Unemployment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a number of programmes aimed at getting youngsters into the workforce all around the country. There is a mixture of the Work Programme, the flexible support scheme, the sector-based work academies and work experience. We are using a whole range of programmes to help youngsters into the workforce. They are working not just in London but right around the country. Clearly, we just have to stay on the issue and make sure that we get everyone in every part of the country into the workforce.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, do these new figures, which have a bit of sunlight about them, depend upon our continued membership of the European Union? Is there not something we could do to encourage young people to cross borders to other countries so that they get work experience in different places and build bridges of understanding for the future?

[Lord Freud]

The fundamental driver of these much sunnier figures is clearly our economy, which is now the fastest growing of the major economies. It is vital that we keep that process going. It is also vital that we have a benefits system that encourages and enables people to go into the workforce rather than being blocked from going into it.

Youth Employment

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I am keen to reaffirm that the Youth Contract is both comprehensive and working. One element, the wage incentive, has now helped more than 65,000 youngsters into jobs. The other elements of the programme are performing powerfully: 148,000 youngsters have started work experience on the programme, and 46,000 have gone into sector-based work academies.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, while I congratulate the Government on what has been achieved, the Minister surely understands the great devastation of youth unemployment, not only in the UK but throughout Europe. It is destroying hope and potential. Can we not now initiate a new European-wide project to somehow lower that figure across the board and restore hope to so many young people?

[Lord Freud]

Youth unemployment is different in its nature from general unemployment in that there is a scarring effect for the young if they do not get into the workforce early. We therefore need to make extra effort to get youngsters into the workforce, which many of our measures are designed to do. There has been a real recasting of support for youngsters, whether through training, education or apprenticeships, and we are providing this support for them through the Work Programme, the jobcentres and work experience. We have myriad programmes, and they are actually having an effect. We are now seeing very steep falls. It is not yet good enough but it is moving aggressively in the right direction.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the figures show that the long-term unemployment figure is still 6% higher than it was in 2010, on top of the doubling that was seen under the previous Government. I am absolutely behind training because it is the way to help people, particularly youngsters, get into the labour market. The trouble is that when things such as training allowances are used as a way of distorting the underlying problem, it misleads people. Indeed, I think it has misled a lot of Members on the other side of the House.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, first, is the Minister satisfied with the quality of the interviews being conducted by Jobcentre Plus and with careers advice in schools? Secondly, does he agree that we need to look very much at the core unemployment rate, which is a major problem that the Government are not succeeding in solving, whichever party is in power?

[Lord Freud]

We are looking to improve careers advice in schools and Ofsted has confirmed that it will give this guidance a higher priority. Reducing unemployment is clearly a central objective for this Government, and I thought it was interesting that a couple of weeks ago the Financial Times reported that we have now overtaken the United States in our participation rate, a rate that normally falls during a recession. We have also been pushing employment up in the key 25 to 35 year-old group between 2007 and 2013.

Welfare: Cost of Family Breakdown

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will have to write to the noble Lord; I do not have that figure at my fingertips.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, what contribution do the Government make to the work of Relate and similar organisations?

[Lord Freud]

We support a number of charities supporting marriage. I do not think that I have to hand the exact level of that support in monetary terms. However, the figure is available and I shall write to the noble Lord to provide it.

Employment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the figures the noble Baroness quoted are very distorted by the training allowances, which got people off the long-term measure. I will not go into a long song and dance about it, but those figures were the result of a very distorted comparison. I have quoted the real figures—the ones that matter—to this House on a regular basis. When you look at youngsters who are both workless and outside full-time education, that figure rose through the longest boom we have seen in our history because of structural inability to get those youngsters into the workforce. There was neither adequate education nor routes into the workforce. We are turning those figures round—and they are the real figures.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

May I ask the Minister how we monitor the success of these training schemes and apprenticeships? How many are effective in providing long-term, standard employment when their training or term of apprenticeship comes to an end?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it is vital that we have routes that lead into long-term, sustained employment and into being part of the economic life of the country. It is a bit early to look at the apprenticeship figures yet, because they are long term, but if you look at the work experience figures, nearly half the people on work experience were off benefits 21 weeks after starting a placement. That is more or less the kind of figure we saw with the Future Jobs Fund. The difference is that this work experience cost one-20th of what the Future Jobs Fund cost the previous Government.

