National Youth Strategy

Question

14:37:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in developing a National Youth Strategy.

We have started our engagement with young people in the sector. Yesterday the Secretary of State met young people in Bristol to discuss the role of young people in the strategy and how we as a Government can support them. We are in the process of establishing a youth advisory board and an expert advisory board. Over the coming months, we will hold further face-to-face engagements and seek the views of experts in our sectors and as many young people as possible, to put young people back in charge of their own destiny.

I thank my noble friend for that Answer and support the Government’s initiative. Does she agree that all young people need access to positive out-of-school activities with trusted adults, to develop confidence and resilience and to reach their own potential? For so many, such opportunities are limited through disadvantage, disability, poor circumstances and the severe cuts we have seen in youth services over the last 14 years. How will the Government ensure that this strategy levels up that inequality of opportunity among young people and reaches those most in need?

I wholeheartedly agree with my noble friend. The national youth strategy will allow us to better target funding and services where they are most needed and to reduce geographical disparities in choices and chances. We will continue to deliver additional hours of positive activities and adventures away from home for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people. In addition to better youth spaces, we will complete youth investment fund projects in disadvantaged areas, providing safe spaces and equality of access for young people from all backgrounds.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that more than 1 million young people took part in the National Citizen Service, with an approval rate of over 90%, making it probably the most successful youth programme in the last few decades? Given that, and given that it was good for social cohesion, mixing young people from different backgrounds together, good for the social soft skills that young people need such as confidence, leadership and teamwork, and good to get young people out from behind their screens and into the great outdoors, can she explain why—apart from short-term, political “not-invented-here-itis”—the Government decided to scrap it?

I do not recognise the portrayal of the decision-making process that the noble Lord outlines. I remind him that when we came into power there was no youth strategy. This is part of our process of ensuring that every young person has a youth service that works for them. It is not to take away from what the NCS provided, but the world is very different now from the world in 2010. The youth strategy that we will deliver as a Labour Government will provide opportunities for all.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that any youth strategy has to look at how it integrates into the voluntary sector of the general adult world? We assume that most young people will get slightly older. Will the Government make sure they have somewhere to go after they finish the youth strategy schemes?

The noble Lord makes a really interesting point, and I would be very happy to discuss it further with him next time we meet.

My Lords, I too very much welcome the Government’s plan to develop a national youth strategy. Does the Minister agree that a major element of such a strategy should be a holistic and consistent approach to citizenship, with a standard curriculum that focuses on interactive and immersive learning? Furthermore, given that the National Citizen Service no longer exists, does she agree that citizenship education would be best located in all primary and secondary schools?

The noble Baroness makes a really valuable point about the role of citizenship. It is essential that pupils develop an understanding of their place in a democratic society so that they can become responsible citizens in modern Britain. As noble Lords will be aware, the DfE has launched an independent curriculum and assessment review, which will look at exactly the type of issues the noble Baroness raises.

My Lords, a range of youth services were cut by the last Government. Policies were axed directly in Whitehall or because of severe cuts to local authority budgets. It will not be possible to reverse the damage overnight, but does my noble friend have any timescales relating to the strategy she outlined earlier?

We intend to develop the strategy over the next year and to publish it in 2025. The key issue around how we are developing it is coproduction; it will be a coproduced strategy that is cocreated with young people in the youth sector who know best what young people now require.

My Lords, given that the uniformed cadet service has more than 139,000 members and provides some of the best social mobility available to young people, exposing them to some of the most highly trained and highly dedicated people in the world, can the Minister guarantee that it will take part in the formation of this national youth strategy?

We encourage all young people involved in existing schemes to take part and get engaged with the formation of the strategy. I will take the noble Lord’s point back to the department and write to him to ensure that happens.

My Lords, further to the point just raised about the cadet forces, they are amazingly successful. As our military is getting smaller and smaller, and the world is getting more and more dangerous, there is a lot of merit in ensuring we can get youngsters into these forces. Will the CCF element of that now have increased funding? It has been shrinking, and therefore fewer schools have CCF units.

We are really keen to see the Combined Cadet Force grow, and the MoD funding in this academic year supports the ambition to grow to 60,000 cadets in 500 school cadet units across the UK. That is in addition to the annual cost to the MoD of the Combined Cadet Force, which is estimated at more than £42 million a year.

My Lords, the decision by the noble Baroness’s department three weeks ago to close the National Citizen Service dismayed a generation of young people and the many brilliant organisations that work with them. As my noble friend Lord Cameron says, it transformed the lives of more than 1 million young people. The organisation UK Youth has pointed out that the Government’s decision, as well as their failure to renew the youth investment fund, will take hundreds of millions of pounds out of the sector, including funding for around 250 youth organisations that were expecting to work with NCS from April. Why did the Government take this decision to announce the closure of NCS rather than looking at ways to repurpose it, and without announcing what might replace it and plug the gap it leaves behind?

As the noble Lord will be aware, there is a whole host of other programmes delivered by the department in addition to the National Citizen Service. We did not want to do what the previous Government did with vinspired and let the organisation wither on the vine.

My Lords, what is the national youth strategy doing, if anything, about the issues surrounding county lines?

One of the things about not having a youth strategy that goes across government is that we have not necessarily had joined-up work. I am happy to get a response to the noble and learned Baroness on that, but my understanding is that this is one of the issues that the Young Futures hubs will work on. They are committed to intervening early to stop young people being drawn into crime and other poor outcomes.

My Lords, can the Minister say how many youth clubs were closed during the Conservative Government’s time in office, and how many will be reopened within the next year or two?

I do not have a specific answer on how many were closed, but I think it was a lot. Local authorities’ youth funding in England fell by 73% under the previous Government and, between 2011-12 and 2022-23, the number of local authority-run youth centres—actually, I do have the figure—fell by 53% in England, from 917 to just 425. If you are looking at legacies of the previous Government, that is quite a damning indictment.

My Lords, if the Government are so keen to expand the role of cadets in a national youth strategy, why have they just pulled the Department for Education’s funding for the cadet expansion programme?

I might look to the previous Government’s record and the £22 billion black hole that they left in this country’s finances.