Welfare Reforms and Youth Unemployment

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow in the wake of my noble friend Lord Willetts and to join others in commending my noble friend Lord Evans on choosing this highly topical subject for today’s debate. He and I both sat on the Social Mobility Policy Committee, which focused directly on NEETs and youth unemployment. Only the House of Lords would put three old Etonians on a social mobility committee, but I challenge anyone reading Hansard to identify who they were. Our work has been complemented, as others have said, by the Milburn interim review. I read all 217 pages over the Whitsun Recess. It is one of the finest reports I have ever read—evidence-based, balanced, clearly written, without any jargon, and with the author’s commitment to social justice shining through. The difficulty is that he has raised enormously high expectations for his final report, due in the autumn.

I will just contrast for a moment the Government’s approach to youth unemployment with that of social care. The Milburn review was announced in November last year, with a final report in early autumn—less than a year. The Casey review into social care was announced in January 2025, with a report expected in 2028. Adult social care has been kicked into touch.

I will pick up two points from the review, one mentioned by my noble friend Lord Willetts. The Milburn review said that the apprenticeship levy

“has been captured by employers upskilling existing workers rather than bringing in new ones”.

It makes the point that only 2% of apprenticeships actually go to NEETs. That is a distorted priority that the Government should urgently correct. The second point is one paragraph of Milburn that I thought encapsulated the whole problem:

“Less than half of the total £8.1 billion currently spent on key benefits for young people aged 16 to 24 years old has any participation support or requirements attached to it”.


It is the polar opposite of what a participation-first welfare system should be providing and means that more and more people are being trapped on benefits. He concludes:

“This is a catastrophic failure”.


The Milburn review and our Social Mobility Policy Committee report both point in the same direction: tackle youth employment locally. Milburn said:

“There is a strong case for local leadership to address the NEET crisis. Labour markets are local. Transport is local. Employer relationships are local … Strategic authorities are bodies that have huge potential to enact change”.


That reflects the recommendation of the Select Committee:

“We recommend that the Government takes note of the successful local partnerships working with those who are NEET … They should support local and combined authorities in endeavours to develop the leadership of such local initiatives”.


We concluded:

“The current local government restructure and the creation of mayoral combined authorities is an opportunity for Government to devolve the power and resources needed for those authorities to lead work, through local partnerships with schools, colleges, universities and employers and Skills England, to promote social mobility and address the acute NEET problem”.


We saw that working in practice when we visited Liverpool.

I end with a radical suggestion that takes those recommendations to a logical conclusion and builds on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made earlier. Pick as a pilot a mayoral authority such as Bristol and work out what the DWP would spend over the next 12 months on benefits for those aged 16 to 24. Give that sum—it is probably billions—as a lump sum to the mayor to work with the universities, the technical colleges and local employers, and challenge them to invest that money in new apprenticeships, work experience, training and voluntary work. Every claimant would of course keep the benefit to which they are entitled, but I believe that unlocking that budget in that way would have a major impact, by the end of the year, on the solution we all want—namely, more jobs for young people. Do the Government have the nerve to do this?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans, for bringing forward this debate, which has been very constructive and wide-ranging. There was a clear consensus in it that far too many young people in this country are leaving education and not getting the chance to work. We must be clear about the scale and implications of this challenge that we face. It is, of course, not a problem that arrived in the last year, or in fact in the last two years; it is deep rooted and long term.

The number of young people not in education, employment or training has been rising for years, increasing by a quarter of a million in the three years leading up to the election. As many others have said, it is now close to a million, which is far too high. But it is not inevitable; it is a crisis of opportunity and one that we should not accept.

I agree with those who said that what it is not is a failure of ambition among young people. There are many young people keen to learn and work who are not provided with that opportunity. It is too often a failure of the system to provide the opportunity and support that they need. As others have said, it is not only a social challenge; it is an economic one as well, and one that needs early intervention and work across the whole of government. That is why I am so pleased that I sit now in two departments: the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education. One of my bosses, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, commissioned Alan Milburn to examine the underlying drivers of rising youth inactivity, because we were clear that this is not a single issue with a single cause. Also, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester identified, this is a series of individuals, quite often with differing needs and reasons why they are not working, learning or earning. In many cases, they very much want to work.

