Youth Employment
The first item of business this afternoon is a debate on motion S4M-05319, in the name of Angela Constance, on action to support youth employment.
I wish all my colleagues across the chamber a happy new year.
Today’s debate is timely, not only as we look forward with hope and ambition to 2013, but as we look back on, reflect on and learn from our progress and the challenges over the past year. I do not need to tell members that youth unemployment remains one of the most important challenges that we and other Governments across and beyond Europe face.
For the past year or so, it has been my job to put young people at the heart of our response to rising youth unemployment, to marshal resources across the Government and to harness support from others outside Government—the business community, as well as the public sector and the third sector. My job has been to spearhead a national response to a national challenge.
The good news is that the youth unemployment rate in Scotland has decreased over the year. Scotland now has 25,000 fewer unemployed young people compared with this time last year. That represents the biggest decrease in youth unemployment since the figures were first collected on the current basis in 2006.
The most recent set of employment figures showed Scotland’s progress on youth employment: we have higher youth employment, lower youth unemployment and lower economic inactivity among young people than anywhere else in the United Kingdom.
However, that is not enough. Although it is all a welcome step in the right direction, there is much more to do. As I look forward to 2013, I ask everyone across the chamber to work together to increase our efforts and strengthen our resolve to do all that we can to support young people towards and into employment.
The Conservatives also welcome the reduction of 25,000 in unemployment. However, the same table on the same page of the statistics states—I have checked this with the Scottish Parliament information centre—that there are 4,000 fewer 16 to 24-year-olds in employment. The minister just said that there were more in employment, but the figure clearly states that there are fewer.
Yes, there was a marginal reduction in the employment figure. I was trying to say that, in comparison to the UK, we perform better on employment, inactivity and unemployment. However, Ms Scanlon is factually correct to say that there is a marginal reduction in the employment figure. From memory, I think that it was either 0.1 or 0.2 per cent.
The employability fund forms part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to supporting people towards and into work. It sits alongside a unique guarantee of a place in education or training for all 16 to 19-year-olds; at least 25,000 modern apprenticeship places in every year of this session of the Parliament; and the upcoming £15 million employer recruitment incentive.
Colleges are key providers of employability provision, but they are delivering in a period of considerable change, so we are responding positively to their call for stability. That is why we have asked the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council to allocate £18 million to colleges within the existing committed resources for 2013-14 in addition to the £6 million that they will get from Skills Development Scotland. That money forms part of our £500 million-plus commitment to colleges that was previously announced in the draft Scottish budget. It also reaffirms our support for the work that the sector does to help people to get jobs.
Central to our endeavours as we move forward in 2013 is making the business case to employers that young people can play a strong part in our economic recovery. That is highlighted in the make young people your business recruitment campaign for young people, which I launched just before the recess. That campaign is about changing hearts and minds. There are around 330,000 companies in Scotland of all shapes and sizes, and around 86,000 young people in Scotland are looking for opportunities to work. Between us, I am sure that we can find ways to mobilise our combined resources and shared appetite to help young people move towards and into employment, thereby giving them hope for their future.
In that work, we are not just responding to recession. The Government is undertaking a wide programme of reform. It is tackling structural issues to drive employment opportunities through reforms to the post-16 learning system and is delivering on the promises of curriculum for excellence to better prepare our young people for the jobs of the future. The scale of our ambition is not limited to achieving a return to pre-recession levels of youth unemployment. Prior to the recession, during a time of economic growth, rates of youth unemployment in Scotland were still around 14 per cent, which, to my mind, is far too high.
With that in mind, I recently visited Brussels and the Hague to investigate why a small cluster of northern European countries have continued to experience very low levels of youth unemployment during the economic downturn. I want to replicate that success for Scotland’s young people, because they deserve nothing less.
This Government is ambitious for all of Scotland’s young people. Action for jobs, our youth employment strategy, sets out short, medium and long-term actions to support young people. It is built on three strategic themes: adopting an all-Government, all-Scotland approach; enhancing our offer to and support for young people; and engaging with employers. Above all, it is a call to those who can effect change—those who can bring people together to provide better solutions for the young people who are out of work—to do so.
As part of our all-Government, all-Scotland approach, I have led a series of regional action forums, which have involved young people who are affected by unemployment in action-focused discussions with local employers, key stakeholders and many MSPs who are here today. I have also held a national rural skills summit and a women’s employment summit, and last month, in partnership with Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament, I hosted a national employment summit for young people, which brought together more than 100 young people and gave them the opportunity to engage directly with a range of Government ministers and other senior stakeholders to identify what measures would be most effective in supporting them towards employment.
Those events have given me an opportunity to engage directly with young people and employers, both of whom have been clear on how we can help them to succeed. They have told me that we need a more joined-up skills and employment system and more support for employers to recruit young people; that young people want better careers guidance; and that young people have asked for more high-quality job opportunities and work experience.
In response to that, we are enhancing our offer to young people. Overall, we are harnessing additional resources across Government and our agencies up to the value of £80 million to support some 23,000 young people towards and into work. We have made clear our unprecedented commitment to young people in Scotland through opportunities for all and have prioritised 16 to 19-year-olds in the 46,000 training places, including 25,000 modern apprenticeships, that will be available each year for the duration of the parliamentary session.
We are modernising the careers services by making them more flexible and responsive to the needs of our young people. Graduates, too, are being supported by the provision of high-quality, paid graduate placement programmes. We are piloting a scheme to offer recruitment incentives to small companies to take on an unemployed graduate. To support young entrepreneurs, the Scottish Investment Bank has allocated around £1 million for 2012-13 to the revolving loan fund, which will support young people who are interested in starting or growing their business through access to loans. In the coming year, we will build on that work and will continue to respond to the needs of young people and employers.
I will continue to engage with employers of all sizes and in all sectors to identify and address the barriers that they face in employing young people. Yesterday, I visited Stepper Technology, which, in the past year, along with its sister company MES Marine & Engineering Services, has taken on 22 new employees, of whom 15 are under 24. Stepper Technology feels that the business community has a social responsibility to ensure that young people are employed and well trained.
Bigger companies—such as Diageo, which is investing £5 million of its own money in youth programmes—know that it makes sense to recruit young people. They are passionate about helping young people to grow and to realise their full potential, because they get it—they know that their success in the future will depend on the quality of the young people whom they attract now, so recruiting some of the best and brightest young people is a key part of their strategy. Through such practices, they can be safe in the knowledge that skills will be passed on to the next generation, which enables companies such as Diageo to remain world leaders in the highly competitive spirits industry.
We are responding to help employers to recruit young people. The employer recruitment incentive, which John Swinney announced in the draft budget, will support about 10,000 young people into work. The our skillsforce service, which draws together national and local services, will help employers to plan, recruit and develop skills for the workplace. That has been directly influenced by feedback that was received from employers during my series of action forums.
The minister will be aware that business is keen for the conditions of the employer recruitment incentive not to be too strict. Will she confirm whether, when she releases the details, the incentive will focus on 16 to 19-year-olds or be broader than that?
We will release the details very soon. The thinking behind the employer recruitment incentive is very much that it should enhance our offer to older young people, by whom I mean 18 to 24-year-olds. We have a good offer to 16 to 19-year-olds, and we wanted to do something to extend our offer to other young people.
Ms Dugdale is right that it is important to have something that is easy to use and easy for business to work with. We also want to ensure additionality from the use of public resource. We are working closely with colleagues in local government, trade unions and the Federation of Small Businesses on how, in addition to providing financial incentives, we can help small businesses and microbusinesses to recruit young people and on how we can help those businesses with practicalities.
There is demand from employers. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills employer perspectives survey report, which was published on 12 December, showed that employers in Scotland were more likely than those in the rest of the UK to have taken on someone who is under 25 in the 12 months that preceded the survey.
The public sector is rising to the challenge, too. I have asked public bodies and other agencies to create opportunities for our young people. I am heartened by the response so far but, as always, there is more to do. Perth and Kinross Council is committed to offering 50 modern apprenticeship places for the next three years, Scottish Enterprise recently recruited 20 new apprentices, with a view to doubling its young workforce, and NHS Tayside is developing a modern apprenticeship in care.
I will highlight a proposal from the European Commission, which suggests a European Council resolution to introduce a youth guarantee across European member states. That would seek to provide young people up to the age of 25 with an offer of employment, further education or training within four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education. I support that proposal, which is worthy of further debate and exploration. It is clear that public employment services are fundamental to the success of such a scheme. With that in mind, I have written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to suggest an early discussion of an approach across the UK that will work for Scotland.
We are in the midst of a debate about the sort of country that we want to live in—I, for one, want to live in a nation with a Parliament that has the full range of job-creating powers—but, right now, we must all continue with our all-Scotland, all-Government approach. I include everybody in the Parliament in that. Members are rooted in their communities—they know the businesses in their areas and the needs of their young people.
Many members have already directly responded to that by, for example, hosting jobs fairs or other events that relate to important sectors in their areas. I commend those efforts and I ask all members to do more for the young people in their constituencies. In the same way as members urge me and the Scottish Government to do more, I very much believe in a relationship of mutual challenge.
We each must play our part to make young people the business of all of us and to do all that we can to support them through the current difficult economic times. Above all, we need to ensure that our young people have hope and ambition for the future and that they do not become disengaged from society and become just another unemployment statistic. I look forward to this important debate.
I move,
That the Parliament supports the Scottish Government’s “all-Government, all-Scotland” approach at the centre of Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy, which has had a positive impact on the challenge of youth unemployment; further welcomes the launch of the Make Young People Your Business campaign; recognises that this approach is vital in the development of Scotland’s young workforce; agrees that all MSPs have a role to play in their constituencies to actively encourage local employers and other partners to do more, and welcomes the decrease in youth unemployment by 25,000 seen in the December 2012 labour market statistics.
