Youth Services

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure we all want to thank the noble Baroness for those remarks. It was great to hear that she is not content just to talk about the issues, but gets dug in in her local community. I have to declare an interest at the outset because I was—for nine years at one time—president of the YMCA. That organisation is deeply involved in all this. It is so deeply involved that when it speaks, it speaks with the authority of engagement and therefore it is terribly important for what it says to be taken seriously.

The way the noble Lord, Lord Storey, introduced the debate was very challenging—not for the first time, coming from him. Criminal gangs are where some young people find that they make their homes, because they have no other home experience to speak of. Then there is knife crime and mental health, and there are zero-hour contracts and all the other employment pressures. I shared with the House before how a retired chief constable, who was working as a volunteer for the YMCA in a young offender institution, told me about encountering a young man who burst into tears. He said, “Why are you crying?”, and the young man said, “Because I’m about to be released, and I’m fearful of what will be waiting for me when I get out of this place”.

The YMCA has recently produced an analysis entitled Youth & Consequences. I hope the Government have studied it, and I would be very interested to hear their comments this evening. The YMCA underlines:

“In 2010/11, Local Authorities in England reported spending £1.18bn on youth services, with this work accounting for an estimated 13% of total local spend on all children and young people’s services”.


It tells us:

“By 2016/17, spend on youth services in England had reduced by £737m, with Local Authorities spending in this area reported to be £448m last year. This reduction in Local Authority spend in England is equivalent to a 62% cut since 2010/11”.


The analysis also tells us:

“Local Authorities in the West Midlands have cut spend on youth services by 71% since 2010/11, while in the North West cuts over the same period amount to 68%. Young people living in the East of England and South West have fared best. However, even in these areas, the annual spend on youth services has more than halved since 2010/11”.


The report goes on to say that in Wales—my noble friend Lord Griffiths is responding to this debate—

“it is young people in Mid Wales who have faced the biggest cuts to their youth services. Local Authorities in Mid Wales have almost halved (48%) their spending on youth services since 2010/11. Those young people in South West Wales have been more fortunate, with cuts to youth services in this region totalling 23% since 2010/11”.

Very fairly, the analysis asks:

“Do new funding sources offer hope? While Local Authorities remain the primary source of funding for youth services, it is important to acknowledge that providers access funding from a range of sources. The most prominent new funding source that has emerged since 2010/11 is for the National Citizen Service … Between 2010/11 and 2016/17, an estimated £630m was spent on the NCS, and as a local provider, YMCA”,


wants to put on record that it,

“recognises the positive impact that NCS can have on young people’s lives”.

However, the services and the work of the NCS do not cover the whole of England and Wales, and we ought to remember that.

I ask the leave of the House before I finish to quote rather extensively from the conclusions of the YMCA survey. The report re-emphasises:

“In just six years, Local Authorities have cut their expenditure on youth services in England and Wales by more than £750m. As this research demonstrates, the long-term benefits of youth services are far too often overlooked by Local Authorities, as they seek to meet more immediate financial and statutory pressures, even within services for children and young people. It is as a result of these cuts, many young people are now missing out on opportunities outside the school setting to engage in positive activities that support their learning and development, opportunities previous generations took for granted.


It is difficult to imagine any other services in England and Wales that could be on the receiving end of cuts of more three fifths of their total budget over such a short period of time, with little or no scrutiny to the long-term impact this would have on our communities and the individuals missing out. Unfortunately it is not until news of young people being isolated or incidents like the recent knife crimes in London hit the headlines, attention seems to go to the role of youth services … To halt and redress these continued cuts which are seeing increasing numbers of young people miss out, it is critical the importance of youth services are recognised in statute”—


I emphasise “in statute”—

“nationally, and in funding locally. Linked to this, it is critical that Local Authorities are better accountable on how spending on youth services is allocated, particularly in England where existing reporting requirements are extremely limited. YMCA is calling on the Government to: protect youth services from further cuts by committing to maintain spending at current levels of expenditure; improve accountability by reclassifying youth services as a statutory service and requiring better reporting of local expenditure and delivery”.

I want to put on record that there is an immense amount of voluntary work being done by the YMCA, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, and this cannot receive enough praise. However, at a time when the young face so many challenges, hazards and difficulties, and when it becomes clear from the press every day what appalling consequences there can be—not least suicide—it is absolutely essential that this is underlined as a national priority.