Another area of consensus in the debate, I think we all agree, is that Alan Milburn’s report provides a very important, serious assessment of the challenge. Having read quite a lot of Government-produced or prompted reports in my time, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young, that it is very much better than a lot of them and certainly well worth a read.

On the point made by several noble Lords about the position of the economy and costs in the labour market, I am sure noble Lords will recognise, as I pointed out to the House the other day, that Alan Milburn makes it clear in paragraphs 264 and 266 that it is not actually about the national insurance contribution increases or the national minimum wage. If we look at the way in which both of those impact on the labour market, but also the reliefs that are available to employers, particularly with respect to national insurance contributions when they take on young people, we see that this is not at the heart of the cause of youth unemployment. We have the fastest-growing economy among G7 countries. We have 416,000 more people in work in this country now than a year ago. Our unemployment is lower than in most OECD countries and the EU average. There are specific issues that young people face in being able to access the labour market; we need to respond not only to the economic conditions but to all the other issues too.

The other important thing about the Milburn report is that it brings into sharper focus the nature of what we face, not just its scale but its persistence: what has been described as “stickiness”. Too often, once a young person falls out of work or education, they can become stuck outside the system and, the longer that continues, the harder it becomes to return, with lasting consequences for their prospects, their health and their earnings. The report highlights the growing number of young people who are not only out of work but who are assessed as having health-related barriers to work. That underlines that this is not simply a labour market issue but one that cuts across employment, health, education and welfare. That is why it cannot be a challenge for one department alone. There must be a whole-of-government effort and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, mentioned, a broader campaign across the country to tackle it.

As the Chamber has also recognised today, when so many young people are outside work or education, we constrain labour supply, limit productivity and store up long-term costs for individuals, for the Exchequer and for the economy. That is why this Government have acted and are investing. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed of Tinsley, this Government are investing now to save for the future. There is an additional £2.5 billion in the youth guarantee and the growth and skills levy, in support of young people and employers over the next few years, including a £3,000 youth jobs grant for employers hiring a young person who has been out of work for six months. There is also a £2,000 incentive for small and medium-sized businesses taking on young apprentices.

We are turning the focus of apprenticeships back to young people, including the full funding of training costs for SMEs employing apprentices under 25. I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Austin and the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the need to achieve this pivot of the apprenticeship system back to young people, and to reverse the sharp decline in apprenticeship starts among young people, which have fallen by 40% over the last decade. That is why we are expanding opportunities for young people through new foundation apprenticeships. It is why we have introduced a £2,000 hiring payment for non-levy-paying employers. We are removing the requirement for small businesses to fund any element of training, and there will be additional investment for taking on apprentices if they are out of work.

This is backed by an additional £1 billion investment and will support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships over the next three years, providing a clear route into skilled work and helping businesses grow with the talent that they need. My noble friend Lord Austin is right to emphasise the role of government here. I am proud that our estates strategy at the Department for Education, as we repair and rebuild schools, will provide places for 13,000 more apprentices and T-level placements.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Willets, that we are considering the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee on the impact of apprenticeships on benefits, and we will have more to say about that.

Another element of the youth guarantee is the expansion of youth hubs across the country, bringing together employment skills and the sort of wider support that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester rightly identified in local communities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, in particular raised the issue of rural unemployment. We recognise that transport can be a barrier for young people in rural areas. That is why we design youth hubs to be flexible, to work with local partners and to tailor delivery to what works best in each area, including flexible opening hours or choosing locations that can align with local transport patterns. Youth hubs bring together employability support from jobcentre work coaches with mental health, housing, essential skills and employer engagement support in community settings, so that young people have access to local opportunities and support tailored to community needs.

We are also, in doing that—I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, is right about the need for more place-based funding and the ability to address this problem—actively testing and evaluating place-based delivery models. This includes how we reach a diverse customer base, including those with specific needs and in hard to reach areas, such as through jobcentre vans: mobile units are being tested in nine areas including Bolton, the highlands of Scotland and north Wales. In particular, the youth guarantee trailblazers, where we are working with mayoral strategic authorities in eight areas, are testing the ability of those strategic authorities with government investment to test innovative approaches to identify and deliver support to young people who are NEET or at risk of becoming NEET. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, will be pleased to hear that in the west of England one of the ideas in rural north-east Somerset is to facilitate e-bike loans for young jobseekers to be able to travel.

