Official Report 383KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S7M-01838, in the name of Tom Arthur, on supporting young people to participate in the labour market. Members who wish to speak in the debate should press their request-to-speak button now.
15:40
I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on supporting young people to participate in the labour market.
The Government believes that every young person should have the opportunity to develop their skills, build their confidence and progress into sustainable, fulfilling work. Supporting young people into employment is not only vital for their individual futures; it is essential to Scotland’s economy, productivity and future success.
However, this is about more than economic outcomes alone. We know that good work provides purpose, stability, financial security and social connection, while supporting positive mental health and wellbeing and helping young people to realise their full potential. By creating pathways into fair, fulfilling and sustainable employment opportunities, we are investing in a healthier, fairer and more prosperous Scotland. That is why the Government continues to take action to ensure that young people are equipped with the skills, experience and support that they need to succeed in a changing labour market.
Through our programme for government, we are strengthening the connections between education and employment, helping young people to progress into, and engage successfully with, the labour market. That includes improving pathways from education into training and employment through stronger partnerships among schools, colleges, universities, employers and employability services; expanding work-based learning opportunities; providing enhanced support during key transitions; and ensuring that young people can access high-quality, effective careers and employability services. Together, those actions will help more young people to develop the skills, experience and confidence that they need to access sustainable employment and realise their potential.
That all sounds laudable, but it stands in contrast to the fact that the number of modern apprenticeship starts is declining year on year and is substantially lower than the Government’s target. What is the minister saying that the Government will do to address that?
I hope that, if the member affords me the opportunity to make some progress through my prepared remarks, I might be able to address some of the points that he has raised, but I will be happy to take a further intervention later on if I am not successful in doing so.
Our commitment to improving young people’s pathways into employment is long standing. Building on the recommendation of Sir Ian Wood’s 2014 report, “Education Working For All!”, we have delivered reforms including through Developing the Young Workforce, expanding apprenticeships and introducing the young person’s guarantee, which are helping more young people to gain the skills and opportunities that are needed for the future.
Today’s debate provides an important opportunity to reflect on the progress that has been made and, most important, to consider what more can be done to ensure that every young person can access the opportunities that they need to succeed.
Although there is no direct comparison between Scotland and the rest of the UK on young people who are not in education, employment or training, the available labour market evidence suggests that Scotland is in a marginally stronger position. However, we cannot and will not be complacent. Too many young people still face barriers, and we remain committed to ensuring that every young person can access the opportunities that they need to build a positive future.
Does the minister accept that his figures are not comparable with the UK figures, because the Scottish Government uses a different mechanism?
I think that I said that there is no direct comparison available between Scotland and the UK on young people who are not in education, employment or training—that is on the record.
However, I note that statistics published by Skills Development Scotland this morning show that we continue to see progress on supporting young people to access and sustain opportunities post-secondary education, with participation rates up from 93.3 per cent to 93.6 per cent of all 16 to 19-year-olds.
Our commitment to that is reflected in our investment across our employability, skills and education system.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I will make a wee bit more progress and then come to Mr Harvie.
Through our no one left behind approach, we are delivering flexible, person-centred employability support tailored to individual needs, helping young people to move into work, education, training and other positive destinations.
Too many young people who face additional disadvantage continue to encounter barriers to employment and progression. That is why keeping the Promise remains central to the Government’s approach. Through our no one left behind approach, care-experienced young people are a priority group for employability support, with almost 8,000 people supported since 2019. Alongside that, programmes such as discovering your potential and charities such as MCR Pathways provide tailored support, mentoring and opportunities to help young people to realise their potential.
I give way to Patrick Harvie.
I doubt that anybody here disagrees that a great many young people face significant barriers that prevent them from participating in the labour market. However, does the Government accept that a great number of young people do not necessarily face barriers but are being offered a raw deal compared with previous generations and compared with older people? They receive lower pay than older people at a time when their housing costs are going through the roof, and they face a great many other disincentives. Those are not necessarily barriers, but they amount to a raw deal.
Patrick Harvie has hit on one of the defining issues with which we are having to wrestle. We took it for granted that each generation would see a rise in their living standards, but that bargain has been fundamentally undermined—indeed, broken—in the 20 years since the global financial crisis. We are not alone in wrestling with that issue; it is an issue across the United Kingdom and in many other countries; it is a large reason for the sense of disaffection, disconnect and alienation that we see in many countries. Some of that is manifesting itself in protest, some in disengagement from the political system and some in the rise of political parties that previous generations thought had been confined to the dustbin of history.
Therefore, Patrick Harvie has raised an important issue that speaks to the importance of the debate that we are having this afternoon as we seek to ensure not only that young people are supported to progress into employment, but that the employment that they progress into is fair, sustainable and well paid, with fair work principles at its heart.
Will the member give way?
I will give way one more time, then I will make some progress.
I thank the minister for giving way one more time. He mentioned care-experienced people. Until 2021, there was a programme called community jobs Scotland, through which employers received direct funding to train and employ a care-experienced person. Those people were given a job and received training alongside it.
I used that programme to great success, but it has now ended. The no one left behind strategy does not give an employer money to employ a young person and teach them all the skills that are needed to thrive in the job. Would the minister consider bringing back such direct funding?
I thank Duncan Dunlop for his intervention and recognise his expertise in that area. No one left behind is a devolved approach that runs across local employability partnerships; we have seen a move to a more regional approach here in the east. However, Duncan Dunlop has raised an important point, and I am happy to engage with him on that.
I will continue with my prepared remarks. Financial barriers can be a significant challenge for young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, which is why we continue to invest in education maintenance allowance for 16 to 19-year-olds to help them stay engaged in learning. By providing that support, EMA helps young people to build skills, knowledge and confidence while contributing to our wider commitments to eradicate child poverty and improve employment outcomes.
In Scotland, we have long recognised the value of vocational and technical options for young people and the important contribution that they make to equipping young people with the knowledge, skills and attributes that they need to flourish in life, learning and work. In August, we celebrated the achievement of 120,485 Qualifications Scotland vocational and technical qualifications, which was a new landmark, up 9.1 per cent from last year. Even with limited powers and budgets, Scotland has achieved a lot: 95.7 per cent of young people in Scotland are in work, training, college or university three months after leaving school.
Despite that progress, many employers continue to report skills shortages, which highlights the importance of ensuring that young people can access opportunities to develop practical skills and gain experience of the workplace.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am conscious of the provisions around time being given back. I have taken up quite a bit of time responding to interventions. Am I free to take a further one?
We have some time in hand.
Okay.
I appreciate the minister taking the intervention. Sixteen to 19-year-olds are five times more likely not to be in education, employment or training if they are from a deprived background. Figures show that college funding has reduced by 7.5 per cent in real terms. Kids from deprived backgrounds need an education close to home. Does the minister accept that it would be better to fund colleges to ensure that the figures are equitable for affluent children and deprived children?
In response to Rachael Hamilton’s two points, first, we all recognise that education is experienced in a differential way, and secondly, the importance of ensuring sustainable finance in our further education sector was reflected in the uplift that was secured for the budget for the current financial year.
The member makes important points, which recognise that there has to be a suite of interventions across our education and skills system in order for us to realise what we are seeking to achieve. On that point, Education Scotland is taking forward the most significant update to Scotland’s curriculum in more than a decade, helping to provide greater clarity on the knowledge and skills that young people need to develop and strengthening the links between learning, skills and the world of work.
Alongside that, Qualifications Scotland is leading work to reform the senior phase qualifications offer, ensuring that qualifications better recognise the breadth of young people’s knowledge, skills and achievements and that any changes are coherent, practical and focused on improving outcomes for all children and young people.
Since we started foundation apprenticeships, almost 29,000 young people have enrolled in one. We are keen to build on that success and we are working with partners to explore how they might contribute to our commitment to expanding work-based learning opportunities. After young people leave school, apprenticeships play a vital role in allowing them to earn, learn and develop skills that are valued by employers. That is why we remain committed to supporting at least—I repeat, at least—150,000 apprenticeship opportunities over the course of this parliamentary session, and it is why we have announced a 10 per cent uplift in modern apprenticeships funding for 2027-28 to maintain high-quality provision across Scotland.
Through our commitment to a single national skills plan, we want to enable people at all stages of their lives to have the opportunity and means to develop their skills, knowledge and attributes so that they can realise their potential and make a meaningful contribution to society and to the economy. The plan will provide a strategic framework to align skills provision with economic need, strengthen employer engagement and support people throughout their working lives, so that we can work towards ensuring that Scotland has the required skills base for our future economy.
However, securing qualifications and employment opportunities alone will not guarantee success. Good mental health is fundamental to helping young people to enter, remain and thrive in work. Through our supporting a mentally healthy workplace national learning network, we are working with employers to create more inclusive workplaces that meet young people’s needs. The network is complemented by our mental health and wellbeing delivery plan, which includes targeted action to support young people as they move into, and remain in, sustained employment.
Disabled young people can face distinct and often more complex challenges during their transition into adulthood. Our transition to adulthood strategy is helping to address those challenges by ensuring that disabled young people have access to co-ordinated support and clearer pathways to enable them to achieve their full potential.
Although education and employability services play an important role, many young people benefit from support that is delivered within their own community. Youth work provides trusted relationships to help young people build confidence and develop skills for learning, work and life. Youth work is particularly effective in engaging those facing barriers linked to poverty, poor mental health, care experience, additional support needs or disengagement from formal learning. That is why we have renewed our support for more than 5,500 youth workers, including volunteers, through training opportunities delivered by Youth Scotland and YouthLink Scotland. As part of our focus on prevention and early intervention, we will continue working with partners to strengthen youth work provision across Scotland.
Partnership remains central to our success. Supporting young people into employment requires a collaborative approach across education, skills, employability and the third sector. Skills Development Scotland, Developing the Young Workforce, colleges, universities, local authorities and Scotland’s third sector all play a crucial role in helping young people to develop skills, gain experience and access employment opportunities.
Strong engagement with employers remains essential if young people are to make successful transitions into work. Through employer-led regional groups, and working with every mainstream secondary school in Scotland, Developing the Young Workforce helps young people to access careers advice, workplace experience and direct employer engagement. We are therefore providing £12.45 million annually to DYW regional groups in 2025-26 and 2026-27, alongside an increased budget for the national team to support resilient staff planning.
Alongside DYW, we invest around £4 million each year in third sector programmes that provide tailored support for young people who face additional barriers. Through initiatives from Career Ready, Enable and MCR Pathways, young people benefit from mentoring, coaching, work placements and employer engagement to help them progress into positive destinations.