14:45
I do not know whether it was because of the festive cheer or our communal new year resolutions, but the two debates that we have had in our first week back—on employability and, yesterday, the oil and gas industry—have been characterised by a remarkable display of consensus across the chamber. We have managed to put more emphasis on that which we have in common than on that which divides us.
I assure members that we in the Labour Party stand ready to make common cause with colleagues from all sides in the face of the economic difficulties that we face. Perhaps few of those difficulties are much more formidable than that of mass unemployment.
Unfortunately, just as the attractions of the 1 January pledges to eat a little less and take a little more exercise begin to wear off with each successive visit to the gym, so our enthusiasm to reach out across the chamber yet again this week is waning. It is not that we doubt the minister’s intent to tackle youth unemployment, but that the motion is too complacent to capture either the scale of the challenge or the political energy and drive that are needed to overcome the problem.
More worryingly, the Scottish Government’s actions simply do not match its words. I am not trying to pretend that the Scottish National Party does not care about unemployment and that it is, for example, in the category of those who believe that unemployment is a price worth paying. Far from it. My frustration results from the lack of delivery. Where exactly is the action that is spoken of in the title of the Government motion? My fear is that we are seeing a return to the party that talks a lot about its good intentions, but does very little to make them happen—to the party of broken promises, which promised so much on class sizes, school meals and the writing off of student debt, but has failed to deliver on any of those pledges.
Mr Macintosh will not be very happy this week after the child benefit changes.
Is Mr Macintosh not disappointed—embarrassed, even—that, according to evidence that is presented in table 1 of the Finance Committee’s employability report, the number of 16 to 19-year-olds not in employment, education or training in Scotland was 5,000 more in 2005 than in 2011? That was pre recession, when Labour was in control at Holyrood and Westminster and in most local authorities in Scotland.
Mr Gibson makes a couple of serious points. He has reminded me that, as a father of six children with an income of between £50,000 and £60,000, I absolutely have not been happy about the child benefit changes.
Mr Gibson is right to identify the fact that long-term youth unemployment was rising before the current recession and therefore cannot be put down entirely to that. However, it has been exacerbated by the recession. That reinforces my point that we should all be taking decisive action. We are absolutely willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with the SNP in tackling the problem, but we do not see enough evidence of action from the Government.
Given that Mr Gibson has compared the 2005 and 2009 figures for those not in education, employment or training, it is only fair to compare the figures for 2007 and 2011, which is the most recent date for them. I can confirm that 9,000 more people are not in education, employment or training.
Mrs Scanlon is less charitable to Mr Gibson than I was prepared to be, but she is absolutely right. The difficulty is that I find the gloss that the SNP constantly puts on figures and its selective quoting of statistics to be simply misleading. That demeans the seriousness of the problem and the situation, and stands as a barrier between us and concerted action across the Parliament.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry. I normally take all interventions, but I want to make a little progress.
I assure members that we believe that full employment should be the Parliament’s overriding ambition. One way to start is to agree on the scale of the problem that is before us, because I was slightly worried by the gloss that was being put on it by the minister in her opening speech. More than 20 per cent of all young people who are eligible to work are officially unemployed. Unemployment has risen remorselessly since 2008. We have in effect returned to the mass unemployment of the 1980s and 1990s, but this time with a particularly devastating focus on the young.
As we have heard in our constituency surgeries, in evidence to parliamentary committees and in the experience sometimes of friends and family, youth unemployment is not just emotionally debilitating, with an immediate impact on individuals and their families, but has a long-term scarring effect on many. As described by economists David Bell and David Blanchflower, unemployment
“while young, especially of long duration, causes permanent scars rather than temporary blemishes”.
People who experience long-term unemployment in their youth are more likely to experience unemployment later in life and less likely to earn as much over the course of their careers. The worrying fact is that alongside mass youth unemployment we have growing long-term unemployment. The unemployment figures are striking—they have risen every quarter except for two since the middle of 2008.
Of particular concern to me, despite the minister’s figures, is that long-term youth unemployment appears to be worse here in Scotland than it is across the UK. A further worrying feature of this recession, compounding matters and adding—
I agree entirely with Mr Macintosh on the scale and scope of the problem and I am well acquainted with Danny Blanchflower’s research. Mr Macintosh is right to point out that long-term unemployment amongst young people in Scotland has quadrupled. That is one of the reasons why we are introducing an employer recruitment incentive.
Does Mr Macintosh accept that at least we now know the figures for the long-term unemployed? Under the Tory Government work programme, people were counted as employed when that was not the case—those who had signed up to the new deal were removed from the unemployment statistics. I recognise that unemployment is still too high.
I am delighted to hear the minister talk about transparency and figures, particularly given the budget process that we are all going through, in which we seem to have to wrestle in every committee to get level 4 figures—to get any information—and in which, to be honest, this Parliament is sometimes on the verge of being treated with contempt by the SNP with regard to access to information.
I am not sure whether to mention this, but Danny Blanchflower, I believe, is a former football manager—a great one—of Chelsea and of Northern Ireland and David Blanchflower is the economist. I think that the First Minister confuses his football managers and his bank managers sometimes, too.
Another feature of this recession is underemployment. I am delighted to see that the Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee has established an inquiry into underemployment, although Professor David Bell’s evidence this week that the youth unemployment figures underestimated the extent of the problem was disconcerting.
According to Professor Bell, the number of part-time workers, including those who are self-employed, has risen by more than 70,000 since 2008 and that has been matched by a dramatic fall in the number of hours worked by full-time staff. The experience of so many individuals in this situation is not revealed in the official unemployment statistics, but the reduced hours, the move from full-time to part-time work and the loss of overtime are felt in increased hardship.
That has been backed up by research carried out by Citizens Advice Scotland that highlighted invisible underemployment—young people withdrawing from the labour market altogether or working in jobs where their skills are not adequately utilised, displacing others.
Women in particular are on the receiving end, both of the increase in unemployment and of increased underemployment. Women are more likely to be in low-paid work, more likely to work part time and less likely to have savings. They face a greater risk of immediate poverty should they lose their jobs. What that means for families is revealed by the Scottish Government’s own statistics, the most recent of which are for the year 2010-11. They show that the average Scottish household income fell by almost £1,200 per year.
I hope that we can all agree on the extent and the seriousness of the unemployment situation in Scotland. I acknowledge that there are steps that the Government has taken that we can agree on. The appointment of a Minister for Youth Employment was something that Labour called for and certainly supports. The allocation of additional resources, with £36 million of funding announced last year, is also welcome. However, it is difficult to see much evidence to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of Scottish Government interventions and we have a deep concern at the Government’s lack of consistency in tackling the employment challenge.
For example, even in today’s motion I am unclear whether the Government is claiming that the supposed decrease in youth unemployment of 25,000 last month was due to actions that it had taken. If so, which specific actions can the minister point to and what evidence does she have of their impact? I am not suggesting for one second that the SNP caused the problems that we are facing, but I question whether it is doing enough to counter unemployment and whether its delivery matches its oratory.
Most SNP and Labour members are united in opposing the UK Government’s policies on the economy, and the SNP is lined up behind Labour in resisting austerity economics and calling for a more Keynesian approach. However, there is little evidence that the SNP is backing those words with actions here in Scotland.
Rather than mitigating or trying to counter the austerity approach, John Swinney simply appears to be passing on the Tory cut, and sometimes making it worse. I find it particularly depressing that, while the Tory Government has a target of reducing the public sector by some 500,000 posts, John Swinney is doing exactly the same here in Scotland.
I direct members to the recent article by Dave Watson of Unison, which points out that we have already lost 50,000 posts in the public sector throughout Scotland. The majority of those are in local government—cleaners, caterers and carers—but they are also midwives and nurses, because of the real-terms cut to the national health service budget. That is not just affecting vital services, but sucking demand out of the economy.
Will the member give way?
Shall I take another intervention, Presiding Officer?
I would be grateful if the member could just draw to a close gradually.
Very well, Presiding Officer. I had a lot more to say, but I will conclude by pointing out to the Government that its cuts to the public sector, and to colleges at a time when young people need opportunities and skills, are absolutely the wrong steps to be taking.
Cutting the housing budget has had a dramatic effect on the construction industry and has depressed demand at a time when we should be increasing it. There are actions that the Government could take now on colleges, housing, rail investment and childcare that would not cost any money and would make a difference.
It is time that the Government woke up from its complacency and realised that fine words and good intentions are not enough. Scotland’s young people need action, and they need it now.
I move amendment S4M-05319.2, to leave out from “the Scottish Government’s” to end and insert:
“an ‘all-Government, all-Scotland’ approach at the centre of Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy; notes with concern that, according to the December 2012 labour market statistics, more than one in five young people eligible to work are officially unemployed and that long-term youth unemployment is higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK according to the latest claimant figures; further notes the comments of Professor David Bell to the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee that youth unemployment figures underestimate the problem; believes that the 24% real-terms cut to college funding between 2011 and 2015 threatens to exacerbate rather than improve this situation and that cuts to Scotland’s housing budget similarly threaten growth and apprenticeship opportunities; is concerned that current efforts to tackle youth unemployment through the modern apprenticeship programme are falling short of the needs of young unemployed people in Scotland; believes that the Scottish Government could do more, for example, on investing in transport, improving childcare and better use of government procurement to tackle Scotland’s unemployment and underemployment crisis, and agrees that all MSPs have a role to play in their constituencies to actively encourage local employers and other partners to do more.”
14:56
We very much welcome the estimated reduction of 25,000 in the unemployment figures for 16 to 24-year-olds over the past year. We hope that it is the start of a downward trend, and an opportunity for all those people to gain work experience, training and skills and to secure employment in the future.
However, over the same period that unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds has fallen by 25,000, the number in employment has fallen by 4,000. There are 25,000 fewer young people unemployed, but 4,000 fewer in employment. I am sure that there may be a very good explanation for that, and I ask the minister if she could give us her thoughts on that in her summing up.