On another element of the youth guarantee, young people on universal credit looking for work will get support through the youth guarantee, with a dedicated gateway meeting and intensive support if they are still not earning or learning after 13 weeks. Nearly 900,000 16 to 24 year-olds will be able to benefit from that dedicated session and four weeks of additional intensive work coach support, including work experience and the ability to enter into and benefit from sector work-based academies as well.

Finally in the youth guarantee there is a jobs guarantee, providing six months of paid government-subsidised work for young people who remain unemployed in the long term after all of that other support. I welcome the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about her experience at Tesco. She is absolutely right that these are not easy cohorts of young people by definition if they have been out of work for 18 months. The delivery partners we are working with are not consultants. They are organisations with exactly the experience of getting young people to work and getting them there on time. I agree with the noble Baroness about all those requirements; perhaps we should send the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, round to get them up in the morning. It is the Government’s intention—we have expanded the investment in this—to enable this job guarantee to provide the six months of paid work to 90,000 young people by virtue of our investment.

I will just touch on retail and hospitality—which was raised by several noble Lords—not least because, as we know, retail and hospitality have traditionally provided those first experiences in work for young people. We know that employers want to play their part in supporting young people. For instance, I welcome the announcement just this week from Marks & Spencer that it is launching a training programme for 1,000 young people.

I had a very good visit to B&M, where, in a meeting facilitated by the BRC, I met other retail employers; and I was able to join the BRC HR leaders’ webinar just the other day. Of course, while there are concerns about the costs and risks of employing young people, I found there was also a lot of enthusiasm from retailers to be involved with, and be a part of, the Government’s youth guarantee, and to play their role in it. In exchange, we want to support and work with employers to develop opportunities for young people. In the DWP, we continue to expand our current network to more employers in key sectors, such as retail and hospitality, where there is a critical demand for workers. We have expanded opportunities through new foundation apprenticeships in hospitality and retail, in addition to our new V-level in marketing and retail, which we aim to introduce in 2028.

Noble Lords also raised an important theme about how we prioritise prevention: how we make it easier to identify young people who are at risk of becoming NEET, and how we stop that from happening. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, identified, we know that these barriers emerge early in life. As a Government, we are focused on ensuring that young people get the best start in life, which many are not currently getting. That is why we are bolstering our prevention measures. Through our child poverty strategy, we are taking steps to lift 550,000 children out of poverty. We have committed to ensuring that 75% of children reach a good level of development by the end of reception, so that they can engage in learning. We know that persistent absence from school is not just a short-term problem but closely linked to young people becoming NEET later on. That is why we welcome the action that has led to the fastest improvement in attendance in a decade.

We know that the transitions between school, further education and employment are too often simply not strong enough to keep young people engaged and moving forward, and we know that the curriculum needs change. That is why we set up the Curriculum and Assessment Review, which will enable young people to have more of those skills that are necessary to operate in the modern job market. It is why we are reforming post-16 qualifications to increase the number of young people who can do T-levels, and it is why, as I said, we are introducing the new V-level qualification, which will be closely linked to occupational standards and involve working with employers, providing a high-quality vocational route for young people.

I welcome the further push from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, on the UTC Sleeve, and I will come back to him on that.

I also hear what noble Lords are saying about work experience. One of the things that Alan Milburn identified is the way in which it is much harder now for young people to get work experience, which is why, through our youth guarantee, we will find 300,000 placements for work experience and sector-based work academy programmes, backed by major employers such as Manchester Airports Group, JD Sports and Gatwick Airport. We are strengthening work experience in schools, with a guarantee of two weeks’ high-quality work experience for every young person. As my noble friend Lady Nargund said, volunteering also plays a very important role in this.

There are other deeper challenges at play as well. More than one in six young people who are not earning or learning had a mental health condition as their primary condition in 2024, more than double the rate in 2012. That is why it is so important that this week we were able to show how the expansion of mental health support teams in schools is progressing. Six million children now have access to mental health support in their schools. We know that young people with SEND and those who struggle to achieve at school face a significantly higher risk of becoming a NEET. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is right. There are supported internships, which I was fortunate enough to see in practice at Whipps Cross Hospital last week through Project SEARCH, which I note is also now working with Amazon on a very big expansion. Supported internships are important for those with education, health and care plans—but the Government are also investing in research as to how we can develop them for those who do not have EHCPs.

