Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)

My Lords, I read the committee’s excellent report over the Summer Recess, when I spent time in Washington DC and visited the recently opened Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream. It defines the core pillars of that dream—in other words, the core pillars of social mobility—as education, health, financial empowerment and entrepreneurship. Much of the exhibition turned on the essential role of business in lifting people out of poverty. When we talk about social mobility, we too often talk about it as something driven by the state—by the Government and the laws we pass in Parliament—when in truth the greatest engine of social mobility is business. Consider the late Dolly Parton, born into poverty in a one-room cabin in Tennessee, who built a global career and a multibillion-dollar fortune in the entertainment industry through sheer guts and talent. But even for those who work in Main Street rather than Hollywood, the first pay packet, the first taste of responsibility and the first colleague who believes in them—all these things—are crucial to setting up a young person for life. This subject is close to my heart, as president of the Jobs Foundation, as declared in the register. The charity recently published a report on Jobs and Education: Building the Bridge to Opportunity, which identified two sides to the NEETs crisis. On the supply side, too many young people leave school without the attitudes and workplace readiness that employers want. I welcome the committee’s call for reform of the EBacc framework. This aligns with our own finding that a broader curriculum from 14, with genuine parity between academic and vocational routes, would help prevent young people becoming NEET. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister echo this sentiment earlier this week. On the demand side, the rising cost and risk of hiring a young person is making employers reluctant to take a chance on someone without experience. The cost of employing a young person has risen by more than £4,000 in two years. When we raise the cost of hiring young people, we should not be surprised when fewer of them are hired. As the chef Tom Kerridge told the authors, rising costs push restaurants away from the very weekend and part-time roles that once gave young people their first taste of work in the hospitality industry. When these first rungs of the jobs market disappear, the ladder of social mobility goes with them. This is why, to achieve NEET zero, both the supply and the demand side of the NEETs crisis need to be addressed.