Young people also need access to high-quality careers information and support when making decisions about their future. SDS, along with colleges and universities, provides career information, advice and guidance across Scotland. Skills Development Scotland’s 16+ participation portal and our participation measure are widely recognised as key strengths of our youth employability system, providing a comprehensive national picture of young people’s participation and helping partners to target support where it is needed most.
Our colleges and universities equip young people with the technical, vocational and high-level skills that Scotland’s economy requires, and they work closely with employers to respond to labour market demand.
When a young person secures employment, up-front costs can create a barrier to their taking up an opportunity. Since our job start payment was introduced in August 2020, it has helped more than 6,600 young people to move into employment. By helping with the initial costs that are associated with starting a job, that uniquely Scottish payment reduces the financial barriers to employment.
We recognise, however, that there is more to do. That is why the Minister for Innovation, Technology and Tertiary Education and I are pleased to announce that the Scottish Government will convene a series of discussions with young people, employers, delivery partners, education and skills providers and representatives from the private and third sectors. We will begin by listening directly to young people and the organisations that support them, to better understand the challenges that they face in accessing and sustaining employment. We will then bring together key partners to consider how we can collectively respond to those challenges and identify opportunities for further action. By placing young people’s experiences at the centre of those discussions, we can build a shared understanding of the issues and strengthen our collective efforts to improve outcomes across Scotland.
Minister, you must come to a conclusion. I have been generous in giving you time back.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to say that I welcome the contribution that Alan Milburn’s review of young people and work has made so far. The focus on widening opportunities and strengthening the pathways between education and employment to ensure that all young people can access good quality work aligns with the commitment that no young person is left behind. Alyn Smith and I met Alan Milburn last week to discuss his final report. We will continue to work with employers, delivery partners and young people to consider the findings.
At the heart of the issue is a need for continued partnership working, and we are committed to that. I look forward to the contributions from members from across the Parliament this afternoon.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that every young person should have the opportunity to realise their potential and participate fully in the labour market; recognises that providing young people with the best start to their working lives is critical to Scotland’s future economic prosperity; welcomes the fact that 95.7% of young people are going into positive destinations such as work, training, college or university three months after leaving school; welcomes the commitment to deliver at least 150,000 apprenticeships during the current parliamentary session; recognises the importance of ensuring that people receive the right support at the right time to progress towards and within work; welcomes the commitment to review employability services in order to maximise effectiveness of support; acknowledges that some young people face additional barriers to making successful transitions from secondary education and that targeted, person-centred support is essential to helping them overcome these challenges, and supports continued action to ensure that every young person, regardless of background or circumstance, is supported to achieve a positive and sustained destination in education, training or employment.
I call Daniel Johnson to speak to and move amendment S7M-01838.5.
15:56
One reason why I love covering the economy brief for Scottish Labour is that I get to meet many people in different sectors all over the country, not least young people in apprenticeships who are entering their sectors, trades and careers at the very start of their working lives, whether that is in defence, advanced manufacturing, construction or energy. Time and again, I see excellent examples, such as the former apprentice who I met at Prestwick airport and who is earning a very substantial five-figure salary just a matter of years after finishing her apprenticeship in maintaining aircraft.
The reality is that, although we meet amazing young people building warships, houses or aircraft, very often in each of those sectors, the schemes are constrained and the firms involved are employing people from other parts of the world to meet the labour shortage. We have a demand for labour, rewarding careers and growth sectors, yet young people are being turned away from the opportunities because there are not enough places to train them. We have demand from the businesses and the young people, but we have constraint from the system. That is an absurdity that we have to address.
It is important that we address the NEET issue. Alan Milburn’s report is highly timely, because many young people are failing to find opportunities, for a broad range of reasons. Some of those are about marginal issues and people being in profound need, but Patrick Harvie hit the nail on the head when he said that a lot of young people, for lots of different reasons, are really struggling to start their careers, full stop.
I am grateful to Daniel Johnson for his kind remarks. Perhaps they indicate that he intends to accept our amendment and support the proposition that the UK Government should have abolished the age-discriminatory bands for the minimum wage.
As Patrick Harvie knows, that is the UK Labour Government’s position, but the issue has to be looked at in some detail. There are some problems with the specific wording of the Green amendment, but people should absolutely be paid a fair wage.
Critically, about 13 per cent of young people across the UK are not in education, employment or training. That figure is largely the same in Scotland. Fundamentally, although the issue is about the routes that young people have available, it is also about changes in the economy, which is why urgent attention needs to be given to it. The problems are just as acute in Scotland, which is a point that the minister somewhat circumvented in his speech.
There are also issues with data recording. For example, in Scotland, we record data only for 16 to 20-year-olds; we lack data for 20 to 24-year-olds. However, we know from the cohort for which we have information that things are getting worse. Four years ago, about 8.7 per cent of young people aged 16 to 20 were in the NEET category, but that has now risen to 13.2 per cent. We also know from data that was released recently that increasing numbers of young people are not in education or employment because they are sick. These are substantial and serious issues that we need to interrogate, and it is not good enough to simply say that we are doing marginally better.
Nor is it good enough to be complacent about apprenticeship starts. Although modern apprenticeships are an important and valuable component in starting people on their career path, we must acknowledge that the number of starts is declining. In 2022, the number of starts was 26,000, but that has now declined to 24,800—that is a decline of 1,200 starts in just four years. Furthermore, we know that the level of demand is much more substantial than that—the Confederation of British Industry states that we are short of some 15,000 apprenticeship places.
The issue is compounded by facts that have just come to light in recent days in the Parliament. There are issues not only in the apprenticeship system; in the college system, the head count in colleges has fallen by 40,000 in three years, which is a fall of 20 per cent. That is astonishing. We need to understand and accept that there is an urgent and pressing issue with regard to skills that we must address with a level of urgency and seriousness.
I agree with Daniel Johnson’s line of argument. Would he accept that the issue is not just a numbers game? We would probably see a differential between different sectors if we were to interrogate the numbers in individual sectors, but there would probably be a more worrying scenario in some of the key sectors that will be crucial to our economic growth.
I would go even further than that: when we interrogate individual institutions, we see that cuts are happening to the courses that are more expensive to run—that is why there are no stonemasonry courses available in Edinburgh. I do not know whether members have noticed, but there are one or two stone buildings in this city. We not only need to understand the numbers, as Mr McArthur pointed out, but ensure that the right courses are available for the right people in the right places.
Above all else, I have a deep concern that—at a time when there is already a university funding crisis—we have embarked on a structural reform that puts the responsibility for those functions into the Scottish Funding Council, a body that does not have a track record of being industry led or having an industry interface. We run the risk of the functional change that is needed being impeded by the structural change that the Government has embarked on.
I move amendment S7M-01838.5, to insert at end:
“; is concerned by figures indicating that as many as one in six young people in Scotland are not in education, work or training; believes that there is a need to simplify vocational qualifications, to create lifelong learning pathways and to support the development of flexible courses that can be tailored to individuals and businesses, and calls on the Scottish Government to draw up proposals to devolve funding for lifelong learning and skills to regional leaders to bring together colleges, employers and training providers, to ensure that people are equipped with the skills industry needs and that local communities share in the benefits of investment.”
16:03
I point to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am a business owner.
Let us think back to our first jobs. It might have been doing a paper round or a milk delivery, or working in a shop. Margaret Thatcher—one of the minister’s favourite people—started behind the counter of her father’s grocery shop, Jeff Bezos spent his youth flipping burgers in a McDonald’s restaurant and Sean Connery delivered milk very near to the Parliament using a horse-drawn vehicle. I washed dishes, which was not so glamorous.
For generations, the formula was simple: you would take an entry-level, often low-paid job, learn about punctuality and working with the public and take the first step on to the rung of the ladder. However, that ladder is being cut away. [Interruption.]
Sorry, but can we not have conversations in the chamber while members are speaking, please?
During the election campaign, I met a 19-year-old on a doorstep who said to me that he had applied for more than 200 entry-level jobs and had not received a single response. He is living at home with his parents, who are equally worried. Because young people cannot get their foot on the ladder, a staggering 30 per cent of those aged 20 to 34 in Scotland are now living at home with their parents, and that figure has increased under recent Scottish Governments.
Young people have lost trust and hope. Our education system hands out participation trophies and tells them that everyone is a winner, but when they step into the real world, our broken economy treats them like an invisible statistic. When challenged, the Government will point to its annual participation measure—as I pointed out earlier, it is not comparable to the NEETs figure—and claim that only a small percentage of young people are out of work or education. However, it has truncated its statistics and it ignores a proportion of the 20 to 24-year-olds who are left stranded and out of the workplace.
Alan Milburn’s interim report shows that, across the UK, 1 million young people—a lost generation—are not in education, employment or training. In Scotland, the figures are harder to find, but Office for National Statistics data shows that thousands of young Scots aged 16 to 24 are completely disconnected from the system, and some state that they do not want to work. However, they are not workshy. They are completely demoralised. They have looked at a housing market where they can never buy a home and a corporate job market that ghosts them hundreds of times and they have rationally concluded that the system is rigged. They have not given up on work; they have given up on a system that breaks its promises.
Why has that happened? Our youth are trapped in a political pincer between two failed Parliaments. First, Westminster has artificially priced inexperienced young workers out of the market, hiking the minimum wage without a thought for productivity. Secondly, the Scottish Government has created an economy with low growth and low productivity, where we have an issue with scale-ups that is limiting our jobs.
We need deep-rooted options. We need adequate pathways into work for our young people. A recent programme for international student assessment figure that came out states that some 43.5 per cent of 15-year-olds feel that their school did not prepare them for adult life. That is at the heart of an issue that we need to resolve. We need dynamic gateways that transition young people from education directly into purposeful vocations. Whether that path goes through university or college, straight into a modern apprenticeship, or directly into a brilliant career—perhaps in the military, the police or retail—the pathway must be there.
We must build opportunities directly into schools—not just tokenism, but projects that have meaning and value to communities, so that young people can feel that they have a purpose. We need robust work experience, opportunities to see real businesses operating locally, and practical lessons on how enterprise functions. We need placements that build confidence and test soft skills.
Work must always be rewarding, and it must be more rewarding than not working. We need opportunities that will help young people to monetise and commercialise their ideas, showing them that they have real meaning and purpose and that they can contribute effectively to the wider world. Once they have that purpose, we must ensure that they have financial independence. A young person cannot build a proud adult life if they are trapped in their parents’ house in their 30s.