This is about much more than education or employment alone: it is about early support and well-being, and ensuring that our systems work together around the young person. It is about more responsibility on schools to identify early who will become a NEET, with the improved risk of NEET indicator tools that we are developing. It is about ensuring, as we are doing, that we build on the existing guarantee of a place in education or training for every 16 and 17 year-old. Much of this, particularly the youth guarantee, is welfare reform, but we are reforming the welfare system more widely as well to ensure that it supports people to engage with work wherever possible. That includes legislating for a right to try, so that disabled people can take steps into work without fear of automatic reassessment. It means changes to universal credit to reduce disincentives to work and investment in personalised employment support, including for people with health conditions.

These reforms reflect a broader shift under this Government, from a system which can too often write people off to one that acts as a platform for opportunity, now also essential to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the system, supporting those who need it while enabling more people to move into and progress in work. We are clear, however, despite this significant progress, that more must be done, because for many young people, the barriers to work do not begin at 16. As I have said, they often have their roots in poorer health, disadvantage and unequal access to opportunity. As our population ages and migration falls, we will depend more than ever on the talent and potential of our young people. We cannot afford economically or socially to leave so many outside work and education. We will take determined action; we will learn from others, which is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State at the DWP is visiting the Netherlands, possibly even at this very moment, to learn from it.

We look ahead to Alan Milburn’s full recommendations in the autumn, but our objective is clear: to build a system that places opportunity and work at its heart—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Evans asked at the beginning of the debate when the Government would respond to the Select Committee report on social mobility. The report was published in November; the government convention is to reply within eight weeks, and it is now almost six months. When will we get a reply?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sorry that there has not been a reply yet. I think there should have been, and I have already made that point to both the DfE and the DWP. I will undertake to ensure that we get that back as quickly as possible.

Just to reiterate, our objective is clear: we need to build a system that places opportunity and work at its heart, one that is not concerned only with what people receive but asks a broader question of how we help people to change their lives. That is the challenge before us, and it is one that this Government are determined to meet.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to what the Minister has to say, but I have also read the consultation very carefully and listened to the statements made publicly by the DSIT Secretary of State. I can only conclude from those that the Government have no real commitment to do anything serious about the harms that our children are experiencing on social media, and I ask the House to agree to my Motion G1. Therefore, I would like to test the opinion of the House on my social media amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

I must inform your Lordships that, if Motion G1 is agreed, it pre-empts Motion G2.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for an excellent question. We have to tailor this to where an individual is at. One of the real challenges is that different young people have different barriers on the way. There is an issue with boys in some parts of the country and in some communities, about either higher barriers to work, lower levels of skills or, simply, lower levels of work experience. We are aiming to make this available to every young person in this situation. If a young person is in this situation—they have been looking for work and not getting it—we will expect them to engage and we will challenge and support them. We will not simply challenge them; we will give them the help that they need. We will work with them until they get that. Some of them will want to start with motivation, skills and creating a vision of what is possible. Others will need skills—maybe school did not work for them and maybe they will need a foundation apprenticeship or a short apprenticeship course before going into a full apprenticeship. Maybe they will want an employer willing to take a risk on them—and an employer could do that with this support. I thank my noble friend for raising a very important point; I would be very willing to discuss it more with her at some point.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the foundation apprenticeships in hospitality and retail. These sectors of the economy traditionally provided the first job for young people, but they have been hard hit by changes to the minimum wage and national insurance, and so this is a welcome counterbalance. On 18 November, one of your Lordships’ Select Committees produced a report that focused on youth unemployment. We went to Blackpool and made a number of recommendations. We should have had a government response by 18 January, but four months later, we have still not had one. I know it is not the Minister’s responsibility, but I suggest that it is a discourtesy to the House. One of our recommendations was that there should be a target for reducing the number of young people who are unemployed. There is a target in the post-education and skills White Paper. If there is a target for them, why can we not have a target for NEETs?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, although it may not be my responsibility, it is the Government’s responsibility, and I take responsibility for the failure to respond. I apologise on behalf of my department, and I will look into what has happened. The department is aware of the report, and I am certainly very grateful for it. I often think that we do not make enough use of the excellent reports that come out of this House, and this Government are determined to use all evidence, including the work that is already there.

We have not set specific targets, but we have set very clear measurements of the impact of what we do—that is how we will measure ourselves and hold ourselves to account. Our trailblazers are looking at localised approaches to support, including sharing information on and tracking NEET young people, which was picked up in the report. I am very happy to look at that and will take the noble Lord’s message back to my department.

