Youth Unemployment

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made his case very well. He referred to the £725 million for the growth and skills levy, which is part of the more than £1.5 billion that has been made available for employment and skills support in the Budget. That is very much needed after the dramatic decline in the number of young people starting apprenticeships under the last Government, which we will reverse. At the same time, we are strengthening our world-leading universities.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will make some progress, because many Back Benchers want to speak.

The skills White Paper sets out our plan to build a more specialised and more efficient higher education sector that will better meet the needs of the economy. The graduate economic inactivity rate is now at its lowest on record, and we want to build on that. We recognise the need for modern technical skills, and not just the old academic subjects. I saw that for myself at the Ron Dearing university technical college in Hull only last week—young people honing their skills and getting a brilliant education.

No matter what path young people choose, we want them to have the skills to succeed. Skills are vital in the world of work today, but more than a quarter of all vacancies are skills shortage vacancies. That is why, last year, the Prime Minister set out our bold ambition for two thirds of young people to enter higher-level education or training. We have added adult skills to the Department for Work and Pension’s brief, to help us join up employment support and skills more closely, so that young people have genuine pathways into good jobs. We are significantly expanding sector-based work academy programmes—SWAPs—in England and Scotland; there will be more than 145,000 additional places over the next three years. Just today, our colleagues at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology announced a new package to give people the skills that will enable them to seize the opportunities that artificial intelligence will bring. That includes an expansion of free AI foundation training for all workers, to upskill 10 million people by 2030. All this is about opening up opportunities for young people.

However, we want to make sure that no stone is left unturned. Last month, the Government unveiled our national youth strategy, which is backed by £500 million. It will rebuild the youth services that the Conservative party decimated, and help more young people transition into adulthood. The Secretary of State has commissioned Alan Milburn to complete a wide-ranging investigation into the causes of youth inactivity, and to come up with policy solutions across the piece. As a former Health Secretary, he is well placed to give particular focus to the role of health in all this. That is needed, because over a quarter of young people not in employment, education or training now cite long-term sickness or disability as a barrier—more than double the figure in 2013-14.

Too many people are shut out of the labour market by disability or ill health. This has worsened, especially since covid, so we are rolling out a £1 billion Pathways to Work offer, which brings together programmes such as Connect to Work, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson) referred to and which I have seen in action in Lewisham, where I met a neurodiverse young man who told me that the personalised support that he was receiving from the team was helping him to stay in work; and WorkWell, which is providing really impressive integrated work and health support that I recently had a chance to see in Cambridge. Pathways to Work will ultimately guarantee access to work, health and skills support for disabled people and those with long-term health conditions who are claiming out-of-work benefits. We already have 1,000 Pathways to Work advisers on hand to provide better one-to-one support. We know that prevention is better than cure, so we want to avoid people falling out of work due to ill health wherever possible, and employers have a unique role to play.

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[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

There are many ways that we can express it, but none of them are good: youth unemployment is at 15.9%; it is up 10%; it is up 1.5 percentage points; it is up over 100,000 in the last year; it is at a 10-year high—higher than in the covid era.

Let us be clear: this is not economic inactivity we are talking about; it is unemployment. The definition of unemployment is not about who is claiming benefits; it is about having had no income whatever—not having worked for a paid hour—in the reference week. It is about being available for work and actively looking for work. That is the number that has gone up. The increasing number of people who are both studying and seeking to work—for whom, by the way, zero-hours contracts are especially relevant—is a particular issue, and I will come back to that point.

Unemployment overall has gone up, but it is young people who have borne the brunt; the rate of increase has been almost twice as high for young people as it has overall. To be fair, that is usually the case—when there is rising unemployment, it is always young people who feel it first and hardest. Why? Well, as the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), said, the first thing that employers do when things look uncertain or difficult is to stop hiring. A hiring freeze is the quickest way to cut down the payroll.

Secondly, if companies have to let people go, I am afraid that redundancy is cheaper when it comes to younger people, so they sometimes deploy a LIFO rule —last in, first out. There is then the secondary effect that the more experienced workers can fill the vacancies. On top of that, we have the situation at the moment whereby sectors that disproportionately employ young people—in shops, restaurants, hotels and throughout retail, hospitality and leisure—have been particularly hard hit by the national insurance and business rates hikes.