Hard work must bring a physical reward. We will couple our employment pathways with aggressive housing and planning reform. We need a progressive rent-to-buy housing model. We must turn a young person’s monthly rent into automatic blocks for a deposit. We will give them realistic, stable ways to own their own home.
The member must come to a conclusion.
We will build youth trust and we will be honest with young people. We need to build a real world where work arrives for young people who have been through the education system in a more direct manner. Let us give Scotland’s young people their future back.
I move amendment S7M-01838.4, to leave out from first “welcomes” to end and insert:
“is concerned that thousands of young Scots remain detached from employment, education or training, despite years of Scottish Government promises; expresses concern that the Scottish Government has been unable to produce comparative not in education, employment or training (NEET) figures for all 16- to 24-year-olds in Scotland, instead relying on more favourable data from a narrower age range; notes that the Annual Population Survey indicates that one in six 16- to 24-year-olds in Scotland has NEET status; believes that a generation is being failed by a system that too often leaves young people without purpose, direction or hope for the future; recognises that work must be the surest route to financial independence and prosperity for young people, and believes that people should keep more of the money they earn and that every young person should have a clear pathway from education to productive employment, financial independence and economic security.”
16:09
What a speech to follow. I start by thanking the Government for lodging the motion to be debated in its own time. It is an incredibly important debate for us to have, given the scale of the crisis that we face. Although I promise not to continually harp on about being the chamber’s youngest member, the matters that we are debating today are not just close to home but reflect the everyday experiences of so many people of my age, including some of my friends who are currently NEET—a circumstance that I could have found myself in.
In the chamber, we often speak about the perils of poverty, lowering the welfare bill and the need for better mental health support—things that I think we all support. However, today, I genuinely challenge every party at the table to answer how, if we truly believe that those things matter, we can allow the NEET crisis to continue. It is about time that we internalised the fact that the very nature and foundations of the labour market have changed. As Daniel Johnson pointed out, the number of college places has fallen and many of our students feel priced out of higher education. As if it was not already hard enough to secure jobs, we have seen the graduate market collapse by 50 per cent and the advent of artificial intelligence remove a litany of entry-level jobs.
Just yesterday morning, BBC Scotland broke the story of Casey Smith, a young person who has been applying for jobs since she was 16—she is about to turn 20. She believes that she has made more than 1,000 job applications only to get five interviews and no offers. Casey’s story is that of thousands of young people who have the drive, skills and know-how but not the opportunity to do. These are the people at the core of the NEET crisis. The very idea that we are slightly meritocratic seems to have evaporated, and nobody seems to have internalised the effects of what is happening.
As the previous speaker mentioned, a 24-year-old man is 26 times more likely to live with his parents than with a partner. One in four 16 to 24-year-olds live in poverty, and, for the first time in almost a century, it is being reported that the level of hope in young people is so dangerously low that it is having an effect on their morale and their ability to find work.
As a 24-year-old, I know that, too often, my generation feels as though we have fallen through the cracks. We were born too early to really reap the benefits of the new tech-emboldened economy but too late to set our roots in a career that will help us to weather the storm of change. That situation is leaving so many young people lost in a sea of no work or bad work. It is not enough to simply get us into jobs if the work is unreliable and low paid. Work must pay.
Like many young people across the country, I was incredibly disappointed that the workers’ rights promises were watered down by the UK Government. I should be clear that the Employment Rights Act 2025 included really good mechanisms, such as banning the immoral practice of fire and rehire, but those measures have not gone far enough, and many of my constituents feel that Holyrood would have gone further.
As the chancellor confirmed last week, the Government has abandoned its pledge to equalise minimum pay bands across age groups, which is a betrayal of the promise that the same Government made to young workers two years ago and perhaps suggests why many of us are looking for political representation elsewhere. I urge colleagues across the chamber to join me in condemning that failure to act. Rent is not cheaper if you are younger, food is not cheaper if you are younger, petrol is not cheaper if you are younger, and heating is not cheaper if you are younger. Once again, the very idea of the social contract between the state and its future is being abused and young people are being asked to pay for it.
When I was born, my single mum had been 18 for two months. We lived in insecure housing and grew up together, both feeling the cold grip of poverty. Things were incredibly tough then and they are even tougher now. The UK Government is telling countless young parents out there, across our country, that they are worth less and that their attempts to put food on the table and to keep the lights on and beds warm should be even harder. That is not acceptable. We must ensure that work pays.
If we want our young people to be in work, we must also ensure that work pays and is fair. Of course, alone, that will not stop the crisis, but it is a tangible act that the chamber can call for and something that the southern chamber can do, and it would feasibly support our young people’s participation in the labour market. However, it is not the only thing. Specifically, if I may—although I chose not to include it in my amendment, because it was outside the scope of the motion—I suggest to Alyn Smith, the Minister for Innovation, Technology and Tertiary Education, that, in order to tackle the crisis together, we could look at the systems that feed into that.
I am sure that many would welcome the implementation of student support recommendations to bring college and university student support levels up to the real living wage. With more and more students entering full-time work during their full-time studies—something that I was doing recently—there is real concern on the part of students and those not in education that inadequate student support is pushing people out of the jobs market. I admit that the evidence picture for that is still quite blurry, but we know definitively that students in higher and further education are suffering in poverty, with one third having considered dropping out—becoming NEET—because of that and two thirds having stated that it has made them feel mentally unwell. Many young people expect that, if the Government is serious about their concerns, it will tackle that issue as well, and I would welcome the chance to work with the minister on that.
We have seen young people and students mobilise across the world, most recently in France. They are right to be angry. Young people feel that we are constantly being slapped in the face by the painful realities of our countries’ failings, from soaring rents to people being forced into insecure employment, all while the cost of living crisis makes our simple necessities unaffordable. All of that is due to no fault of our own but to the compounding failures to create an equitable system for us.
Can we seriously blame the millions of young people outside this chamber who are fed up with the system and feel as though it was designed to make us fail? In his opening, the minister spoke about how many have looked outside mechanisms such as organised politics to find solutions. We, in Parliament, can provide them with hope that there are the means to make things better.
All of us in Parliament need to make it a priority to ensure that young people are supported. It is our duty to do everything that we can to afford every young person the opportunity to follow their ambitions and dreams and to build a stable future for themselves and their potential future families. Doing any less will leave a ticking time bomb at the feet of those of my age, for us to claim when many who sit here today might be gone.
I move amendment S7M-01838.2, to insert at end:
"; agrees that the UK Government must act immediately to end age-based minimum wage discriminatory bands to ensure that young workers are paid a fair wage, and notes the need to establish a minimum standard for apprenticeships to ensure effective quality control and fair treatment for apprentices."
I call Rachael Hamilton to speak to and move amendment S7M-01838.3.
16:16
I have noticed during the debate that the minister was very keen to celebrate the Scottish Government’s record on positive destinations, but I know that that is not the real experience of the people in my constituency and across Scotland who are NEETs and are applying for hundreds and hundreds of jobs but are getting turned back. The reflections that everybody has shared in the debate are spot on—it is a pretty desperate situation.
I want to look behind some of the figures that the Scottish Government has provided when it points to a 95.7 per cent positive destination rate, which includes further education, higher education and training. It is disingenuous to suggest that there is progress, because the Government’s own figures show that the proportion of school leavers who enter employment within nine months of leaving school has fallen by 28.8 per cent to 26.5 per cent. Also, the number of modern apprenticeships that started in 2025-26 was down 658 compared with the previous year, and there was a reduction of almost 40,000 in the college student head count between 2022 and 2023.
We can look at some of the things that stakeholders are saying about the situation. Skills Development Scotland has warned that rising costs for businesses restrict the recruitment of young people. Fiona Hodgson of the Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers’ Federation—SNIPEF—has warned that employers could stop offering apprenticeships, so we
“risk losing apprenticeship opportunities and skilled capacity that could take years to rebuild.”
Charandeep Singh of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce has called for a test of every economic decision. Sara Thiam of Prosper has highlighted the unmet apprenticeship demand that exists in key sectors. Gavin Donoghue of Colleges Scotland has warned that student losses are damaging the skills pipeline. Finally, Professor Mairi Spowage has warned that businesses are sacrificing investment to survive.
I agree that there is no silver bullet for the problem and that a suite of challenges are stacking up, but the Government must do more. The Government committed to funding at least 150,000 apprenticeships over this parliamentary session, as the minister stated. That averages 30,000 apprenticeships annually, but through different apprenticeship routes. The question is how many additional opportunities that commitment will create, particularly when modern apprenticeship starts have been declining and only 25,500 of them have been delivered, which is 8,500 fewer starts than providers requested.
I mentioned college funding. In real terms, college funding is down by about 7.5 per cent compared with 2021, which is locking out young people from deprived backgrounds. People from deprived backgrounds are five times more likely to be not in employment, education or training than those from affluent backgrounds, and this Government should be ashamed of that.
I will turn to the points that have been raised by Labour. Of course, the Scottish Conservatives support the principle of devolution and giving responsibilities to local authorities, and I agree that flexible vocational qualifications should match training to local demand. I suppose that what Labour is trying to do is give responsibility to people at the cliff face, who understand those issues most keenly, but where does the additional training funding come from? Who makes those regional decisions, and how would smaller rural employers be represented? Businesses already struggle to afford apprenticeships, so how would that help? Nevertheless, I appreciate Labour’s suggestions.
I agree with most of what the Scottish Liberal Democrats say in their motion. Mental health services and neurodevelopmental support can play an important role. The Lib Dems also recognise falling apprenticeship starts, which is a concern that I share. Better health support must be accompanied by accessible training and genuine employment opportunities, especially in rural communities that face transport issues, as the distance to college or work can create further difficulties.
On what we would do, I agree with Angela Ross that we should not see university as the default destination for every person. That is something that businesses say whenever the Scottish Conservatives speak directly with them. A university degree might be the right route for some people, but apprenticeships and technical and vocational qualifications are very much recognised as being equally worth while.
The Scottish Conservatives believe that we should ring fence apprenticeship levy funding. I looked at the recent figures and understand that the Scottish Government did not spend roughly £875 million in total. Robert Kilgour did some stats and found that £171 million had gone missing from funding for apprenticeships. All the money that businesses contribute should go back into the system, to deal with the situation that we find ourselves in.
I have come to the end of my time, but I will also be closing, so I will add some extra remarks then.