Student Loans: Review

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the student loans regime.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, given the inherited fiscal situation, we are making tough but necessary decisions to protect both taxpayers and students. It is right that those who can afford to repay their student loans do so. The system remains heavily subsidised. Lower-earning graduates are always protected by the cancellation of any outstanding loan and interest at the end of their repayment term. The Government continuously review student finance to ensure that it remains fair, sustainable and supportive of students from all backgrounds.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful for that. At the moment, a student leaving with an average debt of £53,000 has to earn £66,000 per year just to cover the interest on the debt. The deputy leader of the Labour Party recently described that as “egregious”. The Budget made the situation even worse by freezing the thresholds for students from 2027. A month ago, the Chancellor described the current regime as “fair and reasonable”, but not a lot of people agreed. Does the noble Baroness think the leader of the Opposition might be on the right track by suggesting capping loans at RPI?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I know the noble Lord would not want the suggestion to be made that the level of debt impacts on the amount anybody repays in any given month, because, of course, that is wrong. As I have already identified, the majority of students do not repay the whole of their loan, so they already receive a considerable subsidy from the state. I am sure there are noble Lords in this House who feel slightly aggrieved about being accused, as the leader of the Opposition did, of presiding over a scam in developing the current plan 2 student loan system, but it is important that we maintain the protection for students and graduates that the student loan system creates while being open to thinking about how we can mitigate its burdens on students and those who are repaying their student finance.

Youth Unemployment

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce youth unemployment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are investing over £1.5 billion through the youth guarantee and growth and skills levy to support 16 to 24 year-olds to gain the skills and experience they need to earn and learn. A key part of this is the jobs guarantee, which provides six months of paid work for every eligible 18 to 21 year-old on universal credit for 18 months, funded for 25 hours a week with wraparound support. Grant applications for phase 1 opened on 29 January to identify delivery partners, and delivery will begin from spring 2026 in six high-need areas before expanding nationally, supporting around 55,000 young people over three years.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that reply, and I welcome the initiatives the Minister has just mentioned, such as the youth guarantee. However, do not those initiatives need to be accompanied by welfare reform, which can quite often pull young people in the opposite direction? A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister said:

“Our welfare state is trapping people, not just in poverty but out of work—young people in particular”.


That was reinforced by Alan Milburn, the Government’s employment tsar, who said:

“We’re spending more money on health and disability benefits for 16 to 24-year-olds than we are on apprenticeships. Is that really the right priority?”


Will the forthcoming King’s Speech therefore take the difficult but necessary decisions to reform welfare and allay the concerns of the Minister’s colleagues?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Well, this is welfare reform. It is wrong that there are 900,000 young people who are neither earning nor learning, which is why we are changing the system. We are ensuring that there is an earlier interview for young people. We are introducing 300,000 more opportunities for young people to gain work experience or training linked to an employer. Then we are ensuring that they have a backstop work placement that they will be expected to take at the end of 18 months. That is welfare reform, which this Government are putting in place to respond to the challenges left by the previous one.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am more than happy to do that. The point we have raised consistently throughout this is that it is right that parents have the ability to home-educate their children, if that is what they choose to do, but the idea that they are forced to do that because the vast majority of our schools are bad is simply wrong. The vast majority of our schools do a very good job for children. That is why the vast majority of children are educated within them and benefit from that.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)]

The debate is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. Does he wish to respond?

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

Sorry, my Lords, I did not realised that I have the chance to respond. I feel somewhat outnumbered on a number of the things that I said. I think there is a real need to have a proper look at policy about how all this fits together. I think we are going to come across quite a lot of unease and protest, in various ways, around the country as a result of some of these measures being brought in, perhaps at rather a late moment. Having said all that, I am very happy to work with others to try to find some solutions and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, government Amendment 50 regards notifications where children are placed in temporary accommodation. All noble Lords who spoke to this in Committee saw this as a clearly sensible change to make sure such children can receive the right support when they need it. I am pleased to tell noble Lords that, following extensive cross-government work, the Government have tabled an amendment to introduce a new duty on local housing authorities to notify educational institutions, GP practices and health visiting services when a child is placed in temporary accommodation, if consent is provided.

