Welfare Reforms and Youth Unemployment

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will speak briefly in the gap. I have been here from the beginning of this debate because I am a social mobility commissioner, so this topic is very close to both my heart and my responsibilities in that role. As it happens, our annual symposium in a fortnight will be very much devoted to the topic of NEETs.

I did sign up to speak in this debate, but when I saw the august array of speakers I was not sure that there would be anything I could add to what I expected to be said. I have very much enjoyed the contributions from all noble Lords. But there is one thing I have not heard mentioned that I feel is important, so I want to add it before we get to the winders. It is the importance of the family to anybody’s progress and the importance of a stable and secure home to a child’s development. Much has been said in this debate about employability skills or soft skills. I tend to call them the credentials of character—things such as punctuality and reliability, the shared common standards that we expect of one another when we start work or are in work and faced with people of lots of different backgrounds, levels of educational attainment or abilities.

These shared standards are very much what we learn at home and in the family. They form part of what we learn at school, but they are critical to anybody’s progress. According to a Children’s Commissioner report in 2022, which is not that long ago, 44% of those born in this country at the start of this century did not live with both biological parents for their whole childhood. That is up from 21% for children born in 1970. We have to include the family and home when we are looking at this topic. What are the Government doing to support families, both generally speaking and in the context of how they are considering responding to the challenges highlighted in the Milburn report?