I move amendment S7M-01838.3, to leave out from first “welcomes” to end and insert:
“notes that, despite high rates of positive destinations, the proportion of school leavers entering employment has fallen; believes that the best way to support young people into work is to create a strong economy in which businesses can afford to hire and invest; regrets the decline in Modern Apprenticeship starts and the reduction in college-based skills training in Scotland despite continued employer demand for skills; questions the ambition of a target for 150,000 apprenticeships over the current parliamentary session, given that this is close to what the existing annual provision would already deliver; calls on the Scottish Government to reduce the cost of doing business, to expand apprenticeship opportunities and to rebuild vocational education, and believes that employability support should focus on helping those who face genuine barriers into work rather than imposing further costs and interventions on employers.”
I call Liam McArthur.
16:22
Presiding Officer, thank you for your permission to leave the chamber briefly to attend a round-table discussion that is being hosted by the Deputy First Minister. I offer my apologies to the chamber, as I will be absent for a short time.
The debate goes to the heart of what has felt like a national conversation that has gained a bit of momentum since the publication of the Milburn review’s interim report, which revealed that the number of young people across the UK who are not in education, employment or training has exceeded 1 million for the first time in more than a decade. Although at first glance the situation regarding youth participation in Scotland might appear marginally less alarming, the data that we have, as we have heard, is not comparable across the UK. It would be a mistake to believe that Scotland does not face the same stark reality as elsewhere in the UK and, to be fair to the minister, he did not seek to deviate from that perspective.
Likewise, the positive destination statistics, which are often cited by ministers as a success story, are perhaps less reassuring when we begin to interrogate them. They are a broad measure that says little about the sustainability of destinations for school leavers or the longer-term risk that they may become NEET in due course. Indeed, the Scottish Government’s 2023 review into the economic inactivity of 16 to 24-year-olds found that 197,000, or 38 per cent, of the cohort were economically inactive, and concluded that more information on the influence of health and socioeconomic factors was needed. We seem to be little further forward in closing that information gap.
To quote the Scottish Health Equity Research Unit,
“What we measure shapes what we see, and what we see shapes what we do. Better alignment between participation, health and welfare data will be essential if we are serious about identifying risk earlier and targeting support more effectively.
That is all the more important if we accept that economically inactive young people are not a homogeneous group and that the factors influencing the ability of young people across Scotland to participate in the labour market are many, complex and various. In a rural and island context, for example, the barriers to accessing education, employment or training can look and feel very different from those that are experienced by young people in the central belt in terms of infrastructure, transport and local opportunities.
We also need to confront the fact that, as colleagues have observed, growing numbers of young people are not accessing education, employment or training for health-related reasons. The figure was 26,300 in 2024-25, which means that it has more than doubled over the past decade. The recent Public Health Scotland report emphasises that poor mental health is a serious barrier to participation, while particular challenges are faced by young people with neurodevelopmental conditions. Too often, young people with neurodevelopmental conditions are left waiting for months or even years for assessment and access to the support that would allow them to fulfil that potential.
It is fitting that, last week, the chamber was able to send a clear and strong message, following the debate that my colleague Adam Harley led, on the need for the Government to bring back to Parliament a learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill. I hope that the Government will heed that message and now act.
More generally, we need to ensure that there are sufficient high-quality opportunities and pathways to enable young people to move into skilled work. At a time when employers across Scotland are reporting shortages of skilled workers, it cannot be right—as Daniel Johnson and others have observed—that the number of modern apprenticeship starts has fallen to 24,800 or so in 2025-26 and remains below pre-pandemic levels. In particular sectors, that will be causing even more acute problems.
The Government has undertaken a significant reorganisation of Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council with the aim of simplifying apprenticeship funding. Liberal Democrats supported those changes while recognising that the real test would be whether they deliver better outcomes for learners and employers. The Government must now demonstrate that its reforms can deliver on that promise, reverse the decline in the number of apprenticeship starts and provide the skilled workforce that Scotland’s economy needs.
One of the key messages of the Milburn review is that worrying trends that we are seeing are avoidable but Governments must tackle head-on the failings of existing systems for supporting young people into adulthood. That will require the Scottish Government to be honest about the number of young people who are falling through the cracks at present, and the scale of the challenge that it is required to meet. That is what my amendment seeks to help achieve, and I urge Parliament to support it.
I move amendment S7M-01838.1, to insert at end:
“; notes with concern that the number of 16 to 24-year-olds who are economically inactive because of health reasons reached 26,300 in 2024-25, more than double the figure recorded a decade earlier; further notes that the number of modern apprenticeship starts fell to 24,849 in 2025-26 and remains below pre-pandemic levels despite a shortage of skilled workers constraining Scotland’s economy; recognises the need for improved data to better understand the barriers preventing many young people from participating in the labour market, and further recognises the importance of improving mental health services and neurodevelopmental assessment and support in order to enable young people to achieve their potential.”
We move to the open debate.
16:27
I must say that it is heartening to hear that every member who has contributed to the debate is looking at the whole person. I recently spoke with some young learners about what they wanted from their education and their journey towards employment. What was interesting was that they spoke less about their academic endeavours, subjects and qualifications and much more about the need for practical life skills and an understanding of the adult world that they are preparing to enter.
I have been thinking about those conversations in preparing for the debate, because, while we are focusing on 16 to 24-year-olds and on apprenticeships, skills shortages and economic inactivity, I do not want us to lose sight of the whole person. That applies especially when we are discussing readiness for employment against expectations that were formed in a world that has changed considerably, even in just the past five years. Our young people have grown up through austerity and the Covid-19 pandemic, at a time of rising living costs and uncertainty about whether they will ever be able to afford to buy their own home. Many experienced disruption during important years of social and emotional development, and we cannot assume that that has not affected their confidence or their expectations—in fact, experts have said that it has changed their biology.
Employment itself is also changing, as we are seeing in Banffshire and Buchan Coast across energy, renewables, engineering and all our traditional industries. The skills that are needed today may look different in 10 years’ time, so we need flexibility throughout education to prepare young people to be able to adapt to that.
Scotland’s curriculum for excellence recognises the importance of developing confident individuals and effective contributors, so we should examine how consistently children develop practical skills, relationships, emotional intelligence, problem solving and resilience, alongside their academic learning, with opportunities to build confidence, and learn how to manage difficulties and where to go to ask for support.
As has been mentioned, we must recognise additional barriers, including neurodivergence, deafness, disability, care experience and mental health challenges. Add poverty or rurality, and those barriers become much more complex. We have to ensure that, as well as those opportunities, there is accessibility, because young people deserve to find their purpose, too. An apprenticeship might be available, but can that young person get ready in the morning, access transport to get to work and manage an unfamiliar workplace? Do they feel confident and know where to go to get help?
The Government’s no one left behind statistics show that disabled participants gained qualifications at almost the same rate as non-disabled participants, which is fantastic, but only 25 per cent entered employment, compared with 36 per cent of non-disabled participants. We need to examine what happens between their acquiring those skills and their finding suitable, sustainable employment, and where the gaps are that disabled participants fall into. Fantastic organisations are already working in that space, including Skills Development Scotland, Barnardo’s, Enable Scotland and our youth work services. In fact, I recently attended a Skills Development Scotland appointment with one of my children. The adviser was fantastic, I was impressed by the comprehensive service and my child left feeling quite confident and positive. Some good, meaningful work is being done. I welcome the recognition in the Scottish Government’s motion of the right support at the right time and the importance of sustained destinations, alongside a commitment to 150,000 apprenticeships, a review of employability services and the planned work connecting young people’s mental health with employability. That is important.
As that work progresses, I ask the minister to consider three things. First, can the review examine continuity of support, beginning before age 16 and continuing through education and apprenticeships and into employment? Secondly, how effectively are we identifying changes in circumstances? We have the 16+ participation portal, but information must be accurate and up to date, with follow-up when someone disengages. Third, how do we bring employers, particularly smaller businesses, youth services, mental health professionals and the third sector, into that work, with young people involved in designing that support? Such lived experience is vital. In Finland, youth guidance centres bring employment, education, housing and health support together in one place, without the need even for an appointment. Staff from different services work together to help young people to navigate what they need. That is worth examining alongside Scotland’s provision.
I recently received an email from a teenager who was terrified by what they were seeing online about international conflict. I offered reassurance and signposting for that, but the level of anxiety that our young people experience is eye opening.
The member will need to wind up.
There is a familiar saying that it takes a village to raise a child. What does our modern village look like? If we want young people to take up the opportunities that we create—if we really want them to succeed—we have to listen to them, understand their circumstances and ensure that that village is there to support them for the journey and not simply the destination.
16:34
Young people face a tougher start in life than previous generations have faced for decades. Nearly half of 25-year-olds are living with their parents, their wages have stagnated and employment has fallen. I would argue that choosing a viable career at that age is much harder than it was for previous generations. It does not really matter how we have—
Will the member take an intervention?
Give me a minute or so.
The most important thing that the Government has missed is that choosing a viable career is much harder now. In deciding on its path forward, the Government really has to recognise that. How we arrived here is due to a variety of factors, not all of the Government’s making.
I thank Pauline McNeill for taking the intervention. When she opened, she spoke about wage stagnation—something of which we are all incredibly terrified. Does she agree that we need to call on the UK Government to equalise the minimum pay bands so that no worker is paid a poor wage?
I know that Iris Duane is the youngest member in her group. For many decades, since I was a union official, I have campaigned against age discrimination and I am not going to change my mind about it now—so, yes, I agree.
Angela Ross struck at least one chord, as did Rachael Hamilton, about the way in which young people have to apply for jobs nowadays. They submit hundreds of applications with no response. The way in which that process must affect their confidence must be devastating. Gone are the days when someone could go from shop to shop and ask for an application form. I find it quite disturbing. If they do not have a laptop or an internet connection, how are they expected to keep up with that?
I am not convinced that the new modern apprenticeship scheme has truly embraced the age group between 20 and 25. Members have talked about the modernisation of the scheme. When the minister sums up, I would like to know whether that has changed; I feel that the focus is still very much on 16 to 18-year-olds, and the group aged between 20 and 25 is the one that we are failing the most.
I am glad that the minister has met Alan Milburn and that the two Governments are working together. It is the biggest challenge for both Governments to solve, because of the outlook that I have described.
There is a real divide between people from poorer and single-parent families—it is not only about their opportunities but also about their connections—and better-off families who have professional connections and better opportunities. As other members have mentioned, fewer 25-year-olds own their own home now, and housing costs are much higher for renters or people with mortgages who are in their 20s. That age group is also expected to save more for its retirement and to work longer. We must recognise that it is more difficult for that group.
A recent report by the University College London centre for longitudinal studies reveals that
“generation X”—
that is, those born between 1965 and 1980—
“experienced worse outcomes at age 51 the longer they had spent NEET (not in employment, education or training) in early adulthood. Those who were persistently NEET between ages 16 and 24 were six times as likely to be out of work”.