Young people being in training and education will account for many of those figures.
Does the member not think that unemployment would be a lot lower in Scotland if the Tories had not imposed an extra £1 billion VAT burden, taken £100 million out of our pension pot and cut our capital budget by 26 per cent and our resource budget by 11.6 per cent, and if they were not going to impose a £2.5 billion cut in the Scottish economy to 2015 through their welfare reform proposals?
The unemployment situation in Scotland—and especially education, skills and training—would be massively improved if there was not a 24 per cent cut to the college budget, particularly given that the bulk of that cut is to the teaching budget. I say that as someone who spent more than 20 years teaching in further and higher education before coming to the Parliament. It is time that the Government woke up, took responsibility for all the powers that it does have and did its best for Scotland, rather than constantly blaming Westminster.
I come back to the table of figures that I mentioned to the minister, which also highlights an estimated increase in the inactivity rate from 27 per cent to 31 per cent—just over 4 per cent. There are 24,000 more young people who are deemed to be inactive than there were a year ago; the figure is up from 161,000 to 184,000. Again, there may be a good explanation for those figures and I would find it very useful to find out exactly what that is. The figures seem to me, as an economist, to point to quite a serious concern.
The motion
“further welcomes the launch of the Make Young People Your Business campaign”.
That campaign is very welcome. If we are serious about helping young people into employment, it is right to form good working relationships with the private sector and the third sector as well as the public sector.
The guide “Making Young People Your Business” has been endorsed by the John Lewis Partnership and others who offer graduate programmes, internships, apprenticeships and work experience. They see young people as a benefit to their business, as the minister said, as they adapt to the latest trends, give insight into new markets and bring their information technology skills with them. Nonetheless, it is disappointing that only 25 per cent of businesses in Scotland have recruited straight from school, college or university in the past two to three years. A more flexible approach is needed, given that so many young people cannot get jobs because they have no experience, but they cannot get experience without getting a job. As was debated earlier in the week, the clear message here is to build employability skills.
I was surprised that the minister did not mention the Prince’s Trust, although I appreciate that she cannot mention everything. However, in my research for this debate, I discovered that the trust does an awful lot more for young people than I had appreciated. For example, it has a team programme that teaches young people the benefits of team working and it provides a residential course, work experience and grants of up to £500 to fund tools or equipment needed for a job or a course. The grant can be used, for example, for hairdressing kits, carpentry tools or chef’s whites. Those are all difficult to fund if someone is unemployed. There is also the enterprise programme, with workshops, mentoring and start-up funding. I just hope that the systems are in place for those opportunities to be made available to all those who could benefit from them. It is far better for someone to start off their working life with a grant rather than a loan, as was mentioned. [Laughter.]
I hope that the free vacancy advertising—[Interruption.] SNP members may think that it is funny to try to help young people into work, but I do not.
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I am nearly finished.
I certainly hope that the free vacancy—[Interruption.] I ask SNP members to stop laughing, because I would quite like to be able to continue.
I hope that the free vacancy advertising service, recruitment incentives, wage subsidies, work placements, internships and the fully supported modern apprenticeship programme will ensure a reduction in the numbers of those not in education, employment or training. The latest information from SPICe is that that figure is still 31,000, but it is based on 2011. As I said earlier, the figure has gone up 9,000 since the SNP came to power. I hope that, as with the unemployment figures, that figure is falling. We are probably due an updated figure in that regard.
On the cuts to the college budget, there is no doubt that reducing the number of training places for 16 to 19-year-olds has a devastating effect on giving young people the opportunity to get into employment. The Conservatives will, therefore, support the Labour amendment. We think that it is more thorough and considered and that it looks at a wide range of initiatives that are needed to address youth unemployment.
We now move to the open debate. I call Gordon MacDonald, to be followed by Jayne Baxter. Six minutes please, Mr MacDonald.
15:03
Scotland has more than 600,000 people in the age range 16 to 24, of whom nearly a third are students, over half are employed and just under 15 per cent are unemployed. Even when using the international standard of comparing the level of youth unemployment with the number of those who are economically active, Scotland’s rate of 21 per cent is lower than the UK’s and the European Union average and, thankfully, it is nowhere near the levels recorded in summer 2012 of 55 per cent in Greece, 53 per cent in Spain and 35 per cent in Italy. However, 21 per cent is still too high.
The Scottish Government, recognising the growing problem of youth unemployment, established the post of Minister for Youth Employment in December 2011. The minister, Angela Constance, was tasked with helping Scotland’s youth into training, work or education to secure a strong workforce for the future. At the time of her appointment, we had a higher level of youth unemployment than the rest of the UK. However, as the minister said, that level is now lower than the UK’s and the annual change in the youth unemployment rate shows that ours is dropping faster than the UK’s, with a 4.3 per cent reduction compared with the UK’s 1.8 per cent.
Scotland’s youth employment strategy outlines the key measures that the Scottish Government is taking, including a pledge to deliver 25,000 modern apprenticeships each year over the lifetime of this Parliament and the commitment to offer a training place to every 16 to 19-year-old not in an apprenticeship, training, full-time education or a job.
In education, the Scottish Government has supported youngsters to stay on at school or college through the education maintenance allowance, and almost 35,000 young people in Scotland are receiving an EMA. More than 60 per cent of them are at secondary school, and the result is another year of record-breaking exam results, with the highest ever pass rates for standard grades and highers.
Colleges are refocusing provision for 16 to 24-year-olds and student numbers are being maintained at 116,000 full-time equivalent places, despite cuts to the Scottish Government budget by Westminster. Scottish universities have a record number of Scottish students, with Universities and Colleges Admissions Service figures showing that Scotland is the only part of the UK that has seen a rise in university admissions. Thanks to the Scottish Government’s policy of free education, Scotland is the only country in the UK to ensure that young people can go to university based on ability and not the ability to pay.
The modern apprenticeships scheme in Scotland is the most recognised of its kind in the UK, with statistics revealing that 56 per cent of businesses are aware of the programme—double the figure for any other scheme in the UK. That has resulted in a record number of modern apprenticeships in 2011-12, at 26,427. As the National Union of Students Scotland states in its briefing regarding that drive to upskill young Scots, we need to
“ensure that we have highly skilled young people in Scotland ready to take advantage of the economy’s eventual upturn, investing our resources on productive spend, in boosting our human capital, rather than on welfare benefits.”
It is imperative that we have highly skilled young people who are ready to take up the challenges because in many areas of employment across the UK a retirement time bomb is looming. The ConstructionSkills briefing highlights that, over the past 20 years, the number of workers aged 24 and under in the construction industry nearly halved from 22 per cent in 1990, while the number of workers aged over 55 increased by 65 per cent in the same period.
In the health sector, 20 per cent of general practice nurses are over the age of 55 and, according to an article in PharmaTimes, 10,000 GPs across the UK are due to retire in the next five years. The Motor Transport website highlights that a quarter of light goods vehicle drivers are aged 60 or above, with only 1 per cent being under 25. It estimates that 48,000 professional LGV drivers will retire in the next five years. In the food industry, the sector skills council Improve predicts that 137,000 new recruits will need to be attracted to the sector by 2017 to replace those who retire.
We need to ensure that our young people select the careers in which there is the greatest potential for career development. That highlights the importance of the my world of work website, as it gives everyone 24/7 access to details of different career paths, training availability and current vacancies. In addition to the opportunities for all initiative and the modern apprenticeships scheme, the Scottish Government has launched an employer recruitment incentive to help to support the most disadvantaged young people to enter the labour market. It supports up to 5,000 new jobs, and the number will increase to 10,000 in 2013-14.
The Scottish Government is supporting 1,000 subsidised jobs for 16 to 19-year-olds in social enterprises and voluntary organisations through Community Jobs Scotland, and the third sector challenge fund provides pre-employment support for 800 young people.
However, the Government and the public sector cannot tackle youth unemployment alone. That is why, in December, the Minister for Youth Employment launched the make young people your business initiative, presenting the case for investing in young people, showing how some companies in Scotland have gone about doing that and describing some of the support that is available to employers.
Some 33 per cent of respondents to a Federation of Small Businesses survey reported that their business generated enough work for them to need extra help. With the age demographic problem and the support that is on hand through the our skillsforce website, now would be a good time for small and medium-sized enterprises to start recruiting.
I call Jayne Baxter and I remind members that she is making her first speech in our Parliament.
15:09
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
I am pleased to be making my maiden speech in this important debate on youth employment. Ensuring that young people can achieve their potential in education and employment, alongside creating and sustaining job opportunities, must be at the heart of the Parliament’s agenda.
I am proud to have been elected as a member of the Scottish Parliament to serve Mid Scotland and Fife. I have taken over this role from my friend John Park, who I know served his constituents and the Parliament well. I wish him well as he moves on to new challenges.
It is my intention to campaign on the issues and priorities that matter to the individuals, families and communities that I have been elected to represent, so it is a major concern to me that long-term youth unemployment levels are still worryingly high. Young people, by definition, have their future before them. Our task must be to ensure that high rates of youth unemployment do not have long-term negative impacts on those individuals affected, with consequent issues for their communities and demands on public services.
I believe that equality of opportunity should not be a one-off, pass-or-fail, life-defining event, but a lifelong experience. That belief is due to my experience of growing up in Fife, where, although I went to university straight from school, I found that academic life was not for me. I returned to university as a mature student, but my life has taken a very different path from that which was mapped out for me from school. Although I believe that young people should have the option of going to university, we need to recognise that it is not the only or, even the best option. Indeed, in Fife, a much higher proportion of young people leave school and go to college. I know that there are widespread concerns about the levels of funding in further education.
I believe that Government at every level has the mandate and resources to make investments and build partnerships that will create employment and support young people to gain the skills and experience to get and keep a job. Whether that is through capital investment or procurement policies, there is scope to use public money to achieve value for people and, in particular, for young people.