I said that youth unemployment usually tends to rise faster and be higher than overall unemployment. That is true, but historically it is not as true in this country as it is in the rest of Europe. There are exceptions—in Germany and the Netherlands, for example—but it is the case in southern Europe. After the crash under the previous Labour Government in 2007-08, there was talk of a lost generation in southern Europe as youth unemployment rates soared so high.

Why should the situation in those countries be different from the situation in countries like ours? There is a fancy economics term for it: insider-outsider theory. That theory basically says that when there are economic troubles in a system that has very heavily regulated labour markets, very high levels of employment protection and the very heavy involvement of trade unions, all the help tends to go to the people in work, and it is those trying to get into work—the outsiders—who suffer as a result. Historically, our country has had more liberalised—although not totally liberalised—labour markets, which has meant that we have not had those problems with youth unemployment to the same extent as some of our near neighbours in Europe, and we have tended to recover more quickly when they do occur.

Right now, we have the historical rarity—I am not sure it is unique, but it is certainly a rarity—that the ratio of youth unemployment to total unemployment in the UK is higher than it is in the EU. That is before we feel all the effects of the Employment Rights Act 2025; I am sure that some effects were there already, but we have yet to feel the full effect. That Act will discourage taking on new workers, especially new untested workers, and that is of course what youth unemployment is.

Let me talk about one aspect of the 2025 Act: zero-hours contracts. These contracts have a special place in Labour mythology, which comes from the time when the last leader of the party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), used to bring them up every week at Prime Minister’s questions, saying that they were an epidemic, ripping apart our country. At the time, the Conservatives researched how big a deal zero-hours contracts were, and it turned out that fewer than 3% of workers had a zero-hours contract for their main job. There were others who had one for a second job, including many working as bank staff in the NHS. There were also lots of students on them. It turned out that the average number of hours on a zero-hours contract was 25, and—here’s the bit that nobody could accept—the average job satisfaction of people on a zero-hours contract was higher than it was for workers overall.

Those on the Government Benches have been grimacing a little, but I do not know how many of them know that the proportion of people on zero-hours contracts has gone up since the general election of 2024. They are just a part of our economy. They are also heavily skewed towards young people, such as students working in sectors like hospitality and other seasonal occupations. About 40% of people with a zero-hours contract job are under 25.

I myself was once a young person with a zero-hours contract—I just did not know it was called that. If colleagues across the House think back to their first job, perhaps washing up in a restaurant or working shifts in a shop, they probably did not know at the start if they would be working exactly the same number of hours every week and so on; it turns out that a lot of us probably had our first opportunity in the world of work through a zero-hours contract. It will be true for people even after the Employment Rights Act—those with such a contract will have some extra guarantees included in nit. However, it will also be a bigger deal, from an employer’s point of view, and it will add some risk to taking on young people. What will be the balance for employers and employees? It is, for Ministers, a leap of faith.

[Andrew Pakes]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s knowledge and his passion for this subject. I would just suggest that he perhaps underestimates the impact that insecure work can have. In one of my brother’s last jobs, he had to get in the car and start driving to work each morning before he would get a phone call telling him whether or not he had a shift that day. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it is reasonable that people like my brother should know their shift a day in advance? That is the issue we are really talking about with insecure work. I understand that he is making a political point, but we are talking about real people’s lives.

[Damian Hinds]

I am not making a political point. I think it is right and reasonable to give employees visibility, and all good employers who want to keep their employees will of course do the right thing and try to do so. The Employment Rights Act, however, does an awful lot more than just let people know some time in advance about the hours of their next shift.

The effects we see from the Employment Rights Act, taxation changes and other measures will not be mass lay-offs; it will be people—young people—not being taken on in the first place. Why does that matter? The Minister said it herself: it matters because of the scarring effect of youth unemployment. We know from studies that if someone is out of work in their early 20s, they can still be suffering the effects 20 or 30 years later.

There are things the Government could do to mitigate some of what is happening, including on the regulations coming out of the Employment Rights Act. However, I just wonder why they are doing it overall. I think it is because, in a world where there have been enough U-turns from this Government—actually, I do not think there have been enough yet, but there have been a lot—that legislation is something that Labour MPs can bring home and say, “This is a proper left-wing policy that we have enacted.” But do they really want to bring home higher levels of youth unemployment in their constituencies? That is what will happen.