That matters;16 to 24-year-olds in Scotland are twice as likely as the rest of the population to be unemployed. That generation has to contend with an increase in mental health issues, the impact of Covid and the consequences of not regulating AI—to add all that into the mix.
This is where I disagree most with the Government.
Will Pauline McNeill take an intervention?
The member is closing, so she cannot take an intervention.
I apologise.
For me, the most important thing is that we cannot continue to measure this issue through the Government’s positive destination metric. It masks the reality. It includes volunteering—I am not saying that that is not important, but we need the truth. We need to see what the situation looks like. If someone is in a job with a zero-hours contract, I do not necessarily think that that is a positive destination.
We need more honest data. That is what I plead for. If we had more honest data, we would be more likely to be able to find strategies that really work. I am concerned about those who left school without qualifications and with no career path. How are they picked up on when they are in their 20s? I go back to the point about modern apprenticeships. There are so many acronyms and agencies in this portfolio that, quite honestly, I find it hard to follow them. How does the Government’s approach find those people? If the minister can answer that, I will have a lot more confidence in the Government’s approach.
Business is running late so it would be helpful if all members could stick to the time limits that have been agreed on with their business managers.
I call Jack Middleton, who has five minutes, as agreed to by his business manager.
16:39
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am a member of Unite the Union.
Youth unemployment is rising—albeit that the rate in Scotland remains one of the lowest in the UK—so this debate is timely. I support the Government motion and its central principle that every young person should have the opportunity to realise their potential.
The commitment to deliver at least 150,000 apprenticeships by 2031 is welcome, but that ambition must be matched with economic conditions that give businesses the confidence and security to invest in the next generation. When businesses face uncertainty, apprenticeships, graduate schemes and entry-level recruitment can be among the first investments to be reconsidered.
As one of the younger members of the Parliament, I started secondary school in 2007. I grew up in the north-east, and every one of my friends from my early school days has gone into the oil and gas industry or a mechanical trade that is heavily dependent on it. Having gone to university to study politics, I am the outlier, but the industry still gave me, aged 13, one of my first experiences of working life, at John Wood house, and I know that it continues to provide massive opportunities.
However, as the MSP for Aberdeen Central, I hear real insecurity when I speak to apprentices and young workers about where their careers might lead them in the future. The political and economic uncertainty surrounding the industry today is very different from the situation when my pals and I left school. Through the union, I hear how workers feel when the industry in which they are building careers and developing highly important skills is dismissed as dirty and as something to be discarded. For their sake, politicians of all stripes in the Parliament must do better.
Despite those challenges, the relationships between employers, local schools, North East Scotland College, the University of Aberdeen, in my constituency, and Robert Gordon University, just half a mile outside it, remain hugely important. Those institutions produce enormous talent. If time allowed, I could speak in great detail about the amazing work at NESCol, Aberdeen uni and RGU, but I am afraid that I cannot.
Educating the talent is only half the battle; we have to retain it. Young people should not feel compelled to leave the north-east to pursue successful careers. We have enormous potential not just in the oil and gas and energy sectors but in life sciences, research, technology, agriculture and, increasingly, culture. We need investment that translates that potential into skilled, well-paid employment.
We should acknowledge a bias that many of us in the Parliament, along with those who report on these issues, share. Most MSPs attended university. For too long, that has been, in some senses, how we have defined success, but it is not true. University offers tremendous opportunities, but it is not the be-all and end-all. Apprenticeships, vocational qualifications, retail and hospitality provide just as much value to the economy.
As is the case for many young people, my first contracted job was in retail, but we hear from retailers that they are having to make difficult staffing decisions, which are compounded by increases in national insurance contributions. All the while, Labour’s commitment to remove discriminatory minimum wage age bands remains unfulfilled, with younger workers continuing to receive less pay than their peers for the same level of work.
We must avoid disincentivising employers and employees from taking vital opportunities. The motion rightly welcomes the fact that 95.7 per cent of school leavers enter a positive destination, but that does not always necessarily translate into a sustainable long-term career. My leading plea is that we provide a clearer journey for young people regarding the available opportunities and where different pathways will lead decades down the line. In a deeply uncertain world, they deserve greater confidence in their future, their abilities and the employment structures around them.
Crucially, we need better second chances. In particular, our colleges must have the resources to capture those who are lost just now, to offer alternative pathways and to retrain and provide opportunities for those who need a chance to get into employment. Therefore, I welcome the proposed review of employability services, but it must deliver practical, person-centred support, particularly for young people who face mental health challenges.
Scotland’s young people are not short of ambition, talent or willingness to work, but they need the investment, confidence and security to build lasting careers in the communities that they call home. Delivering that must be a priority for us all.
16:44
I think that I might raise some eyebrows with how I start my speech today, because I am about to say something nice about a Tory.
When I first joined the Scottish National Party and began to get involved in politics, the first big campaign for me was the 1992 general election—which makes me feel a bit old after what Jack Middleton just said. I can still remember the billboards that read, “What does the Conservative Party offer a working-class kid from Brixton? They made him Prime Minister”, alongside a picture of John Major. I will be honest: as a working-class quine brought up on farms in the north-east, I respected that. Do not get me wrong: I disagreed with his politics and still do, and I voted for the SNP candidate Jim McGuigan, but what John Major achieved sends a message about what working-class bairns can aspire to and about how far someone can get in life without a degree.
As someone who did not go to university—one of a minority in the Parliament—I want to talk about that today. University is not for everyone. We are blessed to have world-leading universities that are available to everyone, but that does not mean that university is right and best for everyone, or that the best time to go there is right after leaving school.
I want to see a Scotland where someone can work as a builder, a plumber, a carer or, as in my case, in a supermarket and still feel that the sky is the limit for their career. If we cannot get that message through, we are in trouble as a nation, because we need folk to do the wide range of jobs that are highly skilled but do not require a degree. If I look across the north-east, I see a massive demand for the sort of skills that people cannot get at university. I have been to briefings about the energy transition zone and have heard about the pressing need for welders. I also cannot emphasise enough how much demand there is for roofers. For example, at one point during the previous session of Parliament, Audrey Nicoll, Kevin Stewart, Kirsty Blackman, Stephen Flynn and I all had water coming in through our office ceilings at the same time. Roofers were like gold dust.
If we are going to build a better Scotland, Scotland needs builders, plumbers, carpenters and sparkies. If we are going to be a caring Scotland, we need carers, healthcare support staff and folk who work in social services. If the nation that gave the world economics is going to have economic prosperity, we need engineers, fabricators, managers and administrators. I do not know about the Deputy Presiding Officer, but, personally, I need my hairdresser. I know that folk think that this is my natural hair colour—
Is it no?
Maybe not, George.
For every single job I have just listed, there is a modern apprenticeship in Scotland that will qualify someone to do it. If there is a need for skills, there will be jobs for the folk who have those skills. I realise that just signposting young folk to pathways is not all that we need to do, although that always helps. We must also ensure that enough of those modern apprenticeships are available. That means not just having enough numbers across the country, although 150,000 apprentices during the five years of this parliamentary session is an affa big and affa nice number. We must ensure that those apprenticeships are available in the places where there is both demand from willing learners and demand for those skills.
As a member for Aberdeen, I represent Europe’s capital of energy excellence. Yes, that is my new slogan for the city and, yes, I am going to mention it in almost every single speech that I give here. One of the great things that we have in Europe’s capital of energy excellence is a brand-new energy transition skills hub, which our First Minister opened last summer. That hub is now part of the NESCol estate and supports its amazing work to train our region’s young workforce. Every time I meet staff from NESCol, they highlight that they would love to do more and have the capacity to do so. I thought that it might be helpful to share that, and it is a hint for the minister, in case he didna realise that.
To sum up, I want to see Aberdeen strengthen its position as Europe’s capital of energy excellence and I want to see economic prosperity for Scotland’s future generations. I want our young folk to have the best chance in life and to be offered the tools that they need to succeed, and I want those young folk to feel, whatever path that they choose when they leave school, that the sky is the limit.
16:49
I recently spoke with a young person who had completed a pre-apprenticeship plumbing course at the Clydebank campus of West College Scotland, which is my local college. I thought that a pre-apprenticeship course was a great idea and something that I would be very happy to support. However, it was poorly funded and, whenever there was a staffing gap or someone called in sick, staff from the course were pulled away to teach another course that was being sponsored and better funded.
The first thing that I would like to call for, and that we must consider, is better college funding. We need that in order to employ enough staff to make such courses resilient, because I was told that the course was cancelled on many occasions. That is simply not good enough.
However, that is not the whole story. The course ran from September until January. Who hires anyone in January? It just does not happen. There was no pathway into work at the end of the course. No companies came to visit and there were no jobs on offer whatsoever.
Another thing that struck me about the course was that English, maths and science were not part of the offer. Those are the subjects that large companies offering apprenticeships look for. Yes, the training is technical, but they also look for English, maths and science. That aspect is really lacking in our colleges right now, and it should be incorporated into pre-apprenticeship training.
A further problem concerning our young people at the moment, which we have already talked about quite a lot in the Parliament, is the PISA results. Our schools are failing. English, maths and science are essential for technical trades. We need to look not just at further education but at secondary education. It all plays a role in the wider education system.
It is not simply a case of money; it is a case of strategy. The Government needs to offer a far better strategy. All those things need to be linked up.
Apprenticeships with local authorities are at an all-time low. I do not think that my local council, West Dunbartonshire Council, offered a single trade apprenticeship during the previous financial year. I have not checked the figures, but I was told that directly by a member of staff.
I will again raise an issue that I have spoken about in the Parliament. The Government’s block on new nuclear is preventing the creation of 5,000 highly skilled, well-paid jobs in Scotland. I recognise Jack Middleton’s contribution on oil and gas and completely agree with everything that he was saying. New nuclear is no different. Any young person who gets into the sector right now would have the opportunity to build an incredible lifelong career.
I will also raise a couple of specific examples that I have previously mentioned. I know a physics graduate who is desperate to get into the nuclear industry but now works in finance because there are few, if any, opportunities in nuclear in Scotland. I also know someone who travels down to Sellafield every week to undertake their electrical apprenticeship there and travels to Clydebank campus to do their college work. That is due to a lack of opportunities in Scotland and is something for which the Scottish Government is responsible.
At the beginning of my speech, I mentioned a young person who had undertaken a pre-apprenticeship plumbing course. That person is not a plumber; they work in a care home. They speak fondly of working in there and of the residents, which is lovely to hear. However, I do not regard that as a positive destination for that young person. The Government’s definition would regard that as a positive destination, but I disagree.