I want to highlight the example of Labour-controlled Fife Council, where £5 million is being provided over the next 3 years to give 600 young people who are aged between 16 and 24 years old the chance of a modern apprenticeship with a local employer. The council also proposes to spend an additional £1 million on its own in-house apprenticeship.
If there ever was an issue to unite all the political groupings in Scotland it must surely be working to avoid a lost generation. In Fife, the willingness to work together towards that crucial common cause has been shown with the appointment of the senior Liberal Democrat councillor Tony Martin as the council’s ambassador for youth employment. He will work directly with employers in all sectors, colleges and the voluntary sector to ensure a focus on the challenge of creating and sustaining youth employment.
Young people deserve the best chance that we can offer them. I recall working in the 1980s in the council’s youth training scheme to support young people aged 16 and 17 to get the skills that they needed for the world of work, which included life skills and social skills. Margaret Thatcher’s Government was running the country at that time and mass unemployment meant hard times for individuals, families and communities. For many young people, that meant a loss of ambition, opportunity and hope—a legacy from which some communities are only just recovering. What I learned from that experience—and believe to this day—is that investment in high-quality training and support will bring dividends to a young person and his or her community for years to come. The Christie commission report said:
“We must prioritise expenditure on public services which prevent negative outcomes from arising.”
Nowhere is that more valid than in creating and maintaining employment for young people.
In the 1980s, Dunfermline Athletic football club was an employer that participated in the YTS scheme. The manager—a Mr Jim Leishman—had a gift for inspiring young people and helping them to grow as individuals, whether or not they went on to become professional footballers. I still work with Jim. We are both Labour councillors in Fife and Jim is provost of Fife. He uses that position to spread the message of opportunity and aspiration in schools and colleges across Fife.
That is the message that I want to get over today. Those of us in public life have a responsibility to do all that we can: to work with employers, training providers, trade unions and the third sector to make sure that we all have a clear focus on supporting young people into training, skills and jobs.
In conclusion, I believe and hope that, with clear direction and support from the Parliament, the whole of civic Scotland—the private and public sectors—can come together and put in place the investment and support to ensure that growing up in Scotland means a positive and productive future for young people. The alternative cannot be an option. [Applause.]
Thank you—and well done.
15:15
I am very pleased indeed to follow fellow Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Jayne Baxter who, in her maiden speech, made a very thoughtful and interesting contribution to the debate. I am sure that she will be a credit to the Parliament.
I am pleased to have been called to speak in this very important debate on youth employment and on the actions that the Scottish Government is taking to support our young people into work. Few issues are more important than helping young people find their way in life through getting a job, earning a wage and contributing to the society in which they live. I know that that is what young people want—indeed, are desperate—to do and believe that for them it is as much a matter of pride, of being able to pursue a particular interest, of taking responsibility for their own lives, of proving their abilities, of earning trust and of gaining confidence as it is of earning a wage and contributing to their communities and to society at large. It is therefore incumbent on us all to work together to promote youth employment, particularly in these very difficult economic times. That is what our constituents want us to do—they want us to work hard across the parties to get a result for our young people.
In her opening remarks, the Scottish Government’s dedicated Minister for Youth Employment—and I mean “dedicated” in both senses of the word—told us about the plethora of activities that the Scottish Government is pursuing to improve our young people’s employment prospects. The fact that we have the first ever dedicated Minister for Youth Employment since the Scottish Parliament was reconvened in 1999 speaks volumes about the absolute priority that the SNP Government places on tackling youth employment. At the same time, the Scottish Government has recognised that the post must be backed with resources, and we have heard this afternoon about the additional public funding that has recently been allocated to tackle youth employment.
However, it must be said that as long as the Scottish Government does not have the full economic powers of a normal independent country we will be tackling this key issue with at least one hand tied behind our backs. At present—and in advance of securing the support of the people of Scotland in a yes vote in 2014—it is clear that this SNP Scottish Government is using all the tools and levers at its disposal to promote youth employment. I therefore differ from Mr Macintosh’s views because it is axiomatic that, without having the full tools and levers at our disposal, we are operating with more limited possibilities than if we had full power.
The SNP has full control over college budgets and further education. Can the member therefore tell us how exactly the 24 per cent cut to college budgets has helped our young people?
Of course, the key point is that Scotland does not have full control over its budget—
You don’t have full control over your budget?
I do not know where Mr Macintosh has been recently with regard to the key debate that we are having. The point is that Scotland does not control its resources. If it did, we would not be seeing the unprecedented cuts that we are facing to our budget or the austerity agenda that the Westminster Government is pursuing. Of course, it all raises the question whether Labour actually supports the devolution of employment services or whether it is content for cuts to such services, like the cuts to welfare, to be left to the Tories at Westminster to impose on the people of this country while Labour works hand in glove with them in an unholy alliance to place a ceiling on the ambitions of the people of this country—and shame on them for doing so.
Will the member give way, on that point?
No. I must make progress, I am afraid, because my time is nearly up. I was so interested in Mr Macintosh’s comments that I felt I must respond fully to them.
Many positive initiatives have been mentioned, such as opportunities for all and the modern apprenticeships scheme. Much work has gone into making the scheme the huge success that it is and I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved, particularly the people who have been working hard behind the scenes in the private, public and third sectors to ensure that modern apprenticeships are available to our young people.
We heard about the employability fund, which is intended to offer more flexibility to respond to training needs, and about the certificate of work readiness. I hope that in due course, when the pilot project has been properly evaluated, the minister will be able to provide a progress report.
I make two brief final points. First, it is key that the small business sector is as involved as possible with initiatives. I ask the minister, when she sums up, to say how we can better involve the sector, perhaps via the make young people your business campaign, which was recently launched.
Secondly, there is a greater role for the third sector in local delivery plans. That is the case with respect to the Fife initiative to which Jayne Baxter referred, which was initially pursued by the SNP-led Fife Council administration and then taken on and developed by the current administration. Third sector involvement happens to varying degrees around Scotland and it would be helpful if the minister could provide more information about what is happening.
15:21
I congratulate Jayne Baxter on making her maiden speech. I know how nerve-racking that is—as all members do—and I am sure that she is relieved that it is over. I look forward to hearing many more of her speeches.
The sharp escalation in youth unemployment has been one of the most visible and vexing features of the recession. Although the overall UK unemployment rate has not exceeded its 1984 peak during the current recession, youth unemployment hit an historic high in 2009 and now stands at 21.1 per cent.
As David Bell and David Blanchflower said,
“workers of all ages are accepting lower skilled jobs than ... when the labour market was stronger, but”
the
“effect is strongest for those aged 16 to 24”.
Whatever one’s age or credentials, scouring the market for jobs, submitting endless applications, attending countless interviews and absorbing constant rejections, is exhausting, stressful, discouraging and, for some, ultimately soul-destroying. That is the predicament in which many young jobless people find themselves.
The effect of youth unemployment on future employment prospects and earnings is well documented, and the psychological impact on confidence and self-esteem should not be discounted. Research shows that young men who experience prolonged unemployment are three times more likely to suffer from depression and that high levels of youth unemployment have a detrimental social impact, leading to increased rates of crime, drug abuse and chronic ill health.
It is only natural, therefore, that, as an MSP for Central Scotland, I have watched the rising claimant count among young people with a growing sense of trepidation. The most worrying factor is the incidence of long-term youth unemployment—16 to 24-year-olds who claim jobseekers allowance for more than one year—which has increased exponentially over the past four years. In North Lanarkshire, the rate of long-term youth unemployment rose by a staggering 3,367 per cent between March 2008 and March 2012.
Although the upward trend has tapered slightly, the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics revealed that the number of 16 to 24-year-olds claiming jobseekers allowance for more than one year rose by 137 per cent in the past 12 months. As matters stand, there is nothing to suggest that the rate will fall to pre-recession levels. That will certainly not happen without decisive intervention from government at every level.
I welcome the Scottish Government’s investment of £30 million and the additional £25 million in European structural funding to support youth employment initiatives. However, despite the Scottish Government’s financial commitments, there are areas in which it has been seriously remiss.
One such area, as we note in the Labour amendment, is the funding of further education. As Scotland’s Colleges said in “Scotland’s Colleges: Shaping a Sustainable Model for a Successful Future”, the Scottish Government is consistently failing to
“recognise the critical role colleges play in delivering ... a successful Scotland.”
The 24 per cent real-terms cut to college funding between 2011 and 2015 has had and will continue to have a severe adverse impact on young people who rely on colleges to furnish them with the skills and qualifications to secure employment or progress to higher education. I join my Labour colleagues in urging Mike Russell to rethink this misguided policy with the greatest possible urgency.
Careers advisory services have also been affected by Scottish Government cuts. John Swinney wrote in a recent letter to me:
“the biggest impact in addressing the occupational choices of individuals comes through the provision of good careers advice.”
I could not agree more. If young people are to progress into good careers and enjoy fulfilling lives, it is imperative that they are given the appropriate advice and guidance. I was disappointed, therefore, to learn that Skills Development Scotland has shifted the emphasis of careers advice from personalised interviews to a web-based service called my world of work.
Although there is a place for an online advisory service, it is no substitute for one-on-one interviews that are tailored to individual requirements. Young people, especially those of school-leaving age, are not always receptive to advice or guidance about anything. At such an early age, it is difficult to appreciate the repercussions that decisions that are made now will have on later life.
I reassure Ms McMahon that the introduction of my world of work is a service enhancement and is certainly not a replacement for face-to-face contact. We are committed to introducing career management skills into classrooms.
I know that Ms McMahon has a passionate interest in young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The purpose of the reforms is to better utilise professional careers management staff to work more intensively, and on an on-going basis, with young people who are at risk of disengaging or who have disengaged.