This underscores this Government’s commitment to break down barriers to opportunity and support all children to have the best life chances. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my honourable and very good friend Dame Siobhain McDonagh for raising what the House in Committee agreed is a very important issue and for engaging the Government constructively on it. This government amendment builds on the previous amendments, achieving their intent. Children in temporary accommodation are particularly vulnerable and may need additional support. This notification will alert health and education providers, enabling them to respond appropriately in accordance with existing duties and responsibilities and help to mitigate the harmful impacts of living in temporary accommodation.

For example, schools and colleges may wish to consider interventions such as providing pastoral support or practical assistance such as breakfast clubs, after-school activities and homework support. Health services may consider making proactive contact with families in temporary accommodation to ensure they do not experience gaps in healthcare provision. Guidance will follow for local authority housing officers and the public bodies receiving the notifications to ensure that we effectively implement this very important measure. Therefore, I beg to move this amendment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, this is an improved version of Amendment 165, tabled in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and me. We are all very grateful for this very positive response. Some 41,000 households in temporary accommodation have been placed out of area and 26,640 of them are households with children, so a large number of children will benefit from this.

I have three quick questions for the Minister. First, when she wound up the debate in Committee, she said some technical issues needed to be resolved. I think she said there were some operational issues to see how it can work. I assume those have been resolved. I hope there can be some IT solutions that mean we do not have to do this manually and it will be done automatically. Secondly, under proposed new subsections (6)(a) and (6)(b), the bodies that have to be notified that there is a child in their area in temporary accommodation out of area are medical practices and schools in England. Those living in Shropshire, for example, may be placed out of area in Wales—is there any duty to notify the Welsh authorities that they have children in temporary accommodation living in their area? Thirdly and finally, when will this very helpful amendment come into operation? What is the commencement date? Having said that, I warmly welcome this initiative.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, I tabled this amendment in Committee. I also pay tribute to Siobhain McDonagh for having pursued this for many years and the way in which she has worked with different parts of government to try to work through the issues. It was always really about the children and not about the problems that government has in doing this. I will now make a very lengthy peroration and simply say thank you.

Carer’s Allowance: Overpayments

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question and for her work. I pay tribute to the millions of unpaid carers across this country; the Government greatly value them and the work they do. Carers are also fortunate to have some excellent advocates, including many Members of this House—and I think we would probably all acknowledge that supreme among them is my noble friend, whose work in this area has for so very long been recognised by us all.

Carer’s allowance provides support to around 1 million people and, for most of those who receive it, the experience is positive and the rules are clear. But my noble friend is right that, when we came into government, it became clear that there were far too many cases where working carers had been left with large overpayments to be repaid. That is why we commissioned an independent review of earnings-related overpayments. We are very grateful to Liz Sayce for her recommendations, but also to her advisory panel and especially to the unpaid carers who shared their experiences to make that right. We have accepted or partially accepted 38 of the 40 recommendations in the report, we have begun working on many of them already, and we will set out the details in the new year. We will be very clear and transparent: many of the recommendations regard reviewing how we write to people, how we make things clear and how transparent we are. Above all, when the Government make mistakes, they should acknowledge them and put them right, and that is what we are doing.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

When we discussed this matter a few days ago, I raised with the Minister the issue of the so-called cliff edge, whereby if you earn 1p over the earnings limit you lose the whole allowance. The Minister replied with characteristic sympathy, but she said that modernising the system would take “some years”. The independent review referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, takes a totally different view. It says that addressing the impact of a cliff edge is urgent, and asks the department to be

“creative in its thinking about options for short term changes to remove or reduce this impact more quickly”.

Does the Minister accept that recommendation?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, what I said last time we discussed this is absolutely the Government’s position. For the reasons I explained then—I will not go back into them again—carer’s allowance is traditionally not a classic means-tested benefit, so we want to find ways to tackle this. It will take time, because everything about the system has been built in ways that were designed around a simple, non-means-tested benefit. However, we have already done significant things to make a difference; one of the most important of those was to raise the level at which people could earn by the largest cash amount since the benefit was created. This means that if you earn less than 16 hours a week at the national living wage, there is no problem at all. We have also gone through to make sure that most of the ways in which people have fallen foul of the system can be corrected. For example, we have taken action on guidance and communications, and we are now checking automatically all the data that comes in directly from HMRC. We are doing all the things that can be done in the short term.

