Funding for Youth Services

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this morning, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) on securing the debate and on her excellent speech setting out the value of youth services and the devastating funding situation they face. I also thank all Members who have made the powerful case for youth services and paid tribute to those who provide them.

Over 85% of a young person’s waking hours are spent outside of school and formal education. Young people tell us that they want somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to. The importance of youth services and the value that they bring to young people, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, is widely acknowledged. YMCA talks about youth services as

“a vital resource for building young people’s confidence, resilience, and skills.”

The National Youth Agency says:

“Youth work has proven impacts on improving young people’s mental health and wellbeing, behaviour, engagement with education and attainment.”

I know we have all visited local youth clubs and heard from young people themselves about how youth services and youth workers have changed their lives. Members have rightly highlighted the many community, voluntary and faith organisations in their constituencies that are working to support young people. Their work is invaluable in every part of the country.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport also recognises the importance of youth services. Its statutory guidance to local authorities, issued last September, states:

“Recreational and educational leisure-time activities can have a significant effect on young people’s development and well-being….Those activities can…support them to build their skills…improve trust and tolerance…help them become active members of society…champion their voice.”

We do not believe that youth services matter just because people tell us they matter: there is a wealth of evidence that demonstrates their positive impact. A Dutch longitudinal study highlighted the positive impact of youth work on socially vulnerable young people. Those who were recipients of youth work support for more than six months had significantly more extensive support from their social network, participated more in society, such as by volunteering, developed better social skills and had higher self-esteem. “Better Together”, the National Youth Agency’s 2023 independent review of youth work with schools, found that youth workers can support schools by:

“Engaging or re-engaging young people in learning and school, reducing exclusions and persistent absenteeism, and improving their wider wellbeing.”

It is well recognised that youth work can play an important role in preventing and reducing crime, including serious violence. A study by Carmen Villa-Llera at the University of Warwick’s Economics Observatory project the found that the closure of youth centres in London led to a 10% increase in crime among 10 to 15-year-olds and that young people in the affected areas were 12% more likely to be suspended from school. In 2020, the all-party parliamentary group on child criminal exploitation and knife crime found that a reduction in the number of youth centres corresponded to an increase in knife crime.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South highlighted, 2022 research by UK Youth and Frontier Economics found that for every £1 that the Government invest in youth work, the benefit to the taxpayer is between £3.20 and £6.40, and that youth work saves £500 million annually by preventing incidents of knife crime and antisocial behaviour and other associated criminal justice costs. I think that is the number the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) hoped someone had calculated.

Again, as the Department’s own statutory guidance states:

“Young people’s involvement in such activities can also make an important contribution to other objectives, such as economic, social and environmental improvements, community cohesion, safer and stronger neighbourhoods, better health and increased educational attainment and employment.”

That is precisely why it is so important that youth services are properly resourced and that every young person has the opportunity to access them, and why this debate is so necessary and timely. As we have heard, since 2010 local councils’ expenditure on youth services, whether delivered directly or in partnership with charities and voluntary organisations, has been cut to the bone. There has been a £1 billion real-terms cut in spending by local authorities in England, which the House of Commons Library briefing confirms

“have most of the responsibility for providing youth services, but are not obliged to fund them.”

It would be easy to say that youth services have been decimated, but that would be massively underplaying the scale of the reduction. As we have heard, funding has been cut not by a tenth but, as the National Youth Agency reports, by 73%, with more than 4,500 youth work jobs lost and hundreds of youth centres closed. As the financial crisis in local authorities intensifies, youth services face still deeper cuts. The National Youth Agency found that a third of local authorities reduced their youth provision spend between 2021-22 and 2022-23, with Worcestershire spending zero in that year. It is reported that Kent County Council is planning to cut its entire youth offer from April.

Youth work now faces historic national underinvestment. As the YMCA reports, half of young people do not have access to a youth service or do not know what is available in their area. The reduction in funding has very real consequences for young people and society more broadly, because it is entirely short-sighted and counter-productive. The small savings that may be made initially will always be outweighed by the loss of facilities, damage to young people’s social development and far higher costs that result from an increased need for additional interventions. As the Department itself explicitly acknowledges:

“Not securing such leisure-time activities can mean young people miss out on opportunities to reach their full potential. Those activities can act as a supportive measure that can prevent costly interventions later on. This is true for all young people but is particularly important for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people who might need specific, additional, or early support.”

It is not like the Government do not know exactly what is going on.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) noted, the savage cut to youth services has coincided with an unprecedented increase in the challenges faced by young people. There is a mental health emergency with, according to the NHS, as many as one in five children and young people in England having a probable mental health disorder; there is rising social isolation and loneliness; and there are serious problems with school attendance, with one in five pupils persistently absent, according to the Office for National Statistics.

There is a growing risk of online harms, particularly as the possibilities of artificial intelligence increase exponentially; a cost of living crisis and financial worries; and, as my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) spelled out, the risk of exploitation and crime, with too many young people carrying knifes and county lines and gang conflicts affecting too many young people where they live. These challenges demand more, not less, investment in youth services, but it needs to be effective investment.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is promising to level up and expand access through its “youth guarantee”, but it is doubtful whether that can begin to fill the gap left by more than a decade of cuts. Where the Government have provided funding for youth services, it has been mostly in the form of funding for capital costs or short-term initiatives and pilot programmes. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale highlighted the extra drain on voluntary organisations, which have to constantly bid to secure new funding.

