Welfare Reforms and Youth Unemployment

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Evans of Rainow on securing this vital and timely, and very interesting, debate. Welfare is out of control and risks bankrupting the country unless serious action is taken soon. Let us consider the following figures from the Taxpayers’ Alliance to add to those cited by my noble friend and in the excellent Library Note. Between 2019 and 2025 in England, there was a 106 % increase in people claiming PIP—that was up to 3.5 million. Over the same period, there was a 139% increase in claims for the enhanced element of PIP, taking that to 1.75 million—by the way, they are all entitled to claim Motability cars.

That is unsustainable. I had to say that, although my purpose in speaking is to give a perspective from my time at Tesco. Retailers are amazing providers of first-time jobs, as we have seen recently from the new Marks & Spencer scheme. I also commend the ambition to increase the number of apprenticeships. I welcome the Government’s decision to reinstate the low-level foundation apprenticeships. These were abandoned some years ago, with a devastating impact on apprenticeship numbers.

However, my main concern is with the job guarantee, for which the Secretary of State this week announced bids for multiyear grants to delivery organisations. In my experience, taking youngsters into retail businesses, whether for job experience, internships or special schemes, is difficult. To be successful, it requires exceptional and experienced staff willing to mentor them, and corporate commitment to accept the hanging around and distraction of permanent staff—one sometimes gets the comment, “Never again”. The truth is that, for success, the scheme needs to reflect the reality of retail life. The youngsters need to turn up on time, pass their health and safety test, and be able do a full day’s work, which is appreciably more than the 25 hours a week reimbursable under the new scheme. It needs to be possible to terminate or suspend failing participants. The job guarantee criteria are for youths of 18 to 24 who have been on UC for six months and out of work for 18 months. This is not an easy cohort to deal with.

We are also talking about substantial government investment. How many job guarantee placements do the Government expect to find over the next three years, and how does that compare to their target of getting 90,000 into paid permanent employment? Bear in mind, as we have heard, the high cost of the minimum wage, NICs and the demands of the Employment Rights Act thereafter. More specifically, what does the Minister expect to be the cost per participant, and can that be value for money? Or will the beneficiaries, as so often with government schemes, be the consultants who are bidding for the work?

I fear we have both a supply-side problem, which I have described, and a demand-side problem, since, once they have been on benefits for 18 months, youngsters find it difficult to knuckle down to the kind of jobs that will be made available. My noble friend Lord Baker is right that schools are part of the problem. I agree we need a technical stream in comprehensives, and to learn from his brilliant experience with city technical colleges.

Having said that, in my time at Tesco, we pioneered a not dissimilar scheme for our regeneration stores, in tough places like Seacroft in Leeds and Beckton, near Newham. We took a group of long-term unemployed and got them into the new store teams ahead of opening. The DWP helped with the funding and many—crucially, not all—settled into fruitful careers in the business. The local MP, now Sir Stephen Timms and a DWP Minister, will remember the scheme and it may have some lessons for the new guarantee.

Helen Dickinson of the British Retail Consortium and an impressive roll of retail leaders yesterday called for a government and retail taskforce to help the Government build credible arrangements for getting young people back into work. This seems to me a good idea. Does the Minister agree?