Employment: New Jobs

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, I have very good news for the noble Lord. We are currently restructuring the benefits system to help with that productivity issue. One of the things that universal credit does is to make sure that we have as flexible a labour force as possible. That is something that employers around the country welcome.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

As we welcome those throughout the European Community who come to work in the hospitality industries—I come from a seaside resort—what is the Minister doing to encourage UK youngsters to take up jobs in the hospitality industry?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, one of the most enthusiastic sectors to adopt the sector-based work academies was the hospitality industry. The industry has a programme to make sure that people have training, work experience and then a chance of a job, and that has been going very well in that particular sector.

Unemployment: Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to create all-party consensus to tackle long-term youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, we are providing young people with the help they need to get back to work through Jobcentre Plus, the youth contract, the Work Programme, traineeships and apprenticeships. Our approach is working. Over the past year, the number of JSA claimants aged 18 to 24 has dropped by 84,800. We have also made £55 million available to cities for them to develop new and innovative ways of reducing long-term youth unemployment.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

I am sorry that the Minister does not seem to share my deep concern about the problem of youth unemployment. Is he aware that 21% of young people aged between 16 and 24 are currently out of work? Does he know that long-term youth unemployment has more than quadrupled in the past 10 years? Some 115,000 18 to 24 year-olds have been out of work for two years or more. Whichever parties are in government in 2015, they will have to tackle long-term unemployment. We have tried to tackle this problem over the past 10 to 20 years. We must tackle it together and we must share the concern. If we cannot share the concern, is it not time to put our differences aside and to work together to resolve this nightmare situation for thousands of our young people? Will the Minister lead us in arranging some measure of co-operation?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the short answer is no. The policies of the previous Government were extraordinarily expensive. The Future Jobs Fund was introduced by the previous Government. At the time, I was in the department as an independent adviser, and that shocked me somewhat. It cost £6,500 for each job and half the people were back on benefits at the end. That is more or less the same performance as the work experience programme, which costs only one-20th.

I agree that the figures about which my noble friend is so concerned are a real concern and have been for a long time. I look at the figures for the unemployed and inactive youth. In 1997, it was 1.1 million youngsters. By 2010, after the longest boom in our history, it had risen to 1.4 million. Under this Government, in the worst recession since not the 1930s but the 1920s, it has come down 89,000 to 1.2 million. That is the way in which to have proper policies to handle the structural problem of youth unemployment.

Unemployment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Thursday 20th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking with other European Union member states to tackle youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the Minister for Employment attended a ministerial meeting on youth unemployment in Madrid yesterday under the European initiative for growth and jobs. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will attend a follow-up in Berlin on 3 July. Youth unemployment is on the June agenda of both the European employment and social policy council and the European Council, and UK experts are members of the team reforming the Greek public employment service.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

I think I thank the Minister for his Answer. He is telling us what is going to happen, but does he agree that with nearly a quarter of under-25s in the European area unemployed, the only way we can solve this is on a European-wide level? To tackle this crisis, should he not join Lib Dem MEPs and others who have called for the UK to make the most of the €6 billion EU youth guarantee scheme, which ensures that all under-25s receive continued education, a job, apprenticeship or traineeship? How would the Government use the money that would come from this European initiative?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, clearly there are various initiatives. Some €6 billion across Europe is not a huge amount, and we are spending a great deal on our youth unemployment issues with the youth contract. If it emerges out of these meetings that one of the aspects of the European scheme is to encourage SMEs to take on youngsters by offering loans, clearly that is something that we will look at.

Homeless People: Night Shelters

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, how much consultation was there before this judgment was put into effect? Following the point of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has done tremendous work in this area, is it not time that we issued clear, simple guidelines? Will the Minister write to every local authority explaining that not only have benefits been paid in the past but, in spite of the judgment, they can be paid now and that no one need lose their place in a night shelter?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the actual finding was that a particular night shelter in Anglesey could not be treated as a dwelling because it was, basically, a converted hall. There was no reserving and the people there came on a first come, first-served basis every night. It was a particular finding which might apply to a few other places. However, that is about how local areas find the best possible funding for their support for homeless people.