I do not agree with that intervention, as the paragraph that I was about to read out will show.
The fact that only 17 per cent of young people in South Lanarkshire and 14 per cent in North Lanarkshire have registered for my world of work shows that the message is not getting across to the young people who need that service now.
I understand that delivering effective careers advice is not straightforward. It requires considerable knowledge and expertise. The Scottish Government's youth employment strategy highlights the contribution that is made by the voluntary and third sector in supplying the advice and guidance to help young people to find work.
Last November, I visited the Motherwell office of Rathbone, a voluntary youth sector organisation with over 30 years’ experience of helping young people to find work. Rathbone focuses on disadvantaged communities and tailors its programmes to suit the needs of the individual and the local economy. The employees I spoke to exhibited great knowledge, enthusiasm and commitment to their work. I was therefore disappointed to learn that, between April and November 2012, Rathbone received fewer referrals from Skills Development Scotland than it did in the same period in 2011. Given that youth unemployment rose substantially over that period, I find that detail perplexing. Let us be clear: scrimping on college funding and careers advisory services will solve neither the economic nor the youth unemployment crisis.
If the Scottish Government requires guidance, it should follow the examples that are being set by local councils. Falkirk Council deserves particular praise. Through its backing Falkirk’s future initiative, it has collaborated with local employers to secure work experience and employment opportunities for young people. Thanks to such initiatives, Falkirk has performed robustly against the generally gloomy outlook. Last September, it achieved a two-year low in overall unemployment, and a year-on-year reduction in the number of 18 to 24-year-olds who are claiming jobseekers allowance.
We are all aware that youth unemployment is a difficult and intractable problem. With that in mind, I hope that the Scottish Government will take this speech and Labour's amendment in the collaborative spirit of the all-Government, all-Scotland approach, and act in the best interests of Scotland's young people.
15:28
I welcome this debate, as it focuses on the biggest challenge that faces us as a community. I repeat what I said in the budget debate just before the Christmas recess, which was that we in this chamber have to lay aside the sometimes cosmetic and sometimes visceral tribalism that can pervade this type of debate. The “anything you can do I can do better” syndrome and the torrent of numbers do not play well outside the chamber and certainly do not give solace to the young unemployed.
If there are alternative proposals to the Government’s programme, it is incumbent on those who make those proposals to say what they are, what the costs are and how they will impact on other policies and priorities. I am happy to think outside the box and consider other proposals, but I find the Labour amendment disappointing and saddening. I do not diminish the concern of Labour and Mr Macintosh for the young unemployed—I am sure that we all share that—but the amendment smacks of an uncosted, scattergun approach that asks for more but does not indicate what will have less.
There are a number of interventions in housing, rail and colleges that we were happy to describe in our budget contribution. However, specifically, why have we not seen action on childcare and procurement, neither of which necessarily has to cost much money and both of which the Government is supposed to be committed to? The childcare intervention, in particular, was in the SNP manifesto and would make a real difference in getting people back into the workplace.
The member reminds me of the pessimist who sees the difficulty in every opportunity, whereas the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. I would like to see the whole programme that Labour proposes costed.
The amendment states clearly that
“long-term youth unemployment is higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK”—
it is not—
“according to the latest claimant figures”.
The amendment also quotes David Bell, but let us look at what he said yesterday. I have the advantage of Mr Macintosh in that I was at the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee yesterday. On page 3 of his report to the committee, Professor Bell stated:
“the claimant count is no longer the accepted measure of unemployment.”
He went on to say:
“the growth in unemployment rates since the beginning of the current recession ... has been relatively modest”—
certainly a lot better for us than for all our European counterparts.
And so the numbers game goes on. Mrs Scanlon is not here—she is probably rehearsing the next set of numbers outside. We talk about numbers around colleges, housing, the modern apprenticeship scheme and so on. Opposition members say—without evidence—that those are all threatened, which will exacerbate the position of the young unemployed. We have a duty—an obligation on all sides of the chamber—to say not just what we are against, but what we are for and how we will pay for it. Do we find the level of youth unemployment acceptable? Of course we do not. However, let us debate and quantify what else might be done in the context and the consequences of the resources that are made available to us.
As Mr Macintosh said, David Bell highlighted the fact that unemployment creates permanent scars rather than temporary blemishes. In the face of that, most of us accept that, in the current economic circumstances, the minister and the Government are laying out plans to mitigate that as best we can in the economic circumstances. From opportunities for all to the record number of modern apprenticeships, and from employer recruitment incentives to activity agreements, community jobs for Scotland and so on, there is a plethora—as Annabelle Ewing said—of programmes to encourage young people into training or work. Maybe there are too many, but I welcome the make young people your business programme, which I believe is very sensible. I mentioned earlier the need for us to start to think outside the box.
Had fiscal circumstances been different, and they will be, the easier action would have been to create more demand in the economy—hence our cri de coeur, very often, for a significant stimulus on capital investment in the economy. However, our circumstances are not different, and never will be, in the job market; tomorrow will never be the same as yesterday in the job market. That is why I believe that we must have a fundamental change—a seismic shift—and give businesses, particularly a significant proportion of the 335,000 SMEs in Scotland, not just finance but business support and experience to encourage them to take on help and to employ young people, to build their skills and, in the process, to build those businesses. That is also why I believe in creating an entrepreneurial spirit coupled to community empowerment through social enterprise and the third sector. That means our evangelising and taking the message out to the young in the communities in the cities and the countryside.
I believe that, once we have our hands on the levers of fiscal management, we will be able to consider things such as pensions and other provisions so that people can leave the working population earlier to promote the skilling up of the young and allow the more mature to skill down. Given our economic strategy and focus, the harsh reality is that we must invest in our young. Although I support the initiatives that have been taken to date, it is time to take the power and responsibility to seek to tip the balance of decision making in favour of young people. Our young must be inspired to aspire—they are the future.
15:34
Like many in the chamber, I was desperately sad at the decision of my good friend John Park to step down from Parliament and I wish him well in his new challenges, but I think that Jayne Baxter has demonstrated today that she will be a very able replacement. I am sure that she will serve the constituents of Mid Scotland and Fife exceptionally well.
Like others, I welcome today’s debate and the further opportunity that it provides to consider the vital issue of youth employment. Although the motion is right to acknowledge—I certainly add my welcome of the news—that there has recently been a fall in the number of young people out of work, we should obviously guard against any temptation to take our eye off the ball. The number of 16 to 24-year-olds out of work remains unacceptably high at 87,000, while the number of young people in employment has fallen sharply over the past three years. Ken Macintosh is right to point to the health warning that Professor Bell has attached to the figures. Whether our performance is better or worse than that of the UK seems to change with each new set of figures, but what does not change is the need to do more to improve the situation, as I think all speakers today have accepted.
In particular, as the Barnardo’s briefing highlights, providing more effective support for those furthest from the labour market is essential. Of looked-after children, 36 per cent are still looking for employment six months after leaving school—almost four times the average for school leavers as a whole—and the figures for those securing a place in further education are scarcely any better. I will return shortly to possible options for improving provision, opportunities and outcomes for that group, but I hope that the minister will accept that further attention on that is required.
Other areas also need to be addressed—I will come to those in a minute—but at the outset let me reiterate my strong support for the appointment of Angela Constance to her role, welcome the publication and on-going development of a youth employment strategy, notably through the youth action plans, and endorse the continued all-Government, all-Scotland focus that has been given to the issue, including the additional funding from the European regional development fund. The minister will know that her efforts to provide job training and education opportunities for our young people in these difficult economic times enjoy the whole-hearted support of MSPs across the chamber. She is also right to point out the role that we all have, particularly at a local level in our constituencies and regions.
In that context, let me outline a number of areas where I think that, despite the encouraging figures, changes in the Government’s approach and thinking are needed. As I mentioned, Barnardo’s has once again made a compelling case for more targeted action to support some of the most vulnerable young people in Scotland. That will come as no surprise to colleagues on the Education and Culture Committee, whose recent inquiry on improving outcomes for looked-after children identified alarming evidence of how, despite a collective commitment and the efforts by successive Governments as well as those in the field, we are still well short of being able to claim any real success.
Barnardo’s argues strongly for the third sector to be more closely involved in the development of opportunities for all at a local level, including the youth action plans, and points to
“a serious gap in long term, nurturing and supportive provision for care leavers.”
With care leavers often facing additional barriers to entering the job market, whether through a lack of literacy and numeracy skills, self-confidence or motivation, addressing those obstacles is critically important. That often requires intensive input from specialists, but experience shows that such inputs can make a difference. Barnardo’s works programme is just one example, but there are others that demonstrate the value of fully engaging the skills and expertise available within the third sector in Scotland. That theme is also picked up by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, so I hope that Angela Constance will agree to bring some renewed focus to that over the course of 2013.
Likewise, I hope that Angela Constance will accept that there is now widespread agreement about the need for ministers to look again at the cuts to college funding that are proposed in the Government’s draft budget. As I said, care leavers continue to experience particular difficulties in accessing further education courses and it is becoming increasingly clear that the way in which colleges are trying to adapt to the FE funding cuts is having a more pronounced effect on those with specific support needs. Again, I am sure that Ms Constance will wish to take up that point with the co-sponsors of her motion, notably the education secretary.
The planned cut of around £34 million to college budgets threatens to have a far wider impact that cannot but work against the Government’s objectives for youth employment. In evidence to the Education and Culture Committee recently, colleges, staff unions, student representatives and business groups all underscored the risk of reduced opportunities and quality of provision. NUS Scotland warned that, if the cuts go ahead, they will have
“a significant negative impact on the contribution our colleges would be able to make to improving employability in Scotland”.
I accept that planned reforms can deliver savings in due course through mergers and so on, but Audit Scotland has pointed out that the extent and timing of the savings remain questionable. In the meantime, the loss of staff, reductions in course and the concentration of provision are having an effect that is felt across all age groups, including those that fall within the minister’s portfolio. It is therefore important that Ms Constance lends her support to the widespread calls for the Government to reverse the cuts.
