Young people ‘not to blame for challenges they face when trying to find job’

Stephanie Wareham, Press Association

Young people should not be blamed for the challenges they are facing when trying to find a job, the Work and Pensions Secretary has said, as he visited the first of those being supported by a new government programme for the long-term unemployed.

Pat McFadden said “purposeful activity” is the answer to solving the youth unemployment crisis as the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) topped one million.

More than 90,000 young people are expected to be helped into work in the next three years by the Government’s Jobs Guarantee scheme, which is offering a direct route into work for all 18 to 24-year-olds who have been claiming Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months.

The Government is fully funding up to 25 hours paid work for six months to get young people into work and is being rolled out in areas with some of the highest levels of youth unemployment, including the East Midlands, Greater Manchester, central and east Scotland and south east and south west Wales.

Speaking to reporters on a visit to a Boots warehouse in Nottinghamshire, where the first cohort of young people have started positions through the scheme in administrative, retail and warehouse support roles, Mr McFadden said he thinks the Neet numbers are “too high” and need to come down but said Britain’s labour market is robust.

He said: “There is a challenge for young people in the labour market, and there has been for some years.

“Initiatives like the one we’re talking about today are designed to try and help with that and I will keep pushing to do it.”

“Purposeful activity” is the answer to solving the Neet crisis, Mr McFadden said, as he criticised what he said was a flaw in the Universal Credit system.

He said: “(It) too readily separates people into fit for work and unfit for work, and when they are unfit for work, it leaves them without any support or any conditions.

“That’s why I call it the culture of ‘signed off and written off’, and I think we need to change that.

“I think that distinction is too black and white in the system as it stands.”

He added: “Work is the answer – or training, or more education, purposeful activity is the answer.

“We mustn’t blame young people for the challenges they are facing in the labour market.

“Sometimes it’s the system – fit for work and unfit for work – they didn’t design that, the designers of universal credit designed that.”

Mr McFadden said the Government has a responsibility to help young people “step up” and get into work.

He said: “These are young people who’ve been out of work for one, two, maybe four years, 20 years old, they’ve got their first job here, most of them have only been working here for a couple of weeks, and you can already see how it’s changed their confidence in themselves, their sense of belief in themselves.

“There’s an economic side to what we’re doing on the labour market side, but also, this is about giving young people hope, and the young people that I met today are manifestations of that hope.

“They’re earning money, really, for the first time in their lives.

“Speaking to them, I was full of hope myself that they would go on to have much better futures as a result of what we’ve put in place.”

Mr McFadden said people are starting to see the “early fruits” of a package that he hopes will contribute to reducing the number of people on benefits.

He said: “Every single young person here who is now working is no longer on benefits.

“If you add up what they were going to get in benefits for the next year or for the last three years, it would be many, many thousands of pounds.

“That has stopped now they are earning money.

“We do want to get benefit bill down, but we want to do it by putting working opportunity at the heart of what we’re doing.

“These things are a package and when we create opportunities, we expect young people to engage with those opportunities.

“That seems to be a fair deal from the point of view of the state, the individual, the taxpayer.

“It is a package that I think we’re seeing some very early fruits of it, and I think I have to do more of this in the future.”

Asked about claims from employers that the younger generation is less “work ready”, as mentioned in the independent Young People And Work: Interim Report commissioned by the Government and published in May, Mr McFadden said people need to be “wary of the siren song of nostalgia”.

He said: “If we rewound the clock X number of years, were they always work ready in the past?

“I suspect maybe not – there’s always been a certain amount of training, teamwork, tasks that have had to be taught when someone starts a job.

“That said, there are, of course, more instances of mental health conditions being cited in the benefit system and the labour market, which is why work is part of the answer.

“Work is good for you. It’s bad for your mental health to be sitting at home isolated.

“I see this not only as an economic thing, but as a response to greater instances of mental health problems for young people.

“The last thing we want to see is a diagnosis of problems leading to a life on benefits.

“We need to respond to it with opportunity instead.”

Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: “What young people tell me they really want is a proper job.

“Labour have destroyed job opportunities for young people with their Jobs Tax and employment red tape. That has put the brakes on businesses hiring young people, giving us the highest youth unemployment in over a decade and more than a million young people out of education.

“The Conservatives will back businesses to create jobs with tax cuts, boost apprenticeships, and reform welfare so young people are better off in work.”

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