The Government have introduced a number of schemes to try to mitigate what is going on, some of which are welcome. All Governments introduce somewhat similar schemes. However, the 55,000 people who will be eligible for the jobs guarantee should be seen in the context of the more than 900,000 young people who are not in education, employment or training. The scheme is limited in the areas it covers and, I think, people are eligible only after they have been searching for a job for 18 months or more, which would obviously count out many young people.

I welcome Connect to Work, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Dartford (Jim Dickson), although I do not think it is meant particularly for young people; it might nevertheless be helpful for people who have been off on long-term sick. I thought the timings sounded ambitious when the Government first announced it, though, so I would welcome the Minister telling us what they expect the numbers to be at the end of this financial year, including in my county of Hampshire.

I know that I have already spoken for 10 minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just want to set the record straight on apprenticeships, which have come up a number of times. I hope I can help the House with a non-partisan description of what has happened in relation to apprenticeships over the past 20 or more years. The truth is that under the previous Labour Government, and under the first few years of the coalition Government, many tens of thousands of young people were doing an apprenticeship without even knowing they were doing so, so thin and flimsy were those apprenticeships. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) may screw up his face, but that is true; the research evidence is available.

The previous Government therefore reformed apprenticeships to be a minimum of one year, with a minimum of 20% time off the job, end-point assessments and qualifications designed by employers themselves, overseen by an independent Institute for Apprenticeships. Yes, when we did that, the number of apprenticeships went down, and the numbers that the Minister was quoting were all from after that change. Making the specifications of a qualification considerably more exacting will of course have an effect on the numbers. But guess what the new Government are doing? The minimum length for an apprenticeship will now be eight months. Try telling a German captain of industry that it is possible to do an apprenticeship in eight months. Will the numbers go up? Of course they will!

I recently met hairdressers in my constituency and was reminded of how all this comes together. Hairdressers, like hospitality businesses and others, bring people into our town centres. They are more than just employers, and their businesses cannot just move online. They are now facing seriously higher employment costs, including national insurance contributions and, in many cases, much higher business rates, and that is before we get to the looming impact of the employment regulations. Hairdressers also have a very strong tradition of taking on large numbers of young people and apprenticeships. My worry is that, with the increase in costs, it will be simply unaffordable for them to take on young people in nearly the same numbers. The same is true for pubs and many other employers.

We are seeing the early effects of Government policy in today’s youth unemployment numbers, and I take no pleasure whatsoever in saying this, but I am afraid that they are going to get materially worse. I ask the Government to take that seriously and to act, not by delivering some short-term programmes but by rethinking their approach in order to make it easier and less costly for companies to take on young people so that they can start their careers and build their futures.

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[Andrew Western]

That is why we are making interventions in the form of the youth guarantee and increased investment in the growth and skills levy. I gently point out that, as the right hon. Member will be aware, the rate of youth unemployment rose by 4% in the Conservatives’ last two years in office. Today we have heard attack after attack, and excuse after excuse for youth unemployment rising, but it was rising when they left office. This is not a new problem. It is a significant challenge that we are serious about addressing, but if the Conservatives wish to continue with their policy of collective amnesia about the mess that they left behind, they will never have anything to offer young people.

I turn to Opposition Members’ contributions, beginning with that of the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who showed that the Conservatives have suddenly developed empathy for young people after leaving us with a NEET number of almost 1 million. We heard Tory Members compare the youth unemployment rate with those of other G7 countries, but we have the second-highest youth employment rate in the G7. We are not complacent, and we know that there is work to do. [Interruption.] I am aware that it is a different figure, but it is relevant when looking at the overall picture.

Several Members, but first among them was the shadow Secretary of State, said that nobody on the Government Front Bench had ever worked in a business. I suggest that she checks the record. Certainly, both the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who opened the debate, and I worked for many years in the private sector. I managed a small business; I worked in a global business; and I did several other jobs in the private sector in between.

Conservative Members suggested that they cut the welfare bill and halved unemployment, using a pick ‘n’ mix of flattering figures from various moments of their time in office. However, we, like people up and down this country, will judge them on their legacy when they left office. They left a spiralling welfare bill that disincentivised people from looking for work, and they left us the only G7 country with a lower employment rate than before the pandemic. They are not prepared to face up to the mess that they left our country in, and they do that time and again. I admire their chutzpah for continuing to table Opposition day debates on subjects on which their record is absolutely appalling and by a considerable margin the most significant factor in what we face today, but that does not mean that the public will forgive or forget what they left behind.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workforce. I assure her that the Government are cognisant and mindful of the need to keep a close eye on it. We have recently set up a new cross-Government unit that will look at AI’s impact on the labour market, and will offer free AI foundations training for all workers. She raised concerns about the defunding of level 7 apprenticeships. I will not pretend that the Government’s decision is not difficult. We have chosen to target the apprenticeship funding that this Government have to spend on young people. That is because they are less likely to have a relationship with an employer who might be able to fund their training, and less likely to be able to access some of the other opportunities that people who access higher-level apprenticeships might have, and because there are other routes, including a more traditional higher-education route, for people to access instead of a level 7 apprenticeship.