Over successive Government budgets we have seen that money continues to be found for pet projects and to grab headlines, even after the budget is agreed. The issue is ultimately about political choices and ministers must choose to attach a greater priority to our colleges and those whom they support.
I am delighted that the UK Government's youth contract scheme is to be extended beyond unemployment hotspots so that wage incentives of more than £2,000 will be available to employers across Scotland when taking on a young person who has been out of work for some time. As the minister suggested, that helps cover the costs of additional training or supervision, while giving young people an opportunity to gain meaningful work experience. I am sure that the minister will agree that awareness of those opportunities needs to be properly highlighted in the local action plans that are being developed.
I am conscious that there are many areas that I have not covered, but I conclude by again welcoming the debate and reiterating my support for much of what the minister is doing in relation to an all-Government, all-Scotland approach to tackling the serious challenges facing our young people. However, I urge her to take on board and respond positively to the concerns that I, and others, have raised.
15:41
I, too, congratulate Jayne Baxter on making her maiden speech, which was reflective, poignant and relevant to what I was thinking about when I was considering what I would say today.
I was one of the original lost generation—the YOPper or youth opportunities programme generation—of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many of my school colleagues went on to the youth opportunities programme, which offered a small payment for work experience. When I was thinking about that time, I noticed a lot of similarities with the position that we are in today in Scotland. We had a Labour Administration in Westminster followed by a Tory Administration, and we were moving into a period of severe austerity and recession. Many of the criticisms of the youth opportunities programme—that it was cheap labour and it exploited young people—are being laid at some of the proposals from Westminster to tackle unemployment.
After that period, the Ravenscraig steelworks in Lanarkshire closed. Many people whom I grew up with and went to school with did not have the education opportunities that I had. They suffered from the lifetime scarring that Ken Macintosh spoke about. Indeed, there are many pockets in Lanarkshire that have not recovered from that recession, nor are they prepared to deal with the current one. It is all the more sad that many of those people will be most hit by Westminster’s welfare reforms.
Nearly 30 years later, and as the mother of a teenage son, I think that it is sad that we face similar challenges for the young people in Scotland. However, I am confident in the work of the Scottish Government; it is doing everything that it can to address the challenges that we face due to the economic circumstances.
Mr Brodie mentioned how important it was that we, as representatives, act on the problems. That point is referred to in Labour’s amendment, too. I also want to mention Linda Fabiani, who cannot be in the chamber today. She is organising an event this Friday with local businesses, many of which are SMEs in the area, in conjunction with JobCentre Plus, to highlight some of the additional funding and opportunities that businesses can give young people. That includes voluntary work experience, sector-based work academies and work trials. She is encouraging the SMEs and other businesses in the area to take on some of those opportunities. That goes hand in hand with some of the work across the country that the minister has mentioned, such as the job summits that have taken place.
I am a member of Motherwell College’s KT hub—the knowledge transfer hub—which is an organisation that brings together local small businesses and interested parties. It meets once a month for a breakfast meeting, usually with a business or a motivational speaker. The KT hub has been instrumental in highlighting what opportunities there are for local small businesses to work with young people and improving youth employment in the area.
It is hard not to think of Labour always being negative. Ken Macintosh used the word “complacent” in relation to what the Government is doing, but it is difficult to see any complacency when members consider the success of the modern apprenticeship programme. Not only is it increasing—we have more than 26,000 young apprentices this year—but there is a great increase in the number of women undertaking modern apprenticeships, which must be welcomed.
As if that is not enough, the survey that Gordon MacDonald mentioned shows that the modern apprenticeship programme in Scotland is the best recognised one in the UK. The UK statistics reveal that 56 per cent of businesses are aware of the programme in Scotland. That compares with 28 per cent in Northern Ireland and 25 per cent in Wales. The scheme also exists throughout England, but no region has an awareness level of more than 23 per cent. The level of recognition in Scotland is fantastic.
I am aware that it is Thursday, but what does that matter? It is not awareness of the programme but whether people engage in it that matters.
I say to Mr Findlay that knowledge is power and knowledge is welcome. I do not know what he does with the knowledge that he has in his working life.
Scotland’s modern apprenticeship scheme is the most recognised in the UK, which is a glowing testament to the hard work of those who are involved in the programme. Getting young people into employment or training is a priority for the Government. That is why it has delivered 26,427 modern apprenticeships and will deliver 25,000 more every year in this session of Parliament.
The business community has recognised how those opportunities benefit the whole economy. Far more companies recognise the Scottish system than recognise the system anywhere else in the UK. The report also showed that establishments in Scotland were more likely than those in the rest of the UK to have taken on an under-25-year-old in the year before the survey.
The latest employment figures show that youth unemployment in Scotland has fallen by 4.3 per cent. It is clear that the modern apprenticeship programme is an important scheme in supporting our young people. The Scottish Government’s paid placements are different from the modern-day serfdom that the Westminster system would seemingly implement. That shows why it would be far better for all such decisions to be taken in Scotland.
15:47
I welcome this extremely important debate. I declare an interest in that my daughter is going through education and will, I hope, be part of the generation of young people who will get the opportunity to be all that they can be, with the Scottish Government’s support.
As Mr Macintosh mentioned, at this time of year, we do our new year’s resolutions. My usual ones are to go to the gym—which has not been too successful recently—and to watch what I eat, although lunchtime today did not help too much with that.
One of my other resolutions was to be more understanding of the Opposition parties in Parliament because I know that they have a role to play within the process and that we must work together. Alas, however, it seems that I can get to the end of only my first couple of sentences before I have to mention Mary Scanlon’s having said that a grant is better than a loan. I agree wholeheartedly with that, but would she and her Tory friends in Westminster say the same to the diminishing number of students in England who pay £9,000 for university places? Scottish students pay nothing. That is the fundamental difference in this tale of two Governments: one focuses on its people and believes in positive outcomes for their future, but the other just does not care.
I appreciate George Adam’s understanding and sensitivity to the Opposition parties in giving way.
On grants, I was reading from information from the Prince’s Trust. A person who has been unemployed for some time must find it helpful to get a £500 grant to buy the tools that are needed for them to start an apprenticeship, rather than initially being landed with a loan. George Adam can consider tuition fees, but I was talking about the commencement of work experience or apprenticeships.
The point of the Government’s plans for college education and higher education in Scotland is that we are giving young people the opportunity to be all that they can be and to achieve everything that they can in the working world. We are not just picking and choosing what we want to discuss in whatever debate we are in.
Will George Adam give way?
I ask Mr Macintosh to let me move on.
Politics—our job—is about people. For me, it is particularly about the people of Paisley, which will not be surprising to members. What we do and the decisions that we make affect people and their families.
Today, I was at Jimmy McIntosh’s funeral in Paisley. He was a 90-year-old lifelong St Mirren man who ran supporters clubs for decades. He was a Paisley man to the core. Generations of St Mirren fans, Paisley people and members of his family attended the funeral. The place was a sea of black and white—the colours of St Mirren. During that highly emotional funeral, it occurred to me why we are involved in politics. All the people whom I saw today entrust us with their futures and the futures of their families. That is why I agree with Angela Constance that we must all—local councillors, Opposition members, members of the Government and SNP back benchers—play our part in tackling youth unemployment.
I also agree with Angela Constance that we must ensure that young people retain hope and ambition for the future, because they are, indeed, our greatest asset. I lived through the 1980s as a young man—I know that it does not show and that members will all be extremely surprised to hear that—and I experienced the devastation that was caused by the Thatcher Westminster Government. That is the cardinal difference between the position that Scotland is in now and the position that it was in then.
Scotland needs more powers; we need the levers and powers of independence, because there is only so much that we can do for Scotland and our future with the limited powers of devolution. When I looked at the people at the funeral, I realised that that is why I am involved in politics; that is what motivates me to come here every day to argue on behalf of the people of Paisley and the people of Scotland in general. We must stay focused and grounded.
If we look at the Government’s plans for the future, we find a number of measures that will make a difference to many of the people whom we represent. College reform will ensure that the FE sector better suits the needs of our young people, focuses on jobs and careers and provides high-quality futures for generations of young people. That is what the business sector wants, and that it is exactly what it said when the Education and Culture Committee discussed the issue. It wants young people to be able to work in the sector and to be all that they can be without intervention.
At local level, the previous SNP administration in Renfrewshire invested in our young people—it invested £2.5 million to create 800 to 1,000 jobs for 16 to 24-year-olds in Renfrewshire. That included a six-figure sum from Angela Constance’s department. I agree with the minister that we must all take responsibility for tackling youth unemployment and delivering for our people. That is why the Scottish Government will not adopt the heartless approach that previous Westminster Governments have taken to youth employment.
I mentioned that, for me, politics is about people—representing their needs and protecting their futures. Scotland needs the full levers and powers of independence if we are to deliver all that for our country. The Scottish Government has shown its continued support for our young people, and I back it in that endeavour. The issue is too important for us to play petty politics with and constantly to hit each other over the head with a metaphorical hammer. We must ensure that we get things right for our young people, because we do not want to go down the route that was taken by previous Administrations at Westminster.
15:53
I, too, welcome my new colleague Jayne Baxter. I enjoyed her speech very much and I look forward to working with her over the next few years. This is not good for her, but she sounds like my type of woman.
This afternoon’s debate is not just about getting people a job; it is about much more than that. Employment is an important factor in making people, families and communities who and what they are. Unemployment is an ugly scar that blights and debilitates communities. Quite simply, it is a national scandal. We will not discuss anything more important this year.
We have youth unemployment levels such as we have not witnessed since the 1980s. The youth unemployment rate in my village is 30 per cent—a level that has not been seen since the Thatcher Government butchered huge employers such as the National Coal Board and British Leyland. We are now in the middle of another closure of a big local employer—Hall’s of Broxburn—which is shedding 1,700 jobs.
