Contribution
Yesterday, the Conservative party told young people in my constituency that they are not showing up. I want to talk about the young people in Gloucester, who are ready to show up, and about what it will take to ensure that, when they do, somebody opens the door for them.
Let us start with the Conservatives’ record. The welfare bill did not appear from nowhere; it grew on their watch in a system they designed. In the last five years of the previous Government, the number of young people not in employment, education or training rose by more than 250,000, and welfare went up by £33 billion in that Government’s last year alone. Their plan to chase after Reform, to talk down to people on benefits, to pit neighbour against neighbour and simply to shout at people that they need to go back to work is not new, either. It is the exact same playbook we saw under 14 years of Conservative Government. What happened? More young people were left behind, there were queues round the corner for food banks, and almost one in three children—many of whom had parents in work—were growing up in poverty. We also had a special educational needs and disabilities system that failed to deliver for young people in my constituency, setting so many of them off on the wrong path and writing off their life chances at the earliest stage.
Now, the Conservatives want £36 billion more in cuts, and the shadow Work and Pensions secretary has confirmed that there will be no extra money for employment support. Same plan, no new support and expecting different results is not actually a plan—it is the definition of insanity.
Of course, we all want a lower welfare bill, but the question is how we get there. Alan Milburn’s interim report is clear about the scale of the challenge: nearly 1 million young people aged 16 to 24—one in eight young people—are not in education, employment or training. The review estimates the annual cost of that to our country at £125 billion, which is more than we spend on education each year, yet only about one in five NEET young people in England is getting meaningful employment support, and less than half of the £8.1 billion spent on key benefits for young people has any participation support attached to it. That is the real scandal of the system the Government inherited: it spent billions of pounds on benefits for young people but far too little on helping them into work.
In Gloucester, more than 2,500 young people are not in employment, education or training. When I speak to them, I hear the same thing time and again: they have applied for job after job, only to be ghosted. They are not lazy. They want to work. I am pleased that this Government are acting. The £3,000 youth jobs grant supports any employer that takes on a young person who has been claiming universal credit for six months, in a genuine job of at least 25 hours per week. The Budget delivered a jobs guarantee for eligible 18 to 24-year-olds on universal credit and £100 million for local apprenticeship services. Because the Government are getting people into work rather than writing them off, like the Conservative party, we will bring the welfare bill down for good—not by slamming doors in people’s faces but by opening them.
National action must be matched by local leadership. That is why on the 30 November, I will host the Gloucestershire Futures summit at Kingsholm stadium with Gloucestershire county council. We will bring together schools and colleges, employers, health services, local government and the voluntary sector in one room, with one shared goal that no young person in Gloucestershire is left behind. I am delighted that the Skills Minister will join us. The summit builds on our Gloucester Futures programme from this summer, from which 20 young people graduated after a week with local employers and partners from Fasthosts and the University of Gloucestershire to The Music Works and the Gloucester Rugby Foundation.
In Gloucestershire, we have to make sure that support sits in the communities that need it most, that growth and opportunity are our ambition for Gloucester and not just for Cheltenham, and that national initiatives are run by trusted community partners with a stake in our city. I have two asks of the Minister. First, will he meet me after our summit on 30 November, so that the solutions that Gloucestershire’s employers and partners come up with can feed into the Government’s response to the Milburn review? Secondly, will the Minister ensure that support reaches young people where they are and not where local government sit?
The Conservatives want to talk down Gloucester’s young people but, in fact, they are already showing up. Our job and this Government’s job is to make sure that when they do, the door is open, the support is there and we get them back into work.