The hon. Lady asked about the timing of the roll-out of the youth guarantee. The first tranche—the first 55,000 opportunities—will be in place from April, and by September we will see the roll-out of the full 300,000. She went on to criticise the national insurance increase in the Budget and its impact, but then set out that the Liberal Democrats would cut business rates and VAT and scrap that national insurance contribution increase. I say to her gently that that is the problem with the Liberal Democrat position; they never say how they would pay for it, or what they would do. She lambasts the decisions taken in the first Labour Budget. Would the Liberal Democrats choose to withdraw the additional money that has gone into the NHS? It is not credible to set out only what they are against.

We heard a number of excellent contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald), for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin), for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan), for Harlow (Chris Vince) and for Banbury (Sean Woodcock). Those excellent contributions not only highlighted the toxic legacy of the Conservative party, but set out the range of key interventions that this Government are making, which include, but are not limited to, the youth guarantee.

I think the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) asked a question about the timing of Connect to Work, but I may have lost track.

[Damian Hinds]

It was about the Minister’s projection for the Connect to Work numbers by the end of this financial year, its first year in operation.

[Andrew Western]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that clarity. He will be aware that Connect to Work is already live in two thirds of delivery areas. By April, that will be all areas. In his area of East Hampshire, it is already live, and we expect that it will support up to 4,800 people.

[Damian Hinds]

Is that for this financial year?

[Andrew Western]

I will confirm for him separately the figure for this financial year. That figure is the aspiration in the round, using the £18.7 million funding that has been made available.

The right hon. Gentleman then launched a staunch defence of zero-hours contracts. He will know that we have a fundamentally different view of that. It is my view that insecure work is a blight. It is hugely problematic for those on challenging budgets not knowing what hours they have to work each week. This is the fundamentally different perspective that we have on this side of the House.

[Damian Hinds]

Would the Minister apply that principle to bank staff working in the national health service who have what is in fact a zero-hours contract—a bank staff contract—to top up in other roles in the NHS when that support is needed?

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her supplementary question. She will appreciate that she is raising a number of issues that are outside my role as Employment Minister, but I will certainly raise them with my ministerial colleagues in the relevant Departments. She may, however, be interested in today’s written ministerial statement on safeguarding in the DWP for vulnerable claimants, which sets out the work that is already under way to deliver in this important area.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

9. What recent progress Skills England has made on its priorities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)]

Skills England is playing a central role in delivering the Government’s plan for change and industrial strategy. It is the authoritative voice on skills needs and is informing the post-16 education and skills White Paper; supporting the delivery of sector skills packages in digital, AI, engineering, construction and defence; and informing decision making through the labour market evidence group’s work on migration.

[Damian Hinds]

It really is not ideal to have the body responsible for upholding standards in qualifications inside a Department that will be judged on how many people it gets through to passing those qualifications. It was not ideal when it was at the Department for Education; it is even less ideal now that it is at the Department for Work and Pensions. Will the Minister give a commitment that once Skills England is up and running, he will make it independent from Government, with a guaranteed voice for industry, and will he set that out in statute?

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

I welcome that question, as my hon. Friend raises a very important point. If we are going to have equal status for higher education and apprenticeship routes, we should look at how the information about them is disseminated to potential applicants. I hope that she will be pleased to hear that I have already asked the Department to begin work in this area.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

One of the worries about the new regime and Skills England is the loss of independence, and the loss of what we had in the former Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education: a guaranteed business voice, written into law. How will the Secretary of State ensure that business has a voice in setting standards, and in making sure that those standards are upheld, so that everybody can have confidence in the changed system?

[Pat McFadden]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the business voice and employers’ voice is very important in this. When I wrote the new remit letter to Skills England, I asked it to take into account the views of employers, because it is very important that the skills system is training people in a way that employers want, and that meets the future demands of the labour market.

