Youth Service Provision

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship yet again, Mr Davies. I say in opening that I am rather disappointed; when I look round the Chamber, I see that we have Opposition Members who are interested in youth services, but we have only the Minister to reply on behalf of the Government. It is very disappointing, but even so, I am grateful to be granted the opportunity to raise some of these issues today.

As hon. Members know, there is a crisis in youth services, which have suffered cuts of around £260 million since 2010. There was nothing today in the Chancellor’s autumn statement to cheer up our young people at all. Link that to the ditching of the education maintenance allowance and the access to learning fund, the virtual collapse of careers advice delegated to schools without the necessary resources, and the pittance that local authorities have to pay out from the student opportunity fund, and we can see that young people are getting a very poor deal from this Government.

We are all aware of the spending cuts that local authorities are being forced to make as a result of reduced funding from central Government. That is being felt acutely in areas such as the north-east of England, where 11 out of 12 councils will experience higher than average reductions in spending power for 2014-15, along with a 5% funding reduction compared with 2013-14. To be clear, in pounds per dwelling, that is 10 times higher than cuts in the south-east, and almost four times higher in percentage terms. Across the country, this is devastating service provision and the ability of councils to meet the needs of residents, whether in the form of road maintenance, care and support services for the elderly or the provision of sporting and recreational facilities for the young. Nowhere has been left untouched.

One area particularly hard hit by the attacks on spending is youth services. Despite those services being among the most important that local authorities provide, and ignoring the long-term nature of the impact, levels of provision for young people across the UK have suffered horrendously under the coalition. To be clear from the outset, the Government’s policies have seen young people, just like women, shoulder a disproportionate share of austerity and its worst effects.

Youth services have been hit by funding cuts of £60 million since 2012. Some 73% of local authorities have reported being forced to reduce youth service spending during that time because of central Government cuts, resulting in the loss of hundreds of youth centres and thousands of youth workers across the country. I know that view is recognised by the former children’s Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who said:

“Because they don’t have to statutorily provide youth services they”—

the councils—

“have too often been at the top of the queue when cuts come along”.

However, that is just part of a trend that started when the coalition came to power.

Over that longer term, 93% of respondents to a Unison survey said that their local authority had cut youth service spending since 2010, with youth service spending down by £62 million in 2010-11 and £137 million in 2011-12. Overall, that adds up to cuts of £259 million since 2010, with some local authorities having to slash spending by over half to meet their costs.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this afternoon’s debate, and I apologise for the fact that I will not be able to stay for the entire debate. He paints a rather rosier picture, perhaps because he is talking about two or three years ago, than is the case today. My local authority of Trafford is now proposing that we would have no spending on the youth service at all from next year.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. That is frightful, and as I develop my speech this afternoon, I will refer to some of the consequences of losing youth services altogether.

The Government have established a maze of inefficient and underperforming nationally controlled programmes that duplicate services locally. There are around 40 national schemes and services delivered by 10 different Departments and agencies, leaving councils little, if any, influence to co-ordinate, target and scrutinise the shifting market of publicly funded provision and hindering their ability to plan where best to invest their own support.

Over the summer, I visited one of the schemes, the National Citizen Service, and met some lovely young people. I was impressed by the efforts and intentions, but the fact remains that these schemes have failed to fill the gap that cuts to youth services have created. To make matters worse, the NCS costs £1,200 per head for a six-week volunteering programme, whereas a similar scheme in Germany is able to fund a whole year’s work-based volunteering for the same cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate about a matter that is of huge concern to my constituency following the Trafford council budget proposals made a few weeks ago, which would result in the closure of all of our youth centres around the borough, leaving only the central Talkshop available for young people in Trafford. In a borough that has, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) highlighted, some outlying geographical areas and quite high transport costs, it is unlikely that many young people in my constituency would be able to access the central Talkshop.

