Young Offenders: Employment and Training

Baroness Nye Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nye]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Healy for initiating this important debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Bates, said, there is consensus on all Benches; we all want a reduction in crime, a reduction in reoffending, and we want it to go hand in hand with a just system of punishment. This, as all Governments have found, is a very tall order. When Ken Clarke launched his “rehabilitation revolution” in the Breaking the Cycle Green Paper, it was warmly welcomed by reformers. The new Secretary of State uses more punitive rhetoric but still repeats that aim.

I hope that the Minister will tonight give us an idea of the direction of travel for that revolution, because while all sides of your Lordships’ House must and will welcome the reduction in the youth unemployment figures announced today, the background to that revolution is the fact that the long-term youth unemployment figure is still disturbingly high. While 18 to 24 year-olds make up less than 10% of the population, they constitute a third of those on community or suspended sentences and a third of those sentenced to prison every year. As my noble friend Lady Healy said, we all know that those young offenders are more likely to have mental health issues, to have spent some time in care and to have relatively few qualifications.

The Prince’s Trust report Down, But Not Out showed that one in five unemployed young people think that finding a job in the next year is “unachievable” and that three in five describe their inability to find work as “demoralising”. With graduate unemployment running at 20%, it is our responsibility to help those long-term unemployed young people make progress because that is in the social and economic interests of Britain.

We have heard about the third sector programmes which have had excellent success rates and I make no apology for talking again about the work of the National Grid programme. I am sure that Dr Mary Harris’s ears must be burning with the number of times we are about to mention it, but I mention it again because from small things, great success can happen. It started in 1998, training 50 young offenders to become fork-lift truck drivers. In 2002 a second project was established to train young offenders as gas distribution technicians. As has been said, the reoffending rate at that time was 7% and they have managed to bring it down to 6%, when the national rate is 70%.

In 2003, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Budget that he had asked Sir John Parker, the chairman of National Grid, to see how the programme could be applied nationally. As a result, as we know, that programme is now partnered with 80 leading companies and more than 2,000 offenders have benefited from it. In 2007 a Smith Institute pamphlet was produced that came out of a seminar held in No. 11 Downing Street. Sir John Parker described the programme as win-win—that is, meeting business and society’s needs—and he is absolutely right. Not only that, it is also of direct benefit to the taxpayer—for every 100 young offenders completing that programme, the savings are more than £17 million. That must be better than paying out taxpayers’ money to lock people up. While obviously it is not a universal panacea, it demonstrates that business can help address a difficult social issue while acting in its own interests at the same time. If National Grid and the other leading companies are able to see the business benefit of a progressive attitude to corporate social responsibility, then the Government should take the lead in encouraging other companies to join in.

One of the factors in the success of the National Grid scheme is the transition from prison to work. The training begins before offenders are released, thereby getting them used to going to work and establishing a commitment to that employer. Mentoring and help in finding accommodation are also important parts of the programme. I would like to mention briefly some other proposals from the Prisoners’ Education Trust and the Young Adult Manifesto of the Transition to Adulthood Alliance.

The Prisoners’ Education Trust evidence to the Education Select Committee inquiry on careers guidance suggested that there should be a career guidance package which would have information about training and education during and after release, have local links to the community and be able to signpost people to the right organisations. Young offenders are only too well aware of the difficulties of finding employment with a criminal record. The work of the Learning Matters advocacy project, which is part of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, found that what would make a difference would be more useful subjects, the same courses being available in different jails, more practical and vocational courses, more level 3 courses and more hours of educational courses.

The T2A manifesto calls for young offender institutions to be twinned with local further education colleges and for a national employment initiative to improve the chances of employment by the private, voluntary and public sectors, but the fact is that these are all measures that try to get young offenders not to reoffend through education and employment opportunities. We all share the aim of stopping young people offending in the first place. However, I am worried that with the Government cutting programmes such as Sure Start, youth club provisions, family intervention projects, Youth Inclusion and the Future Jobs Fund, the future does not look rosy. One of my concerns is that by abolishing the education maintenance allowance, the Government took away the incentive for young people at 16 to stay on in full-time education.

I know that the Government have introduced the youth contract but the Work and Pensions Select Committee has said that it alone is not enough,

“to address the current unacceptably high level of youth unemployment”.

I am, of course, aware that it is the responsibility of every individual to remain inside the law. There is no excuse for crime. I know also that getting a job does not always stop people offending and I know that plenty of people who have jobs offend, but all the evidence shows that a job and basic literacy play a crucial part in the rehabilitation process. Against the background of a double-dip recession, the programmes that could help being cut and with growth proving elusive, I would like to hear from the Minister how the Government will take forward the rehabilitation revolution.