is someone under 25 who is in employment for less than 16 hours a week and who is not in education or training. My constituency has two main towns, Banbury and Bicester. In September this year, 7.5% of Banbury’s 16 to 18-year-olds—approximately one in 12 young people—were not constructively engaged in education, employment or training. Nationally, the Prince’s Trust estimates that almost 15% of 16 to 24-year-olds in England are NEETs, which is around 874,000 young people. The Prince’s Trust estimates that the cost to the state of young people who are NEET is £3.65 billion per year.

As hon. Members may know, in recent years, I have helped to establish job clubs in Banbury and Bicester and, earlier this year, we set up a working party involving those running the job clubs—including Jobcentre Plus and Connexions—to consider what more could be done to help NEETs back into education, employment or training. We also considered how to improve the NEET situation in future years and assist the 142 or so existing NEETs in and around Banbury.

I know my hon. Friend the Minister takes the issue seriously. He inherited a skills system that he has rightly described as over-complicated, over-bureaucratic, incredibly micromanaged and top heavy. He has observed that the previous Government went wrong by basing their skills policy on target-driven bureaucracy, failing to provide sufficient attention to community-based adult learning and effectively abandoning a generation of NEETs. However, during the work I have been doing this year, I have become concerned that a number of policy changes might have the unintended consequence of worsening the opportunities for less skilled and disadvantaged young people to move into further education or employment with training.

We need to consider whether returning the contractual relationship to the Young People’s Learning Agency from councils has reduced local flexibility to provide what is needed post-16, and whether removing the ring fence from Connexions funding has put at risk the work needed to prevent NEETs. It is not possible for me to show in Hansard a diagram of what we are doing locally to try to prevent NEETs and to help existing NEETs. However, the simple fact is that Connexions is the gateway for existing NEETs and provides the signposting, engagement and intervention to help them. That is done through support with apprenticeships, engagement with things such as SKIDZ motor mechanics, work trials, personal advice, interventions, or through programmes such as the new projects in Banbury, including the very welcome new Prince’s Trust programme. We need to ensure that Connexions can effectively undertake that work, because we should be in no doubt that the long-term cost to society of a youngster dropping out at 16, 17 or 18 is far greater than the money that would be spent in ensuring they have educational or training opportunities.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I am certainly grateful for the debate. The comments my hon. Friend makes about the costs are absolutely on point. I am sure he is well aware that the cost to the taxpayer is £97,000 per individual over their lifetime—some estimates put the figure at £300,000 if benefits are included. Does he therefore agree that such figures need to be borne in mind when the Government consider how to resolve this intractable problem?

[Tony Baldry]

I entirely agree with that point, which my hon. Friend makes extremely well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. It is a particular delight to respond to this debate, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who I know cares deeply about such matters. I make it clear that I share his doubts about the label “NEETs”. For some reason, young people seem perpetually prone to being pigeonholed in unhelpful ways—from mods and rockers to hoodies. Of course such terms do not reflect reality and therefore do not do people justice. There is no such thing as a typical NEET; there are different groups of young people with particular kinds of challenges, different circumstances and different needs. As my hon. Friend said, it follows that we will be more effective in dealing with the problems and challenges they face if we have the flexibility to draw on a range of different options and build on best practice.

I intend, in the course of the all too short time that I have, to make nine points of substance and then move to an exciting peroration. My hon. Friend will forgive me if I rattle through those points, but I hope they are relevant to him. Along the way, I will attempt to answer some of the particular issues that he raised. Next week—I know that you, Mr Chope, and the whole Chamber, are waiting with bated breath—we will publish our skills strategy, which will set out the direction we intend to take regarding the funding and management of skills. It will be radically different from the assumptions that have underpinned policy over recent years, and will challenge much of the orthodoxy upon which that policy was based.

Let me deal with one point at the very beginning. I have asked officials to look at the issue regarding certification, which my hon. Friend raised. I agree that it does not seem appropriate—it is anomalous to say the least. We will look at that closely and deal with it.

The young people whom my hon. Friend mentioned, and those whom I meet, have ambition. They want to get on with their lives, and they recognise that learning can help them make something of themselves and can make them objects of admiration and respect. By attaining skills through learning, people gain a sense of value and are recognised by others as having worth. We believe that and care about it, and we will adopt policies that will enable young people to gain that sense of value. The investment we make in young people is our gift to future generations.

I do not doubt that the previous Government cared about such matters too—no party in this place has a monopoly on wisdom, and certainly not on compassion. The matter is one that understandably generates strong sentiment, and sentiment is not something we should disregard in politics; we are not dull utilitarians, are we? None the less, there were real problems with past policy. Many millions have been spent on a bewildering succession of schemes, but to what effect? At the last count, some 874,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 —or about one in seven—were not in any form of education, training or work. For a nation that cares about fairness and opportunity and about its own future, that is simply unacceptable.