The concern extends well beyond my constituents, although many of them have written to me about it over the past few weeks. There is considerable pressure on MPs from all over the country to sign a recently tabled early-day motion, and at a recent meeting of the all-party group on poverty, young people challenged MPs from all political parties about the importance of the youth service. They received favourable responses from MPs from all political parties about how we value the youth service, and they told us that, frankly, we do not put our money where our mouth is. It deeply discredits us as politicians when we proclaim our belief in a service but we are unwilling to ensure that it is sustainably maintained and funded. Young people become disillusioned when they see that our promises of investment in them are only words.

In Trafford, we are not only concerned about the loss of youth centres, important though that is—some of them are extremely effective and popular in reaching out to the young people in their neighbourhood; as my hon. Friend said, we are also concerned about the loss of trained youth workers. There will also be a reduction in volunteering opportunities in those youth centres, and I am surprised that a Government who are so keen on volunteering should remove such opportunities, which are much valued in my constituency.

In Trafford, as in other communities, the voluntary sector has traditionally supplied a good proportion of youth provision. I believe that our local authority hopes that that sector will now do much more. Like my hon. Friend, I greatly value the youth work that is done by a range of non-governmental, non-statutory organisations in my borough. The problem is that if we leave such work entirely to voluntary and self-organising youth provision, the offer across the borough will not be strategic. Some areas may be quite well served, but other areas where need is higher may be rather poorly served. There may be some activities that offer lots of opportunities for young people, but other activities that young people want to take part in may not be available in our borough.

My hon. Friend made an important point about sustainability. Voluntary organisations are keen to do what they can to fill the gap in Trafford, but it is a big challenge for them to raise sustainable funding to enable them to make commitments beyond one or two years. For example, Redeeming Our Communities, which has recently begun operating in Partington in my constituency, is keen to look at what more it can do as the youth service in Trafford is degraded, but it has already made the point to me that it can do only as much as it can raise funding for. We must be mindful of the fact that a voluntary sector solution is not sustainable unless there is sustainable funding to allow such organisations to operate.

[Alex Cunningham]

One of the questions that perhaps I should have asked the Minister is whether he will do something to ring-fence and protect youth budgets. Even if Trafford had only a small amount, at least it could work with the voluntary sector to improve its chances of delivering provision in some of the more difficult areas.

[Kate Green]

Certainty would be valuable to those who want to provide youth services. I also make the point to the Minister that the availability of statutory funding has drawn in additional voluntary funding on top of the statutory funding that has hitherto underpinned our service. Lostock youth centre, for example, has been able to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds of voluntary money to top up the statutory support that it receives. Although some of that voluntary money may continue to reach our youth centres, we will lose the basic infrastructure that enables a trained team of youth workers to go out and seek such additional voluntary funding support. Even if voluntary funding were widely available, provision cannot exist in a vacuum, without an underpinning of statutory financial support.

I am concerned that there is a real mismatch between the degrading of our youth services and the other strategic ambitions of local authorities and the Government for our young people: priorities such as reducing crime and antisocial behaviour, making young people feel safe, ensuring their emotional well-being and ensuring that they achieve, attain and have aspirations. In the context of considerable attention being given to the risk of sexual exploitation and abuse, there must be the highest provision in relation to safeguarding, and the youth service hitherto has been an important element of providing such protection to potentially vulnerable young people. As I am sure the Minister will understand, we are deeply concerned about that in the Greater Manchester area. The youth service in Trafford has been actively engaged in that area, and it is well informed about the young people who are at risk. I am concerned that such knowledge and intelligence may be lost.

Everyone recognises the financial pressures that our local authorities are under, but it is very short-sighted simply to slash youth provision. It is poor value for money because it will generate additional costs and pressures in other parts of the system in the years to come. I appreciate that the Minister will say that local authorities must exercise discretion locally and make their own decisions, but he has the opportunity today to offer certainty and stability so that we at least have the capacity for forward planning. I hope he will give us those assurances this afternoon.