National Youth Strategy

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We encourage all young people involved in existing schemes to take part and get engaged with the formation of the strategy. I will take the noble Lord’s point back to the department and write to him to ensure that happens.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the point just raised about the cadet forces, they are amazingly successful. As our military is getting smaller and smaller, and the world is getting more and more dangerous, there is a lot of merit in ensuring we can get youngsters into these forces. Will the CCF element of that now have increased funding? It has been shrinking, and therefore fewer schools have CCF units.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We are really keen to see the Combined Cadet Force grow, and the MoD funding in this academic year supports the ambition to grow to 60,000 cadets in 500 school cadet units across the UK. That is in addition to the annual cost to the MoD of the Combined Cadet Force, which is estimated at more than £42 million a year.