Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, I have been reflecting on why the lifelong learning commitment matters: the world of work has changed and continues to do so. People will need new skills throughout their working lives. We need to help people get into and, just as importantly, stay in work as jobs and industries evolve. So I share the Minister’s ambition, but there is a simple question we have to ask, and forgive me for putting it plainly: what is the point of helping people gain new skills if there are no jobs for them to move into?

If 32 years of helping people get and keep a job has taught me anything, it is this: opportunity depends on business being willing to hire. What do we see? Unemployment rising, vacancies falling and a diagnosis that the labour market is not at all well. A job needs two things: someone who is ready and willing to work, and an employer who is ready and willing to hire them. Too often, the Government talk about the first and forget the second. For a business employing somebody full-time on the national living wage, employer national insurance costs have risen by around 68% over the past two years. At the same time, the cost of employing a full-time 20 year-old has risen by around 26% since 2024. When it becomes more expensive to employ people, businesses hire less, opportunities become scarcer and more people end up relying on welfare instead of wages. My noble friend Lady Coffey put it very well: there are too many incentives to stay on benefits rather than get off them.

We have all had a briefing from UKHospitality. It says that UK hospitality is a barometer for the health of the UK economy. When the sector suffers, high streets, businesses and, most importantly, people suffer. As already referenced by my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park, £3.4 billion of tax increases were put on business in 2024 and as a result 100,000 jobs were lost. Some 38.7% of the workforce in the hospitality sector aged between 16 to 24 has been lost—their first job denied to them. The hospitality sector represents 10% of jobs in coastal communities, 50% of local employment comes from it and there has been a 25% drop in summer jobs.

I found it extraordinary that Stephen Timms recently said that the current size of the welfare bill is not a matter of great concern. Can you believe it? Does the Minister agree with that statement? I believe that a growing welfare bill should concern every one of us and so should rising unemployment. I urge the Minister to speak to her colleagues in the DWP about what can be done to make it easier and more cost effective to hire the people who we are in business to serve. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on getting this debate. I commend the contribution by my noble friend Lord Sharpe and will just say in all honesty and with genuine commitment that we have a few ideas for how that position could be improved.