Child Poverty

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

What is vital with child poverty is that we decide on how to tackle it. Under the last Government, we found that enormous amounts of money were spent on tackling it without hardly moving a figure. In the last few years of that Government, it hardly shifted. The noble Lord can look at the figures himself. We spend 3.6% of GDP on children and families; we are the second highest in the UNICEF measures, and we get precious little bang for our buck. We end up well down the table in performance for how children do. We need to work out how to solve child poverty and not worry about income transfers, which do not achieve the outcome.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Is the Minister aware that child poverty and poverty generally are not evenly spread across the United Kingdom? We have areas that are totally desperate. For instance, the south Wales valleys have twice the level of poverty than other places in the UK. What are the Minister and the Government doing to bridge that gap and somehow even out the issue of child poverty and other poverty in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords, there is a lot of variation around the country on child poverty. Again, I go back to the UNICEF report, which came out recently and which I found fascinating. Finland, which spends only 2.5% of its GNP on children and families, comes out very near the top. One thing that is so special about Finland is the emphasis that it puts on early years education, which seems to have a big impact there. We have to get to the causes of poverty and not just look at the pure measure.

Unemployment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the wage subsidy is paid after six months. It was introduced at a time when remarkably few came into the workforce, so we would expect to see the figure start to move in the months to come and will be publishing the information on that basis. As to the second question, that is not government policy, although it is a matter of debate what is the right level of support for youngsters in the housing market.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Is the Minister aware that the youth unemployment situation varies from area to area: in some places it is very severe; in other places it is more favourable? What are the Government going to do to concentrate any extra resources in those areas that are really in most desperate need?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we have a whole range of programmes now. All of them are much more individualised than previous programmes, so there should be a response to different regions so that the money goes where the need is. I have previously cited the figure for how many youngsters are inactive and unemployed. In the most recent set of figures, I am pleased to say that we have got that figure down to 1.36 million, which is below the level at the last election. So we are doing something about that terrible structural problem of the NEETs, which has been growing over the past decade.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, let me just correct those figures. The number of people who are not students and who are unemployed is around 719,000. That figure is much too high but it is not near 1 million. We are doing an enormous amount to help young people into the jobs market, and we are doing it on a structural basis rather than making little fixes here and there.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, which Minister in the Government has specific responsibility for co-ordinating their struggle against youth unemployment? That is my first question; I think that I am allowed a second.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Then I am happy with my first question.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my colleague Chris Grayling is responsible for unemployment generally, and of course youth unemployment within that.

Health: Pneumoconiosis

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I will look at the Act. The 2008 Act and the 1979 Act were intended to help people with this set of diseases. We are very conscious that some people miss out because they cannot trace claims. That is another matter that we are looking at very actively.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Act, and of course some who advocated it are present in the Chamber this afternoon. At its height, the Welsh quarrying industry employed some 17,000 quarrymen. As the years have gone by, the numbers suffering from pneumoconiosis and silicosis have fallen. How many people now have been diagnosed with these two diseases, which the Act was introduced to cover?

[Lord Freud]

As noble Lords may imagine, when I was asked this Question I tried to get more fine detail, but it simply is not available. There is a division between those suffering from mesothelioma and those suffering from other diseases; that is the only breakdown that we have. I cannot provide the information that the noble Lord requested.

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 14th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, the noble Baroness might have been interested in one of the annexes in that report that indicated that actually there is concern about the national minimum wage. The point that she makes is towards the end of the report. There are a lot of measures to solve youth unemployment. I will pick up some of those that the noble Baroness mentioned. The first one is rebalancing the youth contract, to which she referred. We are already front-loading the wage incentives that we are introducing in April. We are doing more than the average in that period. We are trialling a community action programme for people who have been through the work programme, and we are looking at how we work in areas in an equivalent way to the youth employment partnerships.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to tackle long-term, structural unemployment? In 2007, 2.4 per cent of our young people were designated as long-term unemployed. Now the figure has risen to 4.6 per cent, and it is going upwards throughout the world. What have we got to offer young people in the long term to deal with structural unemployment? Are we doing anything seriously about that?

[Lord Freud]

First, long-term youth unemployment has not changed a lot. What changed is that youngsters were put on training programmes and, when they came off them, they were called newly unemployed. The underlying position has not changed very much in terms of long-term youth unemployment. I am not saying that that is not a real problem but I am saying that it has not grown as much as one might think, looking at the raw figures. Clearly we need to help youngsters in long-term unemployment, and one of the things that the work programme is specifically designed to do is to get support for youngsters on an individualised basis.

