Amanda Hack

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for securing this important debate. Due to the pressure of time, I will focus on one group of young people. At the Work and Pensions Committee this morning we took evidence from two panels about what is driving the increase in NEETs. We heard that post-16 education, employment and training is often predicated on a young person being in a parental home, and that outcomes are severely hampered for care-experienced young people and those in temporary or supported accommodation. In the year ending March 2024, 14.3% of those placed in temporary accommodation in my constituency were aged 18 to 24, which is higher than the national average. Young people in supported housing do not have security, and they are penalised by the housing benefit taper rate. For those who are unaware, the universal credit of a young person living in supported housing is tapered at 55p for every £1 earned when they start working, meaning that they are restricted in how much they can earn before their universal credit is completely taken away. After that, separate and steeper taper rates for housing benefit are what really do the damage. The cost of supported housing, including service charges, becomes completely unaffordable for those young people, which means that increasing their work hours can leave young people financially worse off and simply unable to cover their housing costs—that is without the stress of going into education. The essence of the current system, although unintentional, forces thousands of young people to make an impossible choice. Removing the housing benefit taper rate barrier would create an opportunity for a more sustainable and supportive system for those young people. I would like to hear how the Minister will look at this problem, listen to those organisations and young people on the frontline, and recognise that solving the taper rates for those young people will massively improve the rate at which they are in employment, education or training to secure their future.