I will wrap up very shortly, Deputy Presiding Officer.
Those are only three examples that I know about personally. However, when it comes to college funding and strategy—
The member needs to wind up.
—all the money and time invested will pay dividends for decades.
16:54
Every young person in Scotland should have the opportunity to realise their potential and secure a fulfilling career. My experience of working with young people through youth clubs in the north-east has cemented my belief that there is youth talent and ambition in abundance in every community. Our challenge is to ensure that opportunity is equally available to all.
The proportion of young people who had entered education, training or employment nine months after leaving school is 93.5 per cent. That is nine out of 10 young people, which is the joint highest level since records began. Meanwhile, the proportion of young people from the most deprived backgrounds who progress to positive destinations is the highest on record. That illustrates the ambition and resilience of our young people, and the commitment of the teachers, lecturers and support staff who help them every step of the way. However, we can do more and go further to support our young people and ensure that the next generation is equipped with the skills, experience and confidence that they need to seize emerging opportunities, regardless of the sector that they choose to go into.
As opportunities continue to grow in renewable energy, offshore wind, digital technology and advanced manufacturing in the north-east, which is where my constituency is located, we must ensure that young people can see a clear pathway from education into high-quality employment. An excellent example of that approach is the work of Developing the Young Workforce North East, which is strengthening links between education and industry, broadening horizons and giving young people meaningful exposure to the world of work. The mock interviews that it is organising at Mackie academy in Stonehaven this month are only one example of how the organisation is helping young people to build confidence, develop employability skills and prepare for the world of work.
We are also seeing benefits through the development of Montrose port’s new skills academy. Earlier this year, I met students who were taking Dundee and Angus College’s futures in offshore wind course, some of whom have already secured apprenticeships with Vestas. Their success demonstrates the importance of giving young people clear routes into employment and shows how collaboration between education providers and industry can deliver opportunities in the jobs of the future.
However, local initiatives must be matched by national ambition, so it is vital that we develop a single national skills plan for Scotland that is aligned with economic need and designed to drive productivity. That would ensure that the courses and training that are available match the needs of our industries and the public sector.
Apprenticeships are a vital part of the mix, so I welcome the commitment to deliver at least 150,000 apprenticeships in this parliamentary session, as well as the Scottish Government’s 10 per cent uplift in apprenticeship contribution rates for the 2027-28 budget, which will make it easier for businesses to take on apprentices. That equates to an £8.8 million uplift that applies to all modes of apprenticeship: foundation, modern and graduate. We also need to ensure that each young person gets the right support at the right time to help them to progress into the labour market, so the Scottish Government’s commitment to review employability services is timely.
Also timely is the job start payment, which is a one-off payment that Social Security Scotland delivers to support those aged 16 to 24 into work after they have spent six months or more out of work and on qualifying benefits. I also welcome the First Minister’s start up challenge, which empowers young people aged 18 to 30 from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds to start innovative businesses.
However, we must also recognise that some young people face additional barriers in making the transition from education to employment. The Milburn review highlighted the growing role that health plays, with long-term sickness, disability and mental health challenges becoming increasingly significant factors for many young people who are not in employment, education or training. Those findings demonstrate that tackling youth unemployment cannot simply be about creating more jobs. For many young people, the barriers begin much earlier and require support across health, education and employment services.
Therefore, I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to creating a bespoke scheme with public sector employers to support more disabled young people into apprenticeships and employment, where appropriate. Such targeted, person-centred support can make a real difference by ensuring that young people are not defined by the barriers that they face but are given every opportunity to fulfil their potential.
If we are serious about delivering a just transition and ensuring that the north-east and the wider Scottish economy thrive in the years ahead, we must do all that we can to support more young people into secure, skilled and long-term employment. That is not simply an investment in our young people; it is an investment in the future of our economy. It is one that we cannot afford not to make.
16:59
I am really pleased to speak in this debate, because few things are more important than ensuring that every young person in Scotland has the opportunity to reach their full potential.
For every young person, the transition from school to further education, training or work is a significant period in their lives. I remember that, as my final weeks at school approached, even though I projected a bold sense of confidence that I had it all figured out, inside, I felt so uncertain, and the weight of decisions about university, work and what came next felt so heavy. It felt as though my entire future hinged on that one decision.
Ultimately, my decision—to immediately enter university—turned out to be the wrong one. I lasted less than six months before returning home, embarrassed to tell my parents that I was not going back after Christmas. I felt like a failure. My family welcomed me home with a combination of reassurance, open arms and a very clear message—you will get a job. The first two years that I spent working after dropping out of university were, as my dad would have said, the making of me. I took so much pride in doing a good job. I enjoyed spending my pay packet at the end of every month—mostly in the pub—and I learned over time what I wanted from work and, more importantly, what I certainly did not want.
However, we must be honest in this debate. In the 20 years since I left school, the world has become much harder for young people. The last thing that they want to hear from politicians in this chamber is what it was like back in our day, because all the evidence shows that it is becoming much more challenging for young adults to find work than it was for previous generations. Across the UK, there is a shortage of accessible opportunities for young people to gain their first experience of work. What would in the past have been entry-level jobs are often being replaced by AI and automation. On top of that, there are the wider economic challenges that businesses and employers face, which I will come on to later.
However, despite that challenging context, 95 per cent of school leavers in Scotland had gone on to a positive destination three months after leaving school. That reflects the hard work that is being done in our schools, colleges and workplaces across the country, including by organisations such as DYW Moray, which I met recently. The work that it is doing to bridge the gap between young people and employers in my constituency is having a real impact. It is giving young people practical advice and support to get them ready for the world of work. Too often, conversations about young people today suggest that they lack ambition or motivation. Not only are those suggestions deeply unfair and unhelpful; they are not supported by any evidence whatsoever.
As others have said, the policy and delivery work to support young people into the workplace must be considered in the round and across Government departments and must include the provision of access to mental health support and, particularly for rural Scotland, access to public transport.
Our approach must also be preventative. The systems that support our young people should not wait until they have disengaged from education or spent months or years out of the labour market before offering support. Therefore, I welcome the minister’s commitment to strengthening youth work provision, as I have seen the benefits of that in my constituency.
We must also be honest about the wider economic circumstances and the impact that Government decisions can have on the availability of jobs. Specifically, I am concerned about the impact of the UK Government’s increased employer national insurance contributions and the connected loss of opportunities for our young people, especially in the retail and hospitality sectors, which have traditionally provided many people with their first job. That was the case for me, as it was, I have no doubt, for many colleagues across the chamber. That hike in contributions has put substantial additional pressure on businesses at a time of already rising costs. The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee has highlighted that that policy has affected recruitment and opportunities for young people across the UK.
Therefore, while the Scottish Government must use the review of employability services to ensure that support for young people is effective and is being delivered in a timely fashion, we also need the UK Government to do its part by using its economic powers to stimulate demand for labour and create meaningful job opportunities for young people across Scotland.
We move to the closing speeches.
17:04
In my first speech in the Parliament, I talked about Tony McDonald, a care-experienced young man who I employed at Who Cares? Scotland. On his first day at work, it took him three attempts to pluck up the courage to press the buzzer, because he was terrified. That seemed strange to those of us who were inside the office, because here was a man whom someone had attempted to murder, and who himself had been tempted to murder. How could he be scared of entering an office? It was because it was a completely alien culture to him. He felt far safer in the wing of a young offenders institution, where he knew the ways.
However, I am glad that he pressed that buzzer, because he was one of the people who became the catalyst for the Promise, due to the strength of his character and his recovery, which was in no small part due to the community jobs Scotland programme, which, as I mentioned earlier today, ended its focus on specific groups in 2021. I am glad that the Minister for Business and Fair Work said that he would speak to me directly about the impact of that, because those opportunities, through which we employed people to teach them employability so that they could get on and thrive, made such a difference. That is why Liberal Democrats want a job guarantee for all care-experienced people.
More broadly, we are letting down the next generation. Notionally, the figure is 12 per cent but, as we have heard, there will be many more young people who are not in employment, education or training. That is frustrating. I have worked with hundreds of young people, who all wanted a house, a family and sometimes a car. They always wanted a job. That is still what we see as the main stream in our society, and if anyone says that young people want to languish on benefits, that is a myth.
Without support, by the early 20s, confidence drains, anxiety can increase and work slips further out of reach. It is our duty in this Parliament and it is the duty of the Government to find those people a genuine route to work. Oftentimes, that means apprenticeships, which are key to the issue. Apprenticeships must have the same status as other education and professional development routes; they must have flexibility and dynamism to meet changing industry needs; and they should not be age bound or, as they sometimes are, time bound but should instead be a route to work for all. That must start with the SNP addressing the 25 per cent drop in the number of apprenticeships that are offered that has taken place over the past decade.
The unemployment problem for young people is not just about their lack of skills and confidence. We must also make it easier for businesses to take a chance and employ them. I spoke to the chief executive officer of a marketing company, who said that she employs mainly high-achieving graduates and a few disadvantaged people. That is because those graduates, beyond their academic expertise, come with a ready set social network that enables them to be work ready and to understand how to fit into the culture of work. That company does not have the time or resources to do that for other people.
Meanwhile, a butcher in Kelso has told me that it is too expensive for him to employ a relatively unskilled young person, and he worries for the future of his business, while the Little Bakery in Dumfries, which has more than 30 staff, is frustrated that there has been no request from a young person for an apprenticeship and no request from the Government to supply one. We have young people who want to work, and we have employers who want staff but do not feel as though they can carry the risk. When both sides are willing, it is the Government’s job to close the gap.
That must involve incentivising businesses to employ a young person. Some of the responsibility for that sits with the UK Government, as it will include reforming the taxation regime and national insurance payments, but it could also link to corporate social responsibility. With AI coming in, businesses must realise that they have to help people to become work ready. As I mentioned, we must increase the number of apprenticeships that are available, and we should have specialised offerings for different groups in our society, such as care-experienced people.
Let us take note of the fact that most businesses, such as the butcher, the baker and the marketeer that I mentioned, would rather employ a young person than pay tax for them to be on benefits. We should not rely on benefits. Our economy needs those young people, and it is our moral duty to give them purpose and a job.
17:08
I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am a shareholder of a hospitality business.
We have heard many contributions, and I think that there is broad agreement across the chamber that Scotland must do more to help young people into employment. I was grateful for Jackie Dunbar’s contribution, because she agrees with me on social mobility. If she wants to join my party, I will see her after.
Ach, naw—yer awright. [Laughter.]