Let me move to my nine points. The first is that we will certainly take a close look at job clubs such as those in Banbury and Bicester. They are good examples of what can be achieved by local people using prudent public investment, drawing together industry, local government, community groups and charitable organisations. I have discussed the matter with my hon. Friend, and I know they are examples that can be followed. I have asked my officials to look at them to see what can be done to share that good practice.

The second point is again implicit in my hon. Friend’s analysis. We need a more holistic approach to the way we deal with the problem of such young people. It ranges from the circumstances at school and their prior attainment, to family circumstances and the particular physical or mental health issues they may face, to simple matters of confidence born of inadequate skills—a lack of confidence that is inevitable for those who have poor literacy and numeracy skills. However, it is not as simple as that—indeed, it is not simple at all—which is why we need the joined-up approach that I think has been lacking in the past.

Thirdly, we also need to link the issue closely to our benefit reforms. I am speaking to the Department for Work and Pensions about those matters, and I assure my hon. Friend that part of the discussion is about funding. He made a good point about such people carrying funding with them and therefore being attractive to learning providers. We are on the case, and we will look once again next week—I do not want to give away any secrets—at the principles of learning accounts and the part they can play in driving the system through learner choice and employer need. I am mindful of those who are moving from disengagement to engagement in those terms.

[Anne Marie Morris]

There is certainly an attraction to that approach. South Devon college, in my constituency, goes out on to the streets to where the NEETs are to find them. It is a win-win situation. I think we need to go out to get them rather than waiting for them to come to us, which is the point the Minister is making.

[Mr Hayes]

My failure to respond to that point has nothing to do with its salience but with the time I have available. I will certainly take the matter up with my hon. Friend; it is a well-made argument.

The fourth point is about careers guidance. We need, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury said, to give such people the right advice and guidance. We will be launching an all-age careers service, which I spoke about last week in Belfast. Those who are interested may have a copy of my speech; those who are very interested can have a signed copy.

The fifth point is that raised by the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) about pre-apprenticeship training. As others have said, it is about getting people to the point where they can enjoy more formal training by the skills they acquire early on. We need a continuum of training, and I am working on that, too. However, it has to be progressive. I have said to the DWP that the offer must be authentic in terms of training and skills, and progressive—it must lead to further learning that makes people more employable, and then takes them into work.

The sixth point is the need for early intervention. When dealing with such multi-faceted problems, we need to look at disadvantage; let us be frank about that. It means using the pupil premium, announced by the new Government, in the most imaginative, creative and productive way possible, and seeing how that can leverage real outcomes for people’s subsequent progress in learning and work.

My seventh point is that the Government made a big commitment in the comprehensive spending review not just on apprenticeships, about which I will say a little more in a moment, but on community learning. Adult and community learning was protected in the CSR. I am passionate about the fact that there are different routes into learning. Some of them are informal and others formal, but we must not take the view that there is only one ladder to climb. People will return to learning, and people with a poor history in their prior experience will need a gentle approach. Small, bite-sized chunks of learning, highly accessible, very attractive and often linked to practical competencies can often be the way forward. That is why we protected both the basic skills and the adult and community learning budgets in the CSR.

Eighthly, I have already mentioned apprenticeships. I do not want to trumpet the Government’s achievements in that respect. People are right: we will need to get employers involved, which is why we sent out tens of thousands of letters last week to small businesses to get them involved in an apprenticeship programme and to back the £250 million we have put in, with a view to creating not just 50,000, or 60,000 but 75,000 more apprenticeships, which is more apprenticeships than we have ever had in Britain.

Ninth and finally, we certainly need to give institutions more flexibility. We need to make the system more responsive to the needs of such young people, and generally. A more dynamic and responsive system, shaped around employer need and driven by learning choice, can deliver the skills the country needs, and it can also change lives by changing life chances.

As a result of the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury in securing the debate, I have done three things. First, I have asked my Department to develop a cross-departmental strategy to deal with the NEETs problem. Secondly, I am looking at simplifying the funding process for accessing the right money to run community-led projects to address NEET issues. Finally, in particular, I have asked officials to see what we can learn from job clubs in north Oxfordshire.

The issue is about the value we place on individual lives, and the value we place, too, on social mobility, social justice and social cohesion. When each feels valued, all feel valued. It is about building the big society from the bottom up—a brighter Britain where lives are illuminated by the power of learning, and a bigger Britain where all have their chance to grow.

Question put and agreed to.