Unemployment: Young People

Lord McAvoy Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I accept my noble friend’s point that every case of a youngster being out of work is a tragedy, and that is why we have put so much energy into getting youngsters back into work. We support the appropriate use of apprenticeships in procurement and that can be important for local skills and growth, but we do not support the blanket inclusion of apprenticeships in all contracts. It is up to individual departments. For instance, for longer-term contracts, my department the DWP requires suppliers to take reasonable steps to ensure that 5% of their workforce are on apprenticeships, but there are other contracts where that is not appropriate—for instance, contracts with healthcare professionals.

[Lord McAvoy (Lab)]

My Lords, youth unemployment is still extremely high, as mentioned by the noble Lord who put the Question. Can the Minister say what further things the Government are going to do to reduce youth unemployment? Will the Government, for instance, commit themselves to matching Labour’s commitment to guarantee a paid job for every young person who has been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for a year or more—a job they will have to take?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, when the noble Lord says that youth unemployment is very high, it may be higher than we would like, but if you look at the record, it is now at very low levels. If you look at the real figures, which I have used in this House for the last four years, for all workless youngsters who are not in full-time education—that captures the unemployed and the inactive—that figure is now at 14.9%, or just over 1 million. That figure has only been lower in one year since records began—in 2001. You can see that all the measures we have been taking to get youngsters into the workforce are really beginning to achieve results.