Welfare Expenditure

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hintze (Con)]

My Lords, we need to look after the vulnerable—

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

It is the Conservatives’ turn, but could they please make their minds up?

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we have heard a lot today—and it is important—about youth unemployment and getting the youth back into the workforce, but there is a serious problem at the other end of the scale with people in their 50s and into their 60s who face age discrimination, cannot get into work or are overlooked for training and are certainly not taken on in the recruitment process. Can the Government reassure the House about what they are doing to address the real problem for those people who do not have work and have to wait longer for their state pension?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising the important point about people who want to work but who may have lost a job towards the middle of their career, or later on, and are struggling to get back into it. We have a fantastic programme called Connect to Work, working with people who have faced barriers to getting back into work. Sometimes that help has to be about helping them to rethink what the next stage of life may look like, it may be about helping them to have the right skills to navigate changing recruitment processes—as we all know, it is not the way it was when we were setting out in life—or it may be about giving them additional skills or retraining to do something totally different. The key is a personalised conversation to understand their barriers and help them to get back into work. We cannot afford to write off young people, but we also certainly cannot afford to write off those who have years or decades of experience. The country cannot afford that.