Much as I do not want to say this, the noble Lord will have to be patient. To be able to remove a cliff edge, the first requirement is to automate earnings coming from HMRC, which cannot be done overnight. We have already begun the work and we are looking for all possible workarounds in the short term. This problem has been around for a long time and no one paid any attention. We spotted it, we are taking action and we will sort it.

Carer’s Allowance: Overpayments Review

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord will also have to be patient for just a little longer to hear what the Government will do in response to this. It was a very detailed report of over 100 pages, with lots of detailed recommendations; we have been through it in an equally detailed manner and will publish a proper response very shortly. In the meantime, the Government have done a number of things to make a difference. For example, we have already improved guidance to help staff make judgments about the way they treat overpayments in earnings. The crucial thing, which my noble friend just asked about, is that increasing the earnings limit by so much will mean that a lot of people will not be caught by this issue at all and, by the end of this decade, another 60,000 people will be able to claim carer’s allowance. We have already taken significant steps to improve things and will do more in the months ahead, but for the details I am afraid he must wait for the response to the report.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to the reply the Minister gave a few moments ago, why does the carer’s allowance, unlike other benefits, have a so-called cliff edge, where if you earn £1 over you lose all the allowance? Surely there should be a taper, as with other benefits, to avoid some of the problems which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has raised.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

The issue is long-standing. The real difference is that carer’s allowance, unlike universal credit, for example, is not actually means-tested. It is a benefit which is there to recognise that somebody may not be able to work, or not as much, because they are caring. The requirements are that you must be providing care for 35 hours a week to someone in receipt of a relevant DWP benefit. You must also not be in gainful employment, which we class as being 16 hours a week at the national living wage, and you must not be a full-time student. It is an individual benefit. For example, a woman in a household with no independent income of her own but with income in the household can still claim carer’s allowance.

Having said all of that, we would like to look at the way this works. Unlike universal credit, which was built with a taper in mind and automatic earnings from HMRC, carer’s allowance had none of that, either in the systems, the IT or anything else. Therefore, we have begun to look at other ways to automate certain kinds of earnings coming over from HMRC and what it would take to do a taper, but I do not want to raise expectations too quickly. This is a significant piece of work to modernise the system, which will take some years—but we are looking at it.

Welfare Reform

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising that question and I apologise to my noble friend Lady Lister for having forgotten to deal with it in my response to her. I commend my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for all that she does in this space. First, she knows more than anyone that we are investing in carers: we have just significantly raised the amount of money that somebody can earn before they will lose their carer’s allowance. We have also launched an independent review of carer’s allowance to make sure that the system works. The eligibility change will benefit 60,000 carers-plus by 2029-30.

My noble friend makes the excellent point that the overlap between caring and disability is sometimes more intertwined than we realise. Again, I reassure her that if somebody is on PIP, neither the carer nor the person being cared for will lose that money unless and until there is a reassessment and their eligibility is found to have changed. More than that, we made a specific commitment in the Green Paper to look carefully when considering the consultation responses at how we can support any unpaid carers who find they are affected by the changes that we are proposing. In light of that, I strongly encourage anyone such as her or people she may know to respond to the consultation, to engage with us and to make sure that we understand any unforeseen consequences and can think about how we deal with them.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

The noble Baroness has announced a wide range of reforms. Can she say which require primary legislation and which can be done by secondary legislation? Can she outline the implications for those who work in her department of the reforms she has just touched on?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

With parliamentary approval, we will use primary legislation to address the changes in universal credit and PIP eligibility. Assuming that we have parliamentary approval and that time is found for Bills by whoever makes these decisions, we will bring forward legislation on those. Some of the other aspects of the reforms that we are consulting on in the Green Paper, if taken forward, will also need primary legislation, but of course they are the subject of consultation, so, as the noble Lord will understand, I would not commit to doing them at this stage; it depends on the result of the consultation. Some of those will need consultation, and primary legislation for them, with parliamentary approval, would have to be done in a subsequent Session.

On the impact on people in my department, we have looked carefully and have been working with colleagues across the department to make sure that the changes that we want to make are deliverable—that has been very much at the forefront. Somebody asked me recently what the biggest difference is between being in opposition and being in government. It is that, when you are in opposition, your primary concern is policy; when you are in government, one of your concerns is how you can actually deliver things. We are very conscious that we have to make sure not only that the system has the right elements to it but that it is deliverable, and we are determined to do that.