When the First Minister tries to deflect criticism, he usually likes to talk about the number of people who are in employment, rather than the number who are out of work. If we use his methodology, we can see that, although unemployment has dipped recently, so has the number who are in employment. Mary Scanlon referred to that. Fewer people are working, even though the official unemployment rate has declined.
Another note of caution comes from the stark reality of what is going on in the real world. The labour force survey exposes the gravity of the situation. Since March 2007, the youth unemployment figure has increased from 51,000 to 87,000. That means 36,000 more young people are out of work under this Government. The claimant count shows that the number of 16 to 24-year-olds who are on jobseekers allowance has gone from 22,600 to 35,800. The number who had claimed benefits for more than six months was 3,700 in 2007 and is now 12,275, which is an almost fourfold increase. Even more worrying is that the number who had claimed for more than a year, which was 555 in 2007, was up to 7,050 by November. That is a twelvefold increase, yet Mr Brodie does not want to talk about statistics.
Perhaps most worrying of all is that 12.2 per cent of all young people are still not in education, employment or training. The last school-leaver destination figures showed that more than 11 per cent of school leavers did not go on to any positive destination. The most recent school-leaver destination figures were supposed to be published in December, but we appear still to be waiting for them. I hope that the minister will respond to that in summing up. I wonder whether the figures will be published later this week, after the debate.
Of course, for those who are fortunate enough to find work, underemployment is a major problem, about which members have spoken. Young people are much more likely to have the temporary jobs that economists have told the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee are dead ends. The Scottish Trades Union Congress describes those jobs as
“low wage and insecure with very little prospect of training or career progression.”
Given the grim jobs scene, we should support efforts to tackle overall youth unemployment. However, I say to Government back benchers that a fundamental part of the job of Parliament and parliamentarians is to hold the Government to account and to ask questions about the success, or otherwise, of policy. It is our duty to ask whether interventions are creating long-term and sustainable jobs or whether they represent merely a variety of ways in which to shuffle the figures by creating what one professional in the field recently said some of the schemes promote—“holding corrals” for the unemployed.
I understand the point that Mr Findlay makes. However, does he accept that, when the Opposition lodges amendments that suggest additional expenditure on transport, colleges, childcare and housing, it is the Opposition’s responsibility to tell us exactly where that money would come from and where the cuts would be made to fund the expenditure increase? Is it not also the Opposition’s responsibility to behave maturely?
I am sure that Mr Crawford took that position when he was in the Opposition and I am sure that he identified several times over every single penny that he would have spent—I do not think.
At this time, we would expect our colleges to be key to the drive to get people back to work, but a deliberate Government policy has been to target and reduce college funding. We have seen 70,000 places for part-time students cut, 1,400 jobs lost and fewer courses available. How on earth is that a sensible policy?
Members have mentioned the careers service, which we discussed a few weeks ago. We have heard staff, trade unions and independent academics highlight how the so-called modernisation will not improve but will hinder job prospects. How is that a sensible policy?
Will Neil Findlay take an intervention?
No. I am in my last minute.
What of the Government’s much-championed modern apprenticeship scheme? On the face of it, who could disagree with it? However, we have introduced the scheme without having any way to measure whether it is effective. Skills Development Scotland has written to me and stated exactly that. The Government cannot tell us whether any of the people who go through the schemes remain in full-time employment afterwards.
There are apprenticeships that last for three months and six months, and thousands more are completed within a year. Of course young people are right to take the opportunities, but rebadging vocational training and calling almost anything an apprenticeship diminishes the value of apprenticeships and leads young people on with false promises.
What about the get ready for work programme? Only 20 per cent of those on it are moving into full-time employment, and there are activity agreements with which people get a few hours of advice. That is now classified as a positive destination, and that is simply wrong.
Mr Findlay, you must conclude.
I am sorry, Presiding Officer. I know that I have come to the end of my time. I will leave things there.
I look forward to the rest of the debate.
16:00
I, too, thank Jayne Baxter for a very thoughtful and considered maiden speech. I agree that she will be an asset to Parliament.
The debate has focused on what everyone agrees is one of the most pressing concerns that Scotland currently faces. The Scottish Government is absolutely focused on tackling unemployment broadly, but it must be remembered that, during any economic downturn such as the current recession, young people always tend to suffer disproportionately in respect of employment opportunities. That is mainly due to the fact that in an increasingly competitive labour market, employers tend to employ those who have greater experience and skills and that, during uncertain times, many people are keen to hold on to positions that they are already in. That means less flux and fewer opportunities in the job market for young people who are looking for their first jobs. It is therefore clear that youth unemployment is not a new phenomenon.
In evidence to the Finance Committee last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation highlighted that youth unemployment started to rise in 2004 under previous Labour Governments at Westminster and Holyrood—long before the financial crash. I touched on that in my intervention during Ken Macintosh’s speech.
During the Finance Committee’s recent inquiry into employability, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts—NESTA—pointed out:
“The proportion of 16-19 year old NEETs has remained static since 1996.”
Official Scottish Government figures also show that the proportion of 16 to 19-year-olds not in employment, education or training was higher in 2005 than it was in 2011. As I mentioned earlier, the figure was higher by some 5,000 people.
Unemployment of any kind is, of course, a societal ill, but youth unemployment must be considered to be worse. In the paper entitled “Increasing the Employability of Disadvantaged Youth”—which Siobhan McMahon and Ken Macintosh quoted from—Bell and Blanchflower made it clear that, at current levels, youth unemployment in Scotland will incur future costs to the Government of £200 million and will result in £500 million of lost economic output. However, it is clear that individuals suffer much more as a result of unemployment.
There are many facets to the problems of youth unemployment that must be tackled to address the matter properly. The establishment of the United Kingdom’s first Minister for Youth Employment shows how seriously the Scottish Government views the matter.
As we heard in Tuesday’s debate, employability remains an issue of huge importance. Ensuring that young people are well prepared for the world of work is almost as important as ensuring the availability of work. The Scottish Government has done much to improve matters on that front for Scotland’s young people, and I am heartened by the cross-party consensus on the issue. Our opportunities for all initiative guarantees all young people between the ages of 16 and 19 a training or education opportunity if they need one.
The availability of jobs is, of course, massively important. With a 26 per cent cut to our capital budget, it is extremely difficult for the Government to create and sustain employment as we would wish through investment in major infrastructure projects. It is disingenuous of the Tories to pretend that a 26 per cent cut in capital and an 11 per cent cut in resource somehow have no impact on the ability to provide employment in Scotland. There were crocodile tears from Mary Scanlon over colleges; the Tories and their Lib Dem allies have completely eviscerated the college sector south of the border.
There are, of course, great hopes for Scotland’s economy, with the investment in our renewables potential, which has helped to meet our demands and fulfil our environmental obligations, and is creating thousands of highly skilled and well-paid jobs. We have heard from Opposition members that more money should be spent here and there, such as on housing. In 2011-12, the Government spent £352 million on building 6,882 houses. That helped to create and sustain jobs in the construction sector. In the final year of the previous Labour Government, only 4,832 houses were completed for £562 million. Given the difficult financial situation, we are doing what we can to ensure that the construction sector works, that houses are built and that we succeed in our objectives.
The Scottish Government is also doing a lot to incentivise recruitment by businesses. I was heartened when Kezia Dugdale said on Tuesday:
“I know that the Government understands the potential that young people have to offer businesses; its own make young people your business initiative demonstrates that.”—[Official Report, 8 January 2013; c 15144.]
I was also heartened by her comment that she welcomes the employment recruitment incentive.
In a recent survey by the FSB, a third of respondents felt that their businesses generate enough work to need extra help, but only 28 per cent were thinking of recruiting. The £15 million of funding for the employer recruitment incentive to create up to 10,000 jobs will therefore be welcome.
I was deeply disappointed by Neil Findlay’s speech—hardly a first. It was all criticism, with no solutions whatever. He should be ashamed of his comments on apprenticeships—that they are somehow worthless and meaningless. The minister will make it clear that those apprenticeships are being evaluated and that they make a significant contribution to reducing youth unemployment.
Our manufacturing sector is not able to produce the number of jobs that it once did. For example, between 1997 and 2007, when Labour was in control at Westminster, the number of manufacturing jobs in Ayrshire fell from 28,000 to 13,500; more than half those manufacturing jobs were lost in only a decade. Indeed, Scotland lost more than 100,000 jobs from that sector.
The Scottish Government is by no means complacent and there is much work still to be done to bring unemployment levels down further. However, it is clear that this Government remains fully committed to making sure that everyone has the opportunity to work and to play their part in society.
MSPs can also do more and I am delighted that the Minister for Youth Employment is attending the Ardrossan jobs fair that I am hosting on 4 February, which has strong support and commitments from employers and from providers of education, training and volunteering opportunities. More members should look at what they can do as individuals to help combat unemployment in their areas.
Kenneth Gibson has not invited me to come along to that jobs fair.
If Margaret McDougall wants to explain how many jobs she is thinking of providing or whether she will provide any training or volunteering opportunities, I may consider inviting her.
16:07
I congratulate Jayne Baxter on her excellent maiden speech, and I look forward to many more of her speeches.
The most recent statistics show that youth employment in Scotland is falling. If we exclude those in full-time education, we find that 21.6 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds are unemployed and, as Angela Constance has pointed out,
“The percentage of young people in the workforce in the public and private sectors has been falling since 2005”.—[Official Report, Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, 19 December 2012; c 2288.]
Both nationally and locally, female youth unemployment is worse than male unemployment. It becomes a much more complex issue when we take into account young women with children, because they have to find not only a job but affordable childcare, which can be extremely difficult if the only jobs on offer are part-time or involve working unsociable hours.