We clearly have different views on the way that we want to achieve getting young people into work. I emphasise that we cannot discuss young people’s employment prospects in isolation from the wider Scottish economy. If employers are not in a position to recruit, as Duncan Dunlop suggested is the case, all the employability programmes in the world will not create the jobs that we need.
I return to the Scottish Government’s central argument, which repeatedly highlighted positive destination figures—I hope that the minister will address that point in his closing speech. Nobody disputes that education and training can provide important opportunities.
I will challenge Jack Middleton on some of his statistics. The unemployment rate among 16 to 25-year-olds remains higher than in any other age group, while the Scottish unemployment rate has reached 5.1 per cent, compared to 4.9 per cent across the United Kingdom. Clearly, we must recognise that there is an issue. I would also welcome some clarification on the Government’s commitment to deliver 150,000 apprenticeships; I mentioned in my opening speech that Robert Kilgour has calculated that £171 million was not spent between 2020 and 2024.
I will highlight some of the speeches that were made by colleagues from across the Parliament. I completely agree with Daniel Johnson that vocational education must reflect the needs of employers. In a sense, that could be achievable with more powers going to local authorities—it is just a question of how that would work. On Liam McArthur’s speech, the Liberal Democrats rightly have a record of raising health-related barriers to employment, and I recognise the importance of the proper mental health support that should accompany employment.
I agree with Pauline McNeill and Angela Ross. I share their concerns—I said this in my opening speech as well—that young people are being left outside education, employment and training. However, it is not enough to just identify the scale of the problem; we need practical measures that help to identify those people and allow them to get access to employment. There are many practical problems for which we should be capable of creating practical solutions. To highlight two such problems in the Borders, cross-border apprenticeships are difficult to get hold of, and we also need to make it more accessible for employers to be able to afford to offer opportunities to young people.
I agree that there will be opportunities for young people if we strengthen vocational education, restore college funding and make apprenticeship support more responsive to employers. We cannot keep telling young people that opportunities are available while the businesses that are willing to provide those opportunities are struggling to get the support that they need.
Ultimately, this debate should not be about statistics—which are not tangible to young people—targets or the number of programmes that the Government has announced but about getting the meaningful employment and access to education and training that will enable people to build a future in the communities in which they grew up. Whether people live in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hawick or Eyemouth, they deserve that opportunity. I urge the Government to listen carefully to what each member has said in this debate.
17:13
This debate has shown that there is a significant degree of consensus on some of the core elements and arguments that are in the Government’s motion. However, it has also thrown up some variation in the way in which we frame some of the arguments and assumptions that underpin our expectations about how the economy is supposed to work.
I strongly agree with the minister’s opening remark that this issue is about more than just economic outcomes. That chimed strongly with Karen Adam’s references to viewing the issue with regard to the whole person. This debate should not be about considering human beings as merely cogs in an economic machine with lives that are dedicated to serving somebody else’s purposes; it should be about how the economy serves the interests of people, not how people serve the interests of the economy.
I agree with the motion, and I would be astonished if it is not agreed to. However, I hope that it is agreed to with some constructive amendments. The Greens will also support the Labour and Lib Dem amendments, and I hope that those amendments are agreed to as constructive additions to the motion.
Few of us would disagree with the basic proposition that young people should have the opportunity to participate in the labour market. I think that they should also have the opportunity to decide for themselves the terms on which they do so—what kind of paid work they want to take part in; how much of their lives to dedicate to it; and how to balance it with other priorities in their lives, such as education, caring, creativity and maybe even getting out and campaigning to make this world a better place for the generation that comes after them.
Young people, like people of any age, should be empowered to make those choices. That means removing barriers that are in their way, but it also means offering them a better deal. If we collectively want more young people to choose paid work, they need the opportunity to do that, but they also need it to be a fair and attractive offer. That includes fair pay and fair standards at work, including security and supportive and inclusive working environments, and that applies to apprenticeships just as it applies to paid work. The other part of Iris Duane’s amendment talks about the need for agreed standards and quality control for apprenticeships so that young people who take up those opportunities are treated fairly.
I turn to some of the differences and nuances of this debate. There are a range of different assumptions about the idea that work is the best route out of poverty. I hear that phrase repeatedly when these issues are debated. Work should be the best route out of poverty, but that is not the case for everybody. The reality is that in-work poverty still exists and is widespread. It is accepted as a norm, but it should not be. A full third of 16 to 21-year-olds who are in employment in the UK this year are paid below the minimum wage for older people. That age discrimination in the minimum wage is not a theoretical or marginal matter. It directly affects the life chances of a great many young people.
However, it is not only about pay rates. It is also about the wider impact of many years of austerity, because poorer public services and lower investment in communities have the impacts of poorer health outcomes and wellbeing, as well as poorer economic outcomes for individuals and for our economy as a whole.
There is also a connection to social security. A great deal of the political and media debate about young people, their life chances and their life choices rests on the assumption that claiming social security represents some sort of individual failing, or, indeed, that it is an alternative to work. We so often fail to acknowledge that a great many people who are claiming social security are in work. They are getting up in the morning and going out to do a job, but that employment is not providing them with an adequate income to allow them a decent standard of living.
The welfare state was founded on the idea of protection from the cradle to the grave, but over the decades it has been turned from that vision into a system that far too often bullies people into low-paid work and then subsidises that low pay so that employers do not need to give people what they need in order to have a decent standard of living or be able to make life choices.
The Greens have long advocated an alternative approach that rests on a universal basic income—an approach that is empowering, liberating and redistributive. It contrasts with the current set of expectations that, to incentivise people on low pay to work harder, we must force them and compel them to work on low pay, whereas to incentivise the very wealthy we must give them football player salaries, because it is only immensely high pay that will incentivise them. A universal basic income turns that system on its head and throws out that sense of inequality.
I reiterate that economic empowerment is the way to improve the life chances of young people. The Labour Government down south is currently saying that the way to cut the social security bill is not simply to cut payments and force people deeper into poverty, but to give people life chances and alternatives. I certainly support that. That is the way to cut the social security bill if we want to, but it has to rest on a foundation of equal pay. If we continue with the current situation, and if age discrimination continues in the labour market, we will not achieve what either the UK Labour Government or the Scottish Government is trying to achieve.
17:19
I have to say that it is nice to be part of the debate today. There has actually been quite a lot of agreement across the chamber—I guess there is a first time for everything in this place. I was particularly taken by Karen Adam’s comments on mental health and future employability, which is something we should really understand better. I disagree with others on the issue of a different minimum wage for young people, but it has been a fairly consensual day, so perhaps we can save that for another day.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will not.
Every young person should have the chance to realise their potential and participate meaningfully in the labour market. A good start in work is essential for Scotland’s prosperity and the young person’s future.
Will the member take an intervention?
Oh go on, then. I will take two interventions.
The member will have to indicate who he is taking an intervention from.
I will take Iris Duane’s intervention first.
I thank the member for addressing my comments directly. I want to get some clarification, because the business owner of Reform UK Party Ltd, Nigel Farage, has previously indicated that Reform UK does not support a minimum wage and would abolish the Equality Act 2010, which, of course, would lead to more age-based discrimination in the workplace. Is that view shared by Reform UK Scotland, and is it something that it will be pushing in this chamber?
I am a member of Reform UK Scotland. We are separate from the party in England, and I will not be commenting on that.
I believe that Jack Middleton also wished to intervene.
Does Mark Simpson agree with his colleague David Smith that social care is not a positive destination for young people, or does he agree with me that those comments are, at best, bizarre and, at worst, wildly offensive to the hundreds of thousands of people who keep our care system afloat?
I will let David Smith speak for himself. My understanding of what he said was that, if someone had spent their time training as a plumber but ended up working in a care home, that would not represent a positive destination. David might wish to clarify that down the road, but that is my understanding of what he said.
When I was preparing for today’s speech, I found myself on a trip down memory lane—[Interruption.]
The member must be heard.
—which I will briefly go down now. A few short years ago, when I was a teenager, I learned what work can do. I began my working life as a paper boy, out in all weathers before school on dark January mornings. The challenges of that were slightly different from those of life in Parliament. Back then, the problems I had were trying to avoid my fingers being nipped by overexcited dogs, coming back dripping wet and freezing cold and occasionally having to explain why the paper was a wee bit later than usual because I had allowed myself a few extra minutes in bed.
Members can imagine my delight when I turned 16 and started working in my local Matalan, folding jeans, dealing with customers and working on the checkouts, working alongside folk from all walks of life. Looking back, I can see that it really was a brilliant experience, and I have to say that it was a much warmer and less treacherous experience for my fingers.
Those jobs taught me the value of money and the importance of turning up on time, being reliable and getting on with colleagues. It gave me purpose and the simple sense of satisfaction of earning something for myself. Sadly, today, too many young people lack such opportunities to enter the workplace, learn the skills that I learned and have the experiences that I benefited from, all of which have served me well in life ever since.
We have to make work more rewarding, and scrapping tax on overtime would do exactly that. Reform UK has said that, when a young person takes on extra shifts, the state should not take a cut of that effort. Christmas is coming, and giving young people a few more quid for working harder seems the decent thing to do.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will not. I have taken a number of interventions already.
At the same time, we should stop funding degrees that offer students little in the longer term. Many students are not properly informed of career outcomes before they graduate and would be better off learning a trade or doing an apprenticeship. I welcome the commitment in the motion to deliver at least 150,000 apprenticeships during this parliamentary session. That will be so important to so many young people, but I question whether we could not go further.
Reform UK has long argued that we need far more high-quality apprenticeships and a much stronger focus on vocational routes, so that young people have real alternatives to university and pathways into work.
Wind up, please.
If we make it easier to start work, reward extra effort, prioritise skills over pointless degrees and rebuild our industrial base, we will give every young person—from the fishing ports of the north-east to towns and cities across the United Kingdom—a genuine chance to realise their potential and contribute to our prosperity. That is the best start that we can offer.
17:25
I was going to start by saying how nice it is to close such a consensual debate, but I will just move on.
It is fair to say that there has largely been a broad consensus across the chamber. I was particularly struck by the number of comments about this being a generational issue—young people today face challenges that are exacerbated by a range of things that the generations before them just did not face. Members have also acknowledged the impact of Covid, the effects of which I saw on the young people I taught in secondary schools. Iris Duane, Karen Adam and Pauline McNeill spoke powerfully about the challenges for young people in looking for work nowadays and how difficult that can be.
It has also been good to see that the Milburn review is provoking a national conversation, as Liam McArthur said. There is a broad consensus about the need to do better and to have the data, as well as to take tangible actions that will make it easier for young people to participate in the labour market.