Welfare Reform

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

Because we have to begin to reform the welfare state, to help those who can work to do so, to protect those who cannot and to begin to put our welfare state on a more sustainable footing. The Bill protects existing claimants—they will not be affected by the changes. It ensures that people have a right to try, and that those with severe, lifelong conditions never face reassessment. It comes alongside the biggest-ever employment support for sick and disabled people. Together, this is a fair and balanced package that meets the needs of existing claimants and reforms the welfare state for the future.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

There were almost a million fewer workless households in 2024 than in 2010. One factor behind that was universal credit and reducing the barriers and perceived risks of going back into work if people were not sure how it would work out. Notwithstanding the right to try, if there are to be two different levels of health component outside the severe conditions criteria, will that not raise those barriers back up and do the exact opposite of the right hon. Lady’s stated intent?

[Liz Kendall]

I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect. I actually think that universal credit sometimes locked people out of work, because they had to define themselves as incapable of working in order to afford to live. Less than 1% of people on UC move into work each month. That is not good enough for them, their incomes and their life chances, and it is not good enough for the taxpayer, either.

Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

As always, it is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers.

I thank and commend Mr Beckinsale and the other 114,948 petitioners, including 611 in my constituency of East Hampshire, for bringing this very important subject to Westminster Hall today. After all that we have heard today, we might ask, “Why? Why would the Government do this?” The measure is a revenue-raiser, but in the grand scheme of things it is not the most enormous revenue-raiser. It is already causing all sorts of disruption in children’s education, and there is more disruption ahead. So why are the Government doing it?

I think the answer is fairly straightforward. The Government were genuinely in the market for tax rises, especially tax rises that did not break the rules they had set for themselves on income tax, on VAT and—I say this with a cough—national insurance contributions; and when they looked down the list, this one looked quite popular. It is certainly popular with Labour members and it is very popular with the left wing of the Labour party.

I think the Government thought the measure could be sold quite easily to the British public. They could link it to definable things—to the provision of breakfast clubs, mental health support or recruiting 6,500 teachers. None of those things is new, though. There are already breakfast clubs in thousands of schools supported by state funding. As far as I can tell, this Government’s programme for mental health support continues the previous Government’s programme for mental health support, and recruiting 6,500 teachers to the state sector is a material slowdown compared with the number of teachers recruited in the previous five years.

The Government will have calculated that many schools will absorb the increase; they think that some families might be priced out, but that the number will be relatively minor, and that it will be massively outweighed by the revenue anyway. They also think—we have heard this line so many times from a Government spokesperson—there are so many places that are free and empty in the state sector that pupils can be easily absorbed.

Many Opposition Members think that taxing education is just wrong in principle—we value diversity and believe in the sanctity of parental choice—but from a Labour point of view, given everything I have just listed, it is so far, so good. I think the Government have made five crucial errors. The first is the belief that schools might be able to absorb such a tax increase. Economists know—the one thing we know about the Chancellor is that she is an economist, very definitely; periodically she reminds us—that when we get an increase in an indirect ad valorem tax, that does not get absorbed fully by the producer. It gets shared between the seller and the buyer. With a tax increase of this degree—20% added to the price of a service—that is clearly going to be very difficult for any organisation, but organisations such as schools just do not have those kinds of margins to fall back on to be able to absorb such an increase. To the extent that they can absorb the increase, they can do so only by cutting their service to families, which therefore increases the displacement effect of children from the private sector to the state.

[Alison Taylor]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that schools can offset some of the VAT?

[Damian Hinds]

That is what I just said.

[Alison Taylor]

So it is not 20%, then—it is closer, probably, to 15%.

[Damian Hinds]

I am coming to that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady—she can keep teeing me up.

The Government’s second error was to fail to consider the cumulative effect of all the different cost pressures added on to schools; as well as VAT, there are also business rates, which are mentioned in the petition. There is also the increase in the employer contribution for the teachers’ pension scheme—before somebody says it, this was introduced by the previous Government to come in this year—which is material for schools in that scheme. Now, of course, we have employer national insurance contributions as well. The hon. Lady is right that the amount added through VAT would not be quite 20%; it might come down to 15%, but all those other things add cost as well.