Child Poverty

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I was trying to answer that question just now. The IFS projections are valuable and important, but they do not absorb changes in future policy and they do not make any assumptions as to behavioural change; many of the policies that we are driving are trying to get people back into work and reduce worklessness in that way. In particular, as regards universal credit, the report does not take into account the reduction in workless families that we are expecting.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, if the reforms going through the House at the moment are carried, many families lose their homes and children are put into care, the cost will be £2,900 a week for each child who is in care. Have the Government taken that into consideration?

[Lord Freud]

As noble Lords will know, we are not expecting that kind of change as a result of our policies. We have in that sense taken that into account.

Disability Benefits

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, let me make it absolutely clear that the presumption for people on chemotherapy, whether it is in oral or other forms, is that they will be in the support group. However, we will check this because some people, as the evidence in the Macmillan report demonstrated, get through their chemotherapy with few ill effects, so it is right for them to continue in the workplace. They will want to do that, but the risk is that if there is a blanket move away from the workplace, we basically write off those people’s opportunity to work, and that is wrong.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, perhaps I may declare an interest. My wife underwent chemotherapy treatment for some time and she could not have worked at all. How much consultation is there with the patients themselves as they undergo chemotherapy as opposed to with their doctors, in order to find out exactly what their response to this is?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, when people are in a position where they cannot work and the presumption is that they will be in the support group, we will take the evidence for that from the people who are treating them because it is easily available. It is only in those cases where people are able to work that we will look to place them in the other category so that we do not have a blanket position. This is what the evidence from Macmillan has shown us. We are now going to consult more widely with other cancer organisations so as to be sure that we get this particular, very difficult policy right.

Young People: NEET

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

We have a very elaborate structure to help youngsters back into the workplace. The most important element of that is the work programme, which is our new structural programme to help everyone back into work. Youngsters go into that after either nine months or, if they are regarded as particularly vulnerable, three months. That programme is designed to offer them individual support.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the situation we are in with young people out of work is far too serious for traditional remedies and that we need some way to acknowledge the structural unemployment? In the past seven years, youth unemployment has been at double the rate of the rest of the unemployment figure. Is it not possible that we need new ways—I mentioned yesterday a Minister solely responsible for youth unemployment, or even a cross-party grouping which could tackle this in a serious way?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, we are tackling this in a serious way. It is a very complicated issue, but the trick is to understand what has to be done to help youngsters. Only four things help youngsters: educational qualifications, apprenticeships, a job or work experience. We are trying to boost those elements massively in our youth contract.

Unemployment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will appoint a Minister to deal specifically with youth unemployment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, the Government have no intention of doing this. We already have a Minister for Employment who has a clear strategy and robust policies to support young people into work.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I am sure we are grateful for the youth compact that was announced a few days ago and, wherever we sit in the House, wish it well in denting somewhat the 1 million young people who are looking for jobs. However, would it not be better to have one person with an overall view to look at the short-term and long-term problems of youth unemployment, and to co-ordinate the various departments and strands of policy that are affected by them?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, youth unemployment, specifically, falls within the context of overall unemployment or employment. In practice, it is more important to have integrated support for people to get back into the employment market than across government for youth. In that area, we have the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, which looks at supporting society right across the piece, including youth.

Unemployment: Young People

Debate between Lord Roberts of Llandudno and Lord Freud

Wednesday 16th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

Well, my Lords, the forecasts have now gone to the Office for Budget Responsibility and are the basis for planning. Clearly, the forecast that I have just given noble Lords is somewhat out of date and we are looking to have another later this month. Clearly, the implication of what the Governor of the Bank of England has just said is that growth will, on his forecast, run at 1 per cent this year and next, and this will be built into those kinds of forecasts.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, faced with the tremendously high rate of youth unemployment, is it not time that both parties accept that under both of them youth unemployment has increased? Is it not time that we put by party differences and had a united effort to tackle the problem of youth unemployment?

[Lord Freud]

Yes, my Lords. It is very easy to get tied up with the tyranny of round numbers. The reality is that we have a genuine structural problem that has grown over the last decade and needs handling in a comprehensive way.