The points about apprenticeships that my colleague Daniel Johnson, and Rachael Hamilton, touched on were very apt, too, because we have a demographic challenge in Scotland. Our workforce is at a critical point, given that a third of all our working people are over the age of 50. More than a quarter of NHS Scotland’s workforce is over the age of 55, as are more than a third of local authority employees. Within the next 10 to 15 years, many of those people will retire, so we need to address that demographic challenge. As we are a small country, we need to do everything we can to benefit individuals—including supporting them to get all the benefits that work brings—but also to benefit our economy and society. We need young people growing up to go into the huge range of trades and careers that are there.
One area on which I wish to concentrate in the remainder of my remarks is the vexed question of positive destinations. As a former teacher, I have to say that it is quite frustrating. University graduates today have to compete against, on average, 140 other applicants for a graduate-level role. That number is over 100 more than it was 20 years ago. Despite the fact that more than half of Scottish businesses are experiencing skills shortages, we have heard that there are now 40,000 fewer college students than there were just a few years ago—but do not worry, because 95 per cent of school leavers are in positive destinations. Nearly 200,000 people under the age of 25 are receiving disability benefits, and the Milburn review has told us that the state is on track to spend more than £5 billion on disability payments by 2030—but do not worry, because 95 per cent of school leavers are in positive destinations.
A million young people across the UK between the ages of 16 and 24 are not in education, employment or training. New figures released by Skills Development Scotland show that participation in education, employment or training plummets as Scottish school leavers get older. There is an 11.1 percentage point gap from age 16 to age 19. Miraculously, however, 95 per cent of school leavers in Scotland are in positive destinations.
Obviously, there are clear challenges in getting people into work, and it is not down to just one issue. Has the Labour Party done any work on the impact of the rise in employer national insurance contributions and the number of apprentices that employers have not taken on because of the increasing challenges of cost?
I thank Rachael Hamilton for letting the Scottish Government off the hook on its slightly misleading metric of positive destinations. Yes, there are increased costs from employer national insurance contributions, but there are also increased costs to businesses from business rates, which the Scottish Government has done precisely nothing to sort out, as well as a whole range of other challenges. It is too narrow to look at only one or the other.
The Government does not yet seem to be sufficiently curious about the gap between its positive destination measure and the entirety of the rest of the data. Our plea to the Government would be to address that. We desperately need disaggregated data for Scotland that will tell us, clearly and plainly, the extent of the problem. Frankly, I do not care whether it is marginally better or marginally worse than the rest of the UK; I just want to see more young people in Scotland in employment, education or training.
17:30
I thank colleagues for this genuinely constructive debate. We have heard several good, strong ideas and several very thoughtful contributions from across the chamber.
I will start with a couple of statistics, but I will not do many, because, as I say myself, I do not think that they prove that we are doing well enough. I do not think that that applies for England or for us. I take the point that we could do with being more curious about where people are getting to in their lives.
In that spirit, will the Scottish Government scrap the positive destinations metric and look at a better, more reflective metric on where young people are that goes beyond nine months after they have left school?
I am open to looking at everything in the round, because what we are doing is not good enough.
If members are looking to compare statistics, it is a fact that 93.6 per cent of young people in Scotland are in positive destinations. We can debate what a positive destination is, and I think that we should, but for 16 to 24-year-olds, in terms of employability data, Scotland has a higher employment rate—53.1 per cent compared with 51.4 per cent—than the UK as a whole. It also has a lower inactivity rate—38.1 per cent compared with 40.3 per cent—than the UK as a whole.
However, I do not care whether we are up a bit or down a bit either—I do not think we are doing as well as we need to, so we are in strong agreement on that. That is why we will accept the Labour amendment at decision time. There are good ideas in there, and we need to put the badges to one side and work together. Tom Arthur and I had a constructive meeting with Alan Milburn last week. He admits that his work is not directly applicable to Scotland, but I will take good ideas from anywhere.
I am not here to justify the status quo or justify why we are not doing as well as we could be doing, because too many young people are not being served as well as they need to be by the system that we operate.
On that note, what are the minister’s reflections on the overall number of MA starts, and if we are talking about regional devolution of skills, does that square with the creation of a new central body under the Scottish Funding Council?
If members will give me a bit of slack, I am six weeks into the role. Daniel Johnson made a point earlier about the complex landscape of the skills environment, and I strongly agree with that. There are a lot of actors in the space. We have a cluttered landscape, and clutter is expensive. As we look to move things to a regional basis with a national strategy, we need to look hard at several things.
The key for a lot of this is apprenticeships. One of the things that I have to do as minister for tertiary education and skills is break down the barriers and silos between the senior phase of schools, the colleges and the universities, because too many people are falling through the system. Too many people, as we heard in a powerful speech from Duncan Dunlop, feel that it is not for them.
I will pick up on several points from members if I have time. I reject the premise that the only route to success is a bucket of highers and a university degree. We need to be serious about that. We need to make sure that the system is accessible in a way that it is not for many people now.
I am proud of the fact that one of the first things that I did as minister was increase apprenticeship funding by 10 per cent, and we increased college funding by 10 per cent. I take the wider point about funding—of course I do—but I want our brilliant work in this space to be boosted. I want workplace learning, earn while you learn and degree apprenticeships to make learning in the workplace and learning while you are earning the norm rather than the exception.
Mr Smith said that he did not want to talk about statistics, but Mr Arthur talked about statistics and the 150,000 new apprenticeship opportunities. Is the Scottish Government extending provision, or is it just creating a cumulative target?
It is almost as if the member could read the notes that I have here, as I was coming on to make a point—and she makes a strong point—about the apprenticeship levy. I want to expand provision massively, and we also need to have an honest conversation about what an apprenticeship actually is. Some apprenticeships are pretty clunky and difficult to access, and they serve a particular set of industries, which means that many people are missing out on them.
We have also called—as I do not doubt that the member is aware—for the devolution of the skills and employability functions of the Department for Work and Pensions and the apprenticeship levy, which is currently a bin fire of an opaque tax. It is a tax on jobs—it is administered by the UK Treasury, which top slices it, and it then comes back as general spend to the Scottish exchequer and we put it into the general run of funds. The net effect, therefore, is that there is less money in the skills budget than I would like to see.
I am perfectly happy to take that criticism from the member on the nose, because I hope that there is a consensus in this place that, if there is a cluttered landscape, we should design the system in Scotland to make it work better for our citizens, who are not currently being served as well as they need to be. That should include workplace learning, earn while you learn, breaking down the barriers between schools, colleges and universities, with much more joint working and joint qualifications. It should also include a focus on lifelong learning, because the system is not just about young people, although they are key to much of it.
We are going to need to retrain a lot of people throughout their life journey, because the world of work is changing before our eyes at a rate of knots. Too much of our educational establishment is still based on the idea of a young person who goes through education or training and gets a piece of paper that sits in a file for 40 years and then retires. That model has gone now—we need to augment, reskill and upskill all our workers, and we need to make that easy. That is a challenge to our educational institutions, but they are up for it. I have been working the length and breadth of Scotland, speaking to colleges and universities that are operating in exactly that space—I am excited about what we can be doing with that work, and apprenticeships are very much key to that.
In the time available, I will pick up on a number of points that members have made. Daniel Johnson made a point about shifting responsibility for apprenticeships into the SFC. That was before my time in post, although I strongly agree with it. The object of that exercise is to have responsibility for colleges, universities and apprenticeships in one place on a national level, moving to a regionally delivered structure within the national skills framework.
I very much take Daniel Johnson’s point about the SFC, and the matter is live on my desk right now. I want the approach to be business led, and I want the proper incentives for institutions on the supply side, and for employers on the demand side, to make it easier to take people on. The system needs to be more flexible and better incentivised—I have made that challenge to the SFC, which is working on it right now.
Angela Ross made the point that university should not be the default destination—I strongly agree with that, and I think that we have a consensus there. I remember a previous conversation in the chamber with Stephen Kerr, in which he said that there might be more than one route, but one could be forgiven for thinking that we are all encouraged to go down one route. I strongly agree with him on that.
Iris Duane made a point about support for students. I strongly agree with that, but I think that earn while you learn should be the norm, rather than the exception. Having people learn and gain skills closer to the workplace should help with budgets as well, and I think that it would go a long way towards dealing with the costs.
Rachael Hamilton mentioned the apprenticeship levy; I have said where I am on that. Liam McArthur made a number of sensible points, and the Government will be accepting the Lib Dem amendment, because it contains a number of good points about health issues, and in particular about how rural and island folks access the system.
We heard a very strong speech from Karen Adam, who highlighted the impact—she was the only member to refer to it—of Covid and lockdown on young folks. We are still dealing with a lot of the consequences of that, and people’s confidence is not where it needs to be. We see people who, having been checked out, are struggling to get back into the system, and we need a much more flexible way to encourage them in that.
Pauline McNeill made a point about honest data. That issue is very much live with me, and I hope that my earlier comments demonstrate that I am curious about the data, because I do not think that we are doing as well as we need to be. Equally, I do not think that it is a disaster, and there is a lot of good work going on in that space, so I want to build up that good work and knock down the things that are not functioning as well as they need to be. I am here not to justify how things are but to make things better.
Jack Middleton made a strong speech about petrochemical skills. As a child of oil and gas myself, I strongly agree with what he said in particular about the great work at NESCol, RGU and the University of Aberdeen—see, I can get them in as well. A number of other strong points were made. Laura Mitchell mentioned DYW Moray, which is doing some fantastic work in this space.
In my final few seconds, let us think about next steps. If we all agree that there is something that we need to do better on, I am game for that, and I am game for change. I am not here to defend institutions, academic or otherwise, nor to defend the state of their programmes if they are not delivering as well as they could be.
The future, for me, looks like Developing the Young Workforce—a cracking organisation that is doing great work. It is business led and operates on a regional basis. It also operates on a shoestring, I have to say, but it is delivering great work in the real world by getting people closer to work and into work.
Apprenticeships are very much my focus, because they will break down the barriers between the various institutions and the providers, including colleges and the private sector. However, we need an honest discussion about what an apprenticeship is, and about what adds value and what does not. Again, I want businesses to step up and tell us what that is. Apprenticeships are too difficult to get into right now and the silos need to be broken down.
We all agree that we are not doing as well as we need to do. I will work with anybody in the chamber with good ideas to get the system working better, because I believe that citizen-centred skills learning is the key to getting people into work. That is what we need to be focused on as a Parliament, and the Government will work with anybody to that end.
That concludes the debate on supporting young people to participate in the labour market.