Education, Employment and Training: Young People

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Speaker, and thank you very much for granting this debate. It is now midnight, and I am not sure that I have ever had the privilege of addressing the House at such an early hour, but it is always a privilege to stand up and speak out on behalf of my constituents.

I welcome my right hon. Friend, and good friend, the Minister to his place. He has been devoted to promoting both his constituency of Harlow and educational opportunity ever since he came to the House, not least through his previous superb chairmanship of the Education Committee. Now in his second iteration as Minister for Skills, he stands out as a Minister who is very much a round peg in a round hole, and we are lucky to have him.

Education, employment and training for young people is a hugely important issue for both our country and local residents in the constituency that I have the huge privilege of representing. I was alarmed to discover recently that some 788,000 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training—which seems to me to be a very large number—and that although the overall unemployment rate in my constituency, at 3.6%, is below the national average of 3.7%, 420 18 to 24-year-olds are without work and the youth unemployment rate is 6.2%, while the national average is 4.7%.

Those young people who are not in education, employment or training are frequently referred to as NEETs. I was alarmed to be informed that 57% of NEETs are young people who have previously been in some form of care setting, and that many of these young people will also have left their school or college without gaining GCSE qualifications at level 5 or above in the basics of English and maths. Those are uncomfortable and disappointing statistics, and as a country we can and must do better if we are to give all our young people a good start to their adult lives.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hollobone]

I should be honoured and delighted to do so.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He has always brought good subjects to the House, and tonight, after midnight, he is doing so again. It will be known throughout the House that I am a keen supporter of apprenticeship programmes for young people, which provide an excellent opportunity for those who want to take up a trade and go straight into the world of work, as opposed to further study at university. South Eastern Regional College—SERC—in my town of Newtownards does a fantastic job in supporting young people through that transition. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that more needs to be done to ensure that apprentices are paid equally and fairly, and that the best way we can show that their work and contribution to society are valued is to give them money for what they do by the sweat of their brow?

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. The Government are doing good work with A-levels, T-levels and apprenticeships, but 788,000 young people are falling through the net. The purpose of this debate is to highlight that number and encourage the Minister to tell the House what the Government are going to do about it.

Young people in this country should be encouraged to be in good-quality education, training or employment and to enjoy the right to fulfil their potential, whatever and wherever that may be. The good news for Kettering is that we are fortunate enough to have—based in Station Road, near the heart of the town centre and the railway station itself—a wonderful organisation called Youth Employment UK, which was established and is led by its enthusiastic, talented and inspirational chief executive, Laura-Jane Rawlings, known to all as “LJ”. She is ably assisted by Joshua Knight, the senior policy and research lead, and a hard-working staff of 14.

Youth Employment UK is a national, not-for-profit organisation that was set up in 2012 with a focus on tackling youth unemployment. Funded not by the taxpayer but by an expanding membership of enlightened employers, in the last 10 years it has become one of the leading experts on youth employment, and an active partner to Departments including the Departments for Education and for Work and Pensions.

Last Thursday, 31 August, I met the Youth Employment UK team at their Kettering HQ, together with Robin Webber-Jones, the Northamptonshire principal of Tresham College, which is part of the Bedford College Group, and Councillor Scott Edwards, the portfolio holder for education at North Northamptonshire Council, to explore how the promotion of youth employment, education and training might best be advanced at both national and local levels. From that meeting, it was clear to see Youth Employment UK’s expertise and commitment to all young people across the UK, and I commend Youth Employment UK to the Minister.

In this debate, I have four asks of the Minister, please. First, will he be kind enough to visit Kettering to meet me and representatives of Youth Employment UK, Tresham College and North Northamptonshire Council to discuss the local and national challenges of youth education, employment and training? Secondly, will he ensure that while the Government raise the ambitions for young people to achieve A-levels, T-levels and quality apprenticeships—which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has just highlighted—groups of young people are not left behind? Thirdly, will he expand ambitions and support for young people and create a NEET strategy with a commitment to reducing the NEET rate—a strategy that must focus on both reduction and prevention? Fourthly, will he commit to ensuring that all employers are working to the good youth employment standards, driving up the quality and volume of job opportunities for young people?

Youth Employment UK is home to the national youth voice census, an annual survey that explores with young people aged 11 to 30 what is and is not working for them on their journey to work. I know that the Department for Education already welcomes this annual survey and is already using it as a tool to help shape and inform its policy work. The 2022 report was downloaded more than 70,000 times. It has been referenced in a number of Government reports and received local, national and international coverage. On 14 September, in just 10 days’ time—nine days’ time now—Youth Employment UK will launch this year’s findings, and as I have been privy to some early insight from the team, I can give the Minister a sneak peek into some of its findings. This year’s survey makes it clear that in 2023, young people need more support and more help from the systems around them. Young people across the UK have shared their lack of confidence about their futures and next steps, telling Youth Employment UK in their thousands about the disconnect they feel in their communities. The future is feeling more uncertain for young people than in many previous years.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important debate. The subject of skills development and the improvement of people within employment is close to my own heart. Does he recognise that there is a disparity in how this policy plays out across the whole of the United Kingdom? For example, the apprenticeship levy is collected in Northern Ireland but it is not allocated to apprenticeships there, so we are taxed but the levy is not available. Secondly, we export one third of all our students in Northern Ireland to GB, but they rarely come back. That has to be fixed.