The lack of sustainable, long-term support for universal youth work services means that providers do not have enough funding for the staffing and other resources they need to deliver youth services. In my city of Nottingham, as in many others, we have youth centres lying empty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, the Government’s approach to youth services is fragmented and unco-ordinated, with the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, DCMS and DLUHC operating in silos.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) reminded us, it was not always this way and it does not have to be. Last October, Labour announced our plan for a national network of Young Futures hubs to bring local services together, deliver support for teenagers at risk of being drawn into crime or facing mental health challenges, and, where appropriate, provide universal, open-access youth services. It will be a major reform that focuses on prevention rather than sticking-plaster policies. It will bring together services and communities to support young people and ensure that they all have access to the opportunities they need to thrive and get ready for work and life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I was going to come to later but will touch on now. One of the important things we are doing in the Department is our sports and physical activity strategy, which looks specifically at people who are not particularly active or engaging. We have established a taskforce that brings together the national governing bodies of various sports, which have a huge network that includes grassroots sports organisations up and down the country. The taskforce will see what more we can do to reach those who are not participating for a variety of reasons, one of which may be the cost.

As colleagues have said, local authorities play a key part in delivering youth services. That is reflected in their statutory duty to provide sufficient leisure time activities and facilities in line with local needs. Some areas have faced challenges in meeting that duty. In recognition of the pressures, the local government settlement was increased to more than £64 billion this year, and an additional £500 million will be dedicated to ensuring the continued provision of crucial services and early intervention for communities, in particular for children and young people.

We are also committed to ensuring that disadvantaged young people have holidays that are full of experiences and opportunities. We are providing £200 million a year to local authorities and their local partners through the holiday activities and food programme. Through our reforms to social care and family help, the Government are investing in new approaches that will see spending rebalanced towards more preventive measures. I want youth services to contribute to and benefit from those reforms.

We are also taking further steps to support local authorities to uphold their duty. As was mentioned, we recently updated the statutory guidance that underpins the duty for local youth service provision so that we can support local authorities to better understand their duty and how to deliver it. We are also funding a peer review programme, which provides local authorities with the opportunity to learn from each other and share best practice. By working alongside organisations in the community and voluntary organisations, local authorities can secure high-quality youth provision that meets the needs of the young people in their areas. The programme is working especially well in areas that have developed local youth partnerships, which we are continuing to support.

I am keen to find solutions to some of the problems that have been highlighted today. That is why I recently met with the Young People’s Foundation Trust, which brings all the local organisations together and does joint bids for grants. That eases the burdens mentioned by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I want to roll that work out, so that we have effective local provision.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I do not doubt the Minister’s personal commitment to youth services, but I ask him gently what conversations he has had with his opposite number in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It is not as if local authorities do not understand the value of youth work or do not want to provide youth services. It is that they simply cannot do so: so much of their funding is now directed to statutory services for social care, child protection and homelessness that they do not have the money to provide the services that we desperately need.

[Stuart Andrew]

I have regular conversations with colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up. That is why I was mentioning the local youth partnership work. The response from local authorities up and down the country to the updated guidance we gave them was very positive, and in some areas the sharing of best practice is going extremely well. I want the valuable work of bringing people together to share best practice to be rolled out across the country.

We also have an ambitious goal: our national youth guarantee that, by 2025, every young person will have access to regular out-of-school activities, adventures away from home and opportunities to volunteer. That came as a direct request from young people themselves; we contacted thousands of young people to ask them what their top priorities were, and those were the ones. That is why we are investing over £500 million in services to deliver that ambition, which builds on a £1 billion investment in England since 2015. Our funding is designed to complement the existing provision that local authorities and dedicated voluntary and community organisations are already providing.

We want to level up opportunities and ensure that every young person has somewhere to go, someone to talk to and something to do, as the hon. Member for Nottingham South said. We are creating and redeveloping up to 300 youth facilities through the youth investment fund. More than £250 million has already gone out of the door, supporting 226 organisations, to give thousands more young people access to opportunities in their community. We have also reformed the National Citizen Service programme into a year-round offer, with 120,000 young people taking part last year and thousands more already taking part this year.

We recognise the benefits of greater join-up between formal education and the youth sector. We are working with the Department for Education to expand access to the Duke of Edinburgh award in schools and communities across the country. More than 400 new organisations have already started delivering the programme, giving more than 30,000 young people the opportunity to challenge themselves, support their communities and learn new skills.

In addition, we are supporting uniformed youth organisations to recruit more volunteers, as has rightly been mentioned during the debate, to increase their capacity sustainably. More than 7,500 young people already have a new place in an existing group or one of the new 250 groups we have helped to establish. We are also supporting more than 10,000 young people to take part in outdoor learning that supports their personal development, through the adventures away from home fund.