The third error the Government made was to ignore the existence of geography. There may well be thousands of places available in the country, but they are utterly worthless from this perspective if they are not in the right places and the right age groups for the children who will be displaced. Overall—this is a great simplification —the effect of the measure in primary schools will be relatively small because there is a lot of capacity in primary schools in not quite all, but almost all, parts of the country. In secondary, though, there are lots of areas—in places like Bristol, Bury, Salford and Surrey—where there just are not enough places to accommodate significant numbers of children being displaced from the private sector.

The Government’s fourth error was to fail to segment the market. By the way, the media do this as well: whenever there is a story about this topic, it is always accompanied by a picture of children in exotic headwear, as though wearing a boater or a top hat represented the only type of private school available. It is true that there is probably plenty of VAT to be had from the parents of boys at Eton, and the elasticity of demand is probably quite low—those famous old schools, by the way, will also benefit disproportionately from being able to reclaim VAT on capital; that is actually a benefit for them—but what the Government have ignored is the existence of another tranche of schools.

For a low-fee faith school, for example, the Exchequer makes somewhere between £500 and £1,000 VAT per child a year, but every one of those children displaced into the state sector will cost £7,000 or more. That figure is higher again when we are talking about children with special educational needs or disabilities, whose parents in many cases have just found a place that can accommodate their child, that can cater to their needs and where their child is happy. In many cases, parents are making huge sacrifices to fund the fees, but they are doing so willingly. For some of them—not all of them—this will push them over the edge; they will not be able to afford it any more. The cost per child for those children in the state sector is that much more.

In extreme cases, parents will be unable to afford to send their children to their school, which might be very expensive, so they will go to the local authority and get an education, health and care plan; and the local authority will deem that they have to go back to the same school, but now the state will be paying, including possibly for their transport.

The fifth error that the Government made was to ignore the effect on specific groups of children and families who we should be seeking to support and encourage, for example through the continuity of education allowance for our armed forces—there has been a partial mitigation on that. There has also been a partial mitigation for the music and dance scheme, which drives forward the talent of tomorrow and our creative industries, but only for families with a household income below £45,000.

As has already been said, this change makes our country an outlier—almost unique in the world in putting a tax on learning. It does not level the field between the state and the private; it makes private schools more exclusive than they were before, and therefore widens the divide. It risks losing teachers from the profession. The biggest effect of all is that it is going to make class sizes in state schools bigger, fill up more state schools and therefore, in the end, make it less likely that parents get their children into the school of their choice.

This has now happened—it happened in January. It is done, but it is not too late for the Minister to say that he will keep an open mind. The Government could review the effects on revenue, the displacement of children, the disruption of education, and the number of extra education, health and care plans after two years of the policy being in place. If it turned out that those effects have not all been as they expected, would they reverse this move?

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[Damian Hinds]

On faith-based education, the Minister is quite right that there are large numbers of faith-based schools in the state sector. However, there are some denominations and particular religious traditions for which there are not large numbers of schools, and whose actually charge fees sometimes considerably below the average cost of a state school place. Does he recognise that there may be a case for an exemption in such cases?

[Torsten Bell]

I recognise the description of the status quo as the right hon. Gentleman describes it, but I reiterate my view and the Government’s view that a state education is suitable for all families of all faiths.

A public petition has decided that we should have today’s debate. On those grounds alone, it is right that we have had it. I recognise many of the points that hon. Members have raised, even if I have attempted to set out why the Government believe that in some cases they are overdone. As we rightly debate the impact of these policies, we must recognise the reason that they have been made: the priority that we must attach to providing extra resources for our state schools—resources that I have not heard a huge number of suggestions for replacing today. These are schools where 94% of our children are educated, and where this Government will deliver an education system fit for all.

Social Security Advisory Committee: Winter Fuel Payment

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

Yes, as I understand it that is in the Scottish Government’s gift.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Has the Minister had the chance to visit the DWP library, and has she made a note of how many drives there have been over the years to take up pension credit, and whether any of them ever reached as high even as three quarters of those who are eligible?

[Emma Reynolds]

The previous Government promised 13 years ago to merge housing benefit with pension credit, which would be a significant advance towards improvements. We are introducing that in January. We will have been in power for only six months, but we will have done more than the previous Government did in 14 years.

