Baroness Porter of Fulwood (Con)

My Lords, as we consider this issue it is also important to look at how it intersects with the criminal justice system. We know there is a cycle whereby disadvantage can lead to educational disengagement. This can lead to someone ending up outside of education, employment or training. Once there, this puts them at greater risk of getting involved with the criminal justice system. Having then been involved with the criminal justice system, this further reduces their employment prospects. I had pulled out the same statistics that my noble friend Lord Harlech has already quoted, showing just how substantial the link between youth offending and NEET status is. The DWP report he quoted—I will not repeat his statistics—goes on to say: “The pipeline from education failure, to offending, to sustained detachment is one of the most documented and most neglected in the country, but very little has changed or improved for this cohort”. That is damning. We need to do more to ensure that all the different organisations working with these young people are focused on providing a genuine pathway into education, training or employment. What we address nationally and what we address locally is important. There are obvious tensions, which have been raised, regarding where the balance of power should lie, and, as ever, the optimal answer is not a straightforward one. Too much localisation with multiple layers is confusing; people do not know where to go for help, and it is not clear where responsibility lies. Too much centralisation ignores the reality that local circumstances vary dramatically and that those closest to a specific community are often those most able to help people navigate and find a way through—a point this report makes powerfully. The youth justice system has had to grapple with this same tension. Its current consultation into the oversight and funding of youth justice services is looking at this specifically. There is a sense of a system that has been too fragmented, with too many layers and not enough clear accountability. Given the proportion of NEETs who were involved with youth justice services, any reform of the system should be looked at in the context of wider structures and needs to be fully integrated with the conversation we are having. The key principle should be that there must be clear accountability for who is responsible for doing what at each level of the system. As the Government consider the oversight and funding of the youth justice system, they should consider the points raised today and in this report and look at how to deliver a properly integrated system that helps transition people into education, training and employment; and, crucially, they should be clear on who will be responsible for making that pathway work.