Unemployment: Young People

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, on obtaining this debate and on his masterly survey of the current situation. I hope that he will forgive me if, before focusing on combating unemployment among youth in contact with the criminal justice system, I take noble Lords on an indirect approach to my conclusion about the context in which online strategies can be employed, inspired by two sentences in the UK Commissioner for Employment and Skills, Valerie Todd’s, foreword to her report, The Youth Employment Challenge, published in July last year:

“Lack of experience combined with a lack of social contacts in a labour market which still relies heavily on informal methods of recruitment makes it increasingly difficult for young people to get a foot on the ladder”.

Secondly,

“Commissioners are committed to encouraging and incentivising UK employers to embed a culture of developing and recruiting young people into routine business practice. It is in all our interests to rise to this challenge”.

I am one of those who believe that the only raw material that every nation has in common is its people. Woe betide it if it does not do everything that it can to identify, nurture and develop the talents of its people—all its people. If it does not do that, it has only itself to blame if it fails.

I declare another interest in youth development as a past member of the City and Guilds strategy board at the time of what I regard as one of the most disastrous political decisions ever made. It was the refusal by the then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Ruth Kelly, to accept the recommendations about raising the status of vocational education made by Mike Tomlinson in 2004. It has resulted in far too many young people being forced to go down academic routes to which they are entirely unsuited rather than having an early introduction to vocational courses and so suitable placements in the labour market.

The lack of vocational training has had another unfortunate result. At a time when the country is crying out for growth, employers are complaining bitterly about the skills shortage that is preventing them from being able to expand and develop their businesses. This is coupled with attitudes to work in general, which include a refusal to consider menial jobs because they are what some term “immigrant work” and an inability to turn up on time.

These attitudes would have come as no surprise to Glubb Pasha, whom noble Lords will remember as the commander of the Arab Legion until 1956. He wrote a monograph about empires which, he said, lasted for 250 years or 10 generations. The British Empire, according to him, lasted from 1700 to 1950. In characterising their rise and fall, he catalogued the drive and ambition of their early generations, followed by the high but turning point marked by universal access to higher education, followed by decline, encouraged by lethargy and lack of ambition, marked by people thinking that their education entitled them to a living.

That may or may not be true, but what is undoubtedly true is the confused state of our world, which is in the midst of an information technology revolution that nobody knows how to control, and whose impact on government, economies and how people live is imperfectly understood. This confusion includes the changing role of people, as labour-saving devices take over, making it difficult to determine how many people are needed and in what jobs to make the world go round and what skills they need in order to earn a living wage.

This is of course simplistic, but it provides a backdrop to the circumstances of the group of people to whose needs I wish to draw attention. It includes the appalling lack of education and job skills in young offenders, which is an indictment of our educational system. I admit that I cringe whenever I hear political parties talking competitively about their “virtual” employment schemes—virtual because they do not in fact offer either real employment or the prospects of such—or putting people back to work, when they know, and I know, that the work that they are promising simply is not there. There is a clear disconnect between the number of jobs available, the skills needed to perform them and the skills base of the potential workforce. I fear that until and unless that fact is recognised and appropriate remedial action taken, the situation can only get worse.

I once had a conversation with the head of education and skills at a young offender institution, who told me that her first task was to motivate young people to want to learn. She also wished that she had vocational training classrooms so that she could motivate them to want to work. She welcomed the aptitude tests introduced by the previous Government under its new deal, because they gave such a clear indication of individual talent and potential, but she could not exploit that knowledge because of the lack of facilities to enable young people to develop their skills.

In parallel, I have also come to the conclusion that the inability of young people to communicate verbally is the scourge of the 21st century. However able they are at digital communication, they cannot communicate either with each other or with their teachers. That is largely due to the absence of what used to be regarded as normal aspects of family life such as eating meals together. The chaotic and dysfunctional lifestyles they live are, almost from birth, dominated by the television screen, computer games and social media.

I accept that that this could be seen as helping them to prepare for life in today and tomorrow’s world by familiarising them with the tools of emerging society. However, there is what is termed a digital divide between those who have access to and can use online tools and the social media, and those who have not and/or cannot. That is why, when considering youth employment, it is important to strike a balance between reliance on these tools, and on the social contacts and informal methods of recruitment that are deemed by employers to be such an essential part of the process of getting on the employment ladder. That leads me to hope that the Government will not put all their youth employment-finding eggs in one digital basket.

That is the end of my indirect approach to the subject of this debate; I will now concentrate on my direct approach. The noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, has already mentioned Plotr, the Government initiative launched by the Prime Minister last year to help young people to plot their careers online. Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society, said recently that Plotr had the broad aim of,

“inspiring young people and connecting them to all the opportunities available to them to make the most of their lives”.

That is very worthy and praiseworthy for the digital haves, who have access to online tools and social media, but not so good for the have-nots, who include the 8,862 between the ages of 15 and 20 held in young offender institutions, who face the double whammy of also being denied access to the work experience and social contact that is deemed so essential by employers.

The Justice Secretary, launching his rehabilitation revolution, announced his determination to reduce reoffending, to achieve which a home, a job and a stable relationship are said to be the three most important contributory factors. I expect that the Minister, in her summing up, will commend the use of online tools and the social media to combat youth unemployment, with all the advantages trumpeted by Nick Hurd. However, I hope that she will also encourage the Justice Secretary to ensure that young offenders, for whom everything possible must be done to deter them from a life of crime, are given access to the online and social media tools, if not individually because of security reasons, then at least in learning and skills departments in establishments.