Supporting Disadvantaged Families

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I am conscious that we did boost the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile, which cost more than £1 billion, and I am sure that that may have helped some of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. One thing we must recognise—we are working across Government on this—is what we can do to try to help reduce the cost of living. An interesting paper by the University of Bristol talks about the poverty premium, half of which is energy related—about £250 out of the £490 it identified. That is why I am working with people such as the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) and a wide range of people in this Government to tackle issues that face not only the poorest in society, but other households as well. We will continue to do that and I look forward to ongoing activity in and out of Government in order to ensure that we reach as many people as possible and make their lives better.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I particularly welcome this very large extension of the holiday activities programme. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that, in rolling it out, the Government will learn from some of the best deployments such as Connect4Summer in Hampshire, with a focus not only on a nutritious meal, on the daily mile, and on purposeful activity to address the holiday learning loss to which she has just alluded, but on things such as cooking from scratch workshops, first aid, and whole family sessions?

Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I have not yet seen the BBC documentary, and I suspect that the hon. Gentleman has not done so either, because it is due to be aired shortly. However, it is important to stress that officials discussed advice to be sent to Ministers late in 2019, and the final discussions were held with Ministers in 2020. Parliament was then informed. This relates to the back end of the timetable, which concerns people moving to universal credit in 2024-25, so the change was communicated in good time.

The hon. Gentleman referred to cost, and it is important to put that in context. This is additional money that will go into the pockets of our claimants, some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our country. About 900,000 people could now receive transitional protection who would not have been able to receive it through natural migration.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s clarification of the need for this reforecasting. May I invite him to restate the Government’s total commitment to a universal credit arrangement that simplifies the system? It means dealing with one Department rather than three, it combines six benefits into one, it helps people to get into work more quickly, and it smooths their transition into work thereafter.

[Will Quince]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and for all the work that he did in our Department. He is absolutely right: universal credit is a modern, flexible, personalised benefit that reflects the rapidly changing world of work. Conservative Members believe that work should always pay, and that we need a welfare system that helps people into work, supports those who need help, and is fair to everyone who pays for it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

The reality is that under PIP 32% of claimants now receive the highest rate of support compared with just 15% under the legacy system—that is worth £15.05 per week—and there are now 257,228 more people benefiting from PIP than did so under the legacy system.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

UC smooths the transition into work and it smooths progression in work. Since it became the default benefit for newly unemployed people, we have had month after month after month of positive employment news. Is it not bizarre that Opposition Members want to scrap that system and return to the Labour system that saw millions of people either trapped in the 16-hour economy or shut out of work altogether?

[Mr Speaker]

Obviously this is all tied in with Hartlepool.

Universal Credit

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

There are sometimes days when Ministers have to come to this House to defend difficult decisions that have had to be made, but this is not one of those days. Today, we are talking about increasing spending and widening eligibility. I would never dream of accusing any Member on either side of seeking to mislead the House, but I will make a more general point: the mere repetition of a falsehood does not turn it into the truth.

We have had fully 24 Back-Bench speeches in this debate, and I will seek to respond to as many as I can in the short time available. There are five main elements to our support in early years and childcare, and each one is a bigger offer than under Labour. First, there are 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two-year-olds. There was no such entitlement under Labour. Today’s regulations amend the eligibility criteria, introducing an equivalent earnings threshold of £15,400, which typically equates to somewhere between £24,000 and £32,000 in total household income. By 2023, we estimate that around 7,000 more children will benefit from the entitlement compared with the previous system.

Secondly, there is the universal 15 hours a week free childcare for three and four-year-olds—more hours than under Labour and now with the early years pupil premium, which was also not available under Labour. Thirdly, there are an additional 15 hours for working parents, and guess what? No such offer existed before 2010. Fourthly, up to 85% of childcare costs can be reimbursed through universal credit, which is a higher percentage than was ever available under tax credits. Finally, tax-free childcare will provide support for nearly 1 million more families than the existing vouchers scheme.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

Given the concerns raised across the House about the April closure of the childcare vouchers scheme, does the Secretary of State agree that the closure should be delayed to allow for those concerns to be addressed?

[Damian Hinds]

I have heard the concerns about the timing, and I can confirm that, following the hon. Lady’s representations, we will be able to keep the voucher scheme open to new entrants for a further six months.

Tax-free childcare will mean that more people become eligible, regardless of their employer and including the self-employed for the first time. The hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) raised concerns about families having to pay childcare costs up front, but I reassure her that the flexible support fund is available to help in such cases.

[Lucy Powell]

Will the Secretary of State give way on that point?

[Damian Hinds]

I am short of time, so if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will come back to her if there is time.