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Member makes some extremely good points. It does not seem right that the situation he describes should be as it is. Perhaps the Minister, in his response, will be able to give the Government’s response to those important issues. I shall be in touch with representatives of Youth Employment UK, who will be interested in Northern Ireland, and I will ask if they would be kind enough to contact the hon. Member’s office to see whether this could be explored further.

The key findings and recommendations from this year’s youth voice census will provide us all with a clearer understanding of the issues that young people are facing in our constituencies, in our schools and as they enter the workforce. This should be a call to all of us, and in particular to the Government, to make a commitment to understanding what young people really need in order to feel confident about their futures.

The Government’s plan for education is a strong one, streamlining qualifications and ensuring parity of esteem between vocational pathways and university. In order to support future-ready young people who have the skills required to build our future workforce, we have to hear the voice and expertise of all types of employers and more varied groups of young people.

Individual circumstances will likely be the biggest factor in a successful next-step transition and, of course, not all young people have the same starting point. Pathways and programmes must be designed to be accessible and flexible enough to benefit all young people. We therefore must be sure, at both national and local level, that young people will not be left behind by any education reform plans.

I am delighted that Youth Employment UK is leading a commission on the reforms that have been introduced and will be case-studying a number of local areas, including Kettering, to see what the reality of education reform means for young people and their personal situations and aspirations. I hope these case studies, when published, will be a useful moment for my right hon. Friend the Minister to assure us that there are ladders of opportunity available to every young person, everywhere.

While my right hon. Friend is developing future education and training pathways, I hope he will have a particularly keen eye on the actions required to support those 788,000 young people who are currently NEET. Through its work as the secretariat to the all-party parliamentary group on youth employment, Youth Employment UK is stressing the need for the Government to make a guarantee to young people that there will always be a quality opportunity for them and that the Government will level up the systems around supporting and promoting young people.

In its 2022 report, produced with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Youth Futures Foundation, which is a beneficiary of dormant assets funding, identified that bringing our NEET rate down to that of our German friends would benefit UK GDP by as much as £38 billion. It must therefore be a matter of utmost importance to the Government that we have a NEET strategy focused not only on reduction, but on prevention too.

I am delighted to advise my right hon. Friend that Youth Employment UK was commissioned by the Careers & Enterprise Company to write a paper on NEET prevention and reduction, and that the paper and its recommendations are available to the Department for Education. In addition, Youth Employment UK has co-produced a young person’s guarantee along with the Prince’s Trust, the Youth Futures Foundation, the Institute for Employment Studies, Impetus and the Learning and Work Institute as co-chairs of the Youth Employment Group, which will be sure to add value to the DFE and other Government Departments in their efforts to tackle youth unemployment.

Over the last 10 years, Youth Employment UK has been providing free skills and careers information to young people aged 11 to 30. Its superb website, which I have seen and which I encourage my right hon. Friend to view for himself, is an encyclopaedia of information, inspiration and advice for young people. I was impressed to see on my visit to Youth Employment UK’s headquarters that the website is powered by young people themselves, as Youth Employment UK is an excellent employer of young apprentices. The website helps more than 200,000 young people a month, or 2.4 million a year, to understand all their options and pathways, and how to navigate and prepare for the world around them as it changes. I am sure my right hon. Friend will join me in congratulating Youth Employment UK on this valuable work.

Instrumental to the role that Youth Employment UK plays is its work with employers. Employers are key to tackling youth unemployment and to creating the experiences and opportunities that young people need to move on in the world with confidence. By understanding young people, Youth Employment UK is able to advise and support employers to create quality and inclusive opportunities for young people. Youth Employment UK has created the good youth employment standards and has more than 1,000 employers in its membership that are leading the way in driving up good youth employment standards and opportunities.

Employers such as Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Pret a Manger, Sodexo, Haven, Severn Trent and Surrey County Council are among the many working with Youth Employment UK and investing in apprenticeships, T-levels and inclusive recruitment for young people. As passionate as my right hon. Friend is about T-levels and their placements and apprenticeships for young people, I am sure he will agree that we need more employers to provide opportunities at a national, local and hyper-local level. I hope he will join the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, the Department for Work and Pensions, and these more than 1,000 employers in recognising the importance of the good youth employment standards and the work that Youth Employment UK does to drive quality and to connect young people to good employers.

In closing, let me reiterate my four asks. Will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to visit Kettering? Will he ensure that while the Government promote A-levels, T-levels and quality apprenticeships, groups of young people are not left behind? Will he create a strategy to reduce the number of young people being or becoming NEETs, and to prevent it from happening? Will he ensure that all employers are working to the good youth employment standards? Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your indulgence at this early hour. I look forward to the Minister’s response.