Turning to free school meals, we have extended the availability of free meals since 2010, going much further than Labour. The Conservative-led coalition extended free meals to disadvantaged students in further education institutions and introduced universal infant free school meals. We are investing £26 million in a breakfast club programme over the next three years, using the soft drinks industry levy.

When universal credit was introduced, we made clear our intention to set new criteria for free school meals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) rightly pointed out. We stated that intention in our response to the Social Security Advisory Committee report on passported benefits in March 2012. We repeated it in April 2013, when we introduced a temporary measure enabling all universal credit families to receive free school meals during the early phase of universal credit, and we have repeated it again several times since, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) mentioned. We are now, as we always planned, introducing new eligibility criteria to ensure that those entitlements continue to benefit those who need them the most.

Under our new regulations, we estimate that by 2022 around 50,000 more children will benefit from a free school meal compared with the previous system. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who is shaking her head, asked about the methodology, as did the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) and, I believe, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock). We responded to the Social Security Advisory Committee on that exact point, and it put the information into the public domain.

[Lucy Powell]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Damian Hinds]

I cannot. No child who is receiving free meals now or who gained them during the roll-out of universal credit will lose their entitlement during the roll-out, even if family earnings rise above the threshold, as my hon. Friends the Members for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) and for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) mentioned. Once roll-out is complete, those children will be protected until the end of their phase of education—primary or secondary—as my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) reminded us.

The protection arrangements will enable hundreds of thousands of children to continue to receive a meal during the roll-out, even if family earnings exceed the threshold. The £7,400 threshold relates to earned income, and it does not include additional incomings through universal credit. Depending on their exact circumstances, a typical family earning around our threshold would have a total annual household income of between £18,000 and £24,000.

The hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) said that the threshold was arbitrary. It is not arbitrary; the thresholds for these passported benefits are set at such a level as to hold the eligibility cohort steady, except that in the case of free school meals we took the decision to make it somewhat more generous than the previous system. The threshold is comparable, by the way, to that in the approach in Scotland, where there is a net earnings threshold equivalent of £7,320.

It is simply not true to say that we are introducing a cliff edge; there has always been one. The simple fact is that a child either gets a lunch or does not. A plate of food does not lend itself well to being tapered, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) has said. Some have suggested that we could convert the benefit into cash—that is true, of course—so that we could have a taper, but the whole point of free school meals is to guarantee that an individual child will receive a nutritious and healthy lunch.

Extending eligibility to all children in households on universal credit would result in around half of pupils becoming eligible. We estimate that that would cost in excess of £3 billion a year more by 2022. The additional meal costs alone, excepting the deprivation funding, would be in excess of £450 million a year—quite close to the figure mentioned by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West. I reiterate that eligibility is going up, not down, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) said.

I am running short of time, so I will turn to the regulations on universal credit. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions earlier outlined the changes in these regulations for UC. They include the removal of waiting days, which will put an average of £160 extra in people’s pockets and get them into the monthly routine sooner, and an additional two weeks of housing benefit to smooth the transition to universal credit. That one-off, additional, non-recoverable payment is worth an average of £233 to 2.3 million claimants over the roll-out period. Those measures form part of the £1.5 billion package of reforms that the Chancellor announced at the Budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said that he was surprised to hear that Labour Members would be voting against those measures. I suggest that their constituents will be even more surprised.

[Paul Masterton]

Wil my right hon. Friend give way?

[Damian Hinds]

I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not; we are very short of time. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) reminded us in her unique style, the Government are committed to tackling injustices, removing barriers and widening opportunity. Because of the strong economic management that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor recapped for us earlier, we are able to continue our bold and ambitious programme of social reform extremely quickly.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Can the Secretary of State confirm clearly for the House—this is very important—that the six-month delay in the closure of the childcare voucher scheme will be used to address concerns and issues that have been raised in the House today?

[Damian Hinds]

I already confirmed that we would have this period to reflect concerns and to allow the bed-in.

Our approach is working, including through advances in education, ensuring everyone can get the best start, unprecedented investment in childcare to support career choices and household budgets and universal credit, helping people into work, faster. In this generation, we have employment at record levels, household incomes at record levels and income inequality down. For the next generation, we have major improvements in the early years foundation stages, 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools and a 10% narrowing in attainment between the rich and poor. Today’s legislation continues this important work. I am proud of the enhanced support we are offering families through these programmes, and I commend the regulations to the House.

Question put.