In North Ayrshire, one in eight young people face little chance of finding employment. Youth unemployment has doubled in the past five years from 6.5 to 12.6 per cent, and it shows no sign of improving. That means that North Ayrshire is the second fastest rising youth unemployment hotspot in the UK. Many of those young people feel that they have nothing to aspire to and nothing to look forward to.
We must remember that behind every statistic there is a human being who is struggling to get by and, if we are not careful, many could fall through the cracks. North Ayrshire Council welcomed the one-off £800,000 payment from the Scottish Government last year to help to address youth unemployment, but with the scale of unemployment in the area there is a need for such support to occur regularly.
Last year I attended an event at the Playz in Pennyburn, Kilwinning, where I spoke to numerous young people and heard about their experiences of looking for work in the area and the struggles that they faced. All those young people were actively looking for work but were unable to find quality jobs. Many were suffering from underemployment and had to resort to part-time and temporary work just to get into the labour market. In some cases, they were overqualified but felt that such work was the only option that they had left.
Underemployment is a serious problem in Scotland, particularly among young men. In Scotland, 10.95 per cent of the population are underemployed, so I am pleased that the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee is undertaking an inquiry to explore the impact of underemployment on the economy and on the people concerned. We will hear the results of that inquiry in due course.
North Ayrshire’s most recent area profile states:
“the proportion of school leavers going into full time higher and further education is much higher at 68.7% in North Ayrshire than for Scotland as a whole (62.9%).”
Although that is welcome, it is also a reflection on the available alternatives that exist for young people, many of whom would rather go into work.
Worryingly for young people, a 24 per cent real-terms cut in college places between 2011 and 2015 means that opportunities in further education are reducing. We need to develop an approach that not only encourages young people to go into education but ensures that there are quality jobs and apprenticeships out there when they want to join the labour market.
I welcome the current investment in apprenticeships, but more needs to be done. The CITB-ConstructionSkills briefing states that the industry is crying out for skilled young people, argues that the industry is facing a “retirement timebomb” and notes that only 12 per cent of construction workers are under 24. The Scottish Government needs to do more to get young people into trades, and yet the industry’s recovery is being threatened by further cuts to the Scottish housing budget.
Does the member feel that the schools have a part to play in that, too? Are they always pointing young people in the right direction for careers?
The schools have a part to play in that, as do colleges. We are all working together on the issue, so it should involve a partnership.
I was concerned to read in a recent Skills Development Scotland paper that some modern apprenticeships are only of six or nine months’ duration. It seems that a modern apprenticeship in accountancy lasts for only nine months. How can that be right?
I have been given examples of young people who are apprenticing in call centres under the guise of an administration apprenticeship. They are supported by a wage subsidy when in fact all that they are doing is making or taking phone calls. Does the Government really consider such a job to be a quality apprenticeship?
I am sure that we all have examples of young people who are being exploited by employers who are backfilling posts under the pretext of modern apprenticeships. I look forward to the publication of the Government’s report on the number of young people who have a positive destination after completing one of those modern apprenticeships—or are modern apprenticeships simply an exercise to reduce the unemployment statistics?
In tackling youth employment, we need to provide more training opportunities by encouraging more employers to take on young people, and we need to provide more college places rather than reduce them. We need to ensure that they are quality jobs and genuine training places that give young people the skills to fulfil their potential and the future that they deserve.
16:14
Like other members, I thank Jayne Baxter for her thoughtful contribution, and I look forward to more over the next few years.
Siobhan McMahon’s contribution was thoughtful and meaningful too. I did not agree with everything that she said, but at least she said it in the right spirit, which I welcome. I must also mention Neil Findlay’s intervention on Clare Adamson. It is not often that an MSP gets up in the chamber and proudly states that he knows what day it is, but I offer him congratulations anyway.
There is no doubt that the issue of youth employment is one of the most serious challenges facing Governments on both sides of the border. Just this week the Prince’s Trust published its report “The Prince’s Trust Youth Index 2013”, whose headline figures are stark and which highlights the personal impact that unemployment has on the young. Just over a quarter of the young people surveyed believe that their future prospects have been permanently damaged by the recession; one fifth of young people who are not in education, employment or training feel that they cannot cope with everyday life; and over a third “always or often” feel “down or depressed”.
The report also highlights that one third of the so-called NEETs did not have someone to talk to about their problems while they were growing up and that young people who have not grown up in a supportive family environment are twice as likely not to be in education, employment or training. It is important that we do all that we can for young people who have not achieved a positive destination, because not being in education, employment or training impacts heavily on health and wellbeing. According to the Prince’s Trust report, 49 per cent of NEETs are unhappy with their lives, compared with the 14 per cent of young people in education, employment or training who state that.
That is why the Scottish Government’s commitment to its opportunities for all programme, which guarantees a place in education, employment or training for every 16 to 19-year-old, is important for the health and wellbeing of our younger citizens. It is important, too, because having young people in the workforce is beneficial not just to them but to us. It will help Scotland to achieve the modern, vibrant, well-educated and trained workforce that will be the cornerstone of our economic recovery.
The testimonials included in the guide for the make young people your business scheme show that far more can be gained than lost by having young people in the workplace. I hope that members across the chamber will consider signing my motion on the scheme, which has been marked for a members’ business debate. I strongly believe that, as well as businesses working to make young people their priority, all members in this chamber should work to make them their priority, too.
I held a constituency jobs fair last October that the Minister for Youth Employment came to. I thank her for the time that she took to speak to those who attended and to the exhibitors. I think that she will agree that the fair was perceived as a huge success. I thank, too, Langside College for hosting the fair and for publicising it within the college. We also publicised it externally through local papers, social media and so on. Ultimately, more than 500 people attended, and a number of large employers in my constituency, including the NHS, the Glasgow Housing Association, City Building and Asda, were there, along with representatives from Skills Development Scotland, Jobcentre Plus and a number of training organisations, who were able to give more general help, advice and assistance.
Despite what has been said about the my world of work website, it was one of the things that seemed to attract people’s attention at the fair. Quite a number of people looked at it, including a lot of young kids—they looked like young kids to me, although they were probably in their twenties. However, they seemed to be attracted by the website and to see its benefits.
The feedback that I have received on the fair from both organisations and participants has been extremely positive. The participants said that the opportunity to make contacts, find out more about training opportunities and get tips on how to structure CVs, apply for jobs and undertake the interview process, in a setting that was more informal and less intimidating than they are used to, was beneficial to them. I have since spoken to some of them who have gone on to get interviews that I hope will lead to employment for them. I am waiting for responses back on that.
The organisations involved in the fair also saw its benefits. It was an opportunity for them to network with other like-minded organisations, to speak to people face to face whom they would normally deal with only by email, to publicise their employment and training opportunities in a different way, and to have access to a pool of potential workers already showing how keen and committed they are to finding employment or training opportunities. A number of the organisations have been back in touch to pledge their support for future events.
I am currently in the middle of my second competition for a paid intern. All high schools in my constituency, or where constituents attend, have been involved, and the interviews are taking place later this month. Last year’s intern, Campbell, was a great addition to the office, and I am confident that this year’s winner will be equally so. No matter what the predominant rhetoric of the UK Government is, we know that young people as a group are not the feral, feckless, workshy, lazy, computer-game-playing scroungers that they are made out to be. In the shameful common Westminster parlance, they are much more likely to be strivers than skivers.
We are all aware at the local level of so much good work that young people do for their peers and the community at large, be it through youth groups, churches or any number of other ways. Indeed, the Scottish Youth Parliament played an integral role in civic Scotland in a number of key campaigns over the past year, including their love equally campaign for marriage equality, their one fair wage campaign on the implementation of the living wage, and their votes at 16 campaign, because being able to pay tax, get married, start a family, join the army and drive before being able to vote for who leads the country is both unjust and unfair.
This Government is clear in its commitment to the next generation of Scots, and the make young people your business initiative is just the latest in a long line of initiatives that the SNP has taken to show that young people are an integral part of the common weal of Scotland. However, only full powers over the economy will allow us to have a Scottish solution to Scotland’s employment challenges and to ensure that, with welfare reform in Scotland, we have our own welfare system—one in which “welfare” is the important word, and not one under which those at the bottom of the wealth ladder are forced to pay for the sins of Westminster’s politicians, both past and present, and the greed and profligacy of bankers.
I listened to the speeches that have been made during the debate, and I have pointed out the ones that I was taken by. One or two others were pretty much what we would expect, as my colleague Chic Brodie said. If we are going to have a serious debate about the future of our young kids, it is incumbent on Opposition members, and particularly those from the main Opposition party, to use it not as an opportunity to have a go at the Government but as an opportunity to put their vision of how they would help the young people of Scotland. I beg Opposition members to realise that it is incumbent on them, as an Opposition and as what they see as a future Government of this country, to come to the chamber with another plan and not just another plan of attack on the Scottish Government.
I would be grateful if you could draw to a close, please.
Until they do that, they are abusing the privileged position in which we all find ourselves as MSPs. Our young people deserve better.
16:21
I, too, congratulate Jayne Baxter on her thought-provoking and well-measured maiden speech. I was one of the young people who took part in the YTS—I was a yopper—and from that training post I secured permanent employment, so I share her conviction regarding initiatives to lessen the impact of unemployment on young people.
Youth employment is an incredibly important issue. In my time today, I want to focus on disadvantaged young people, whose routes to employment have more barriers than most, even when there are more jobs to go round.
At the end of February last year, more than 16,000 children and young people were being looked after by councils in Scotland. The figure has increased annually since 2001. Some 1,408 of those leaving care in 2010-11 were between 16 and 21 years old. Those are young ages at which to deal with a major life event and strive to become a self-sufficient adult. The difficulties of such a transition are evident when we consider that a third of homeless people were formerly in care. On the whole, care leavers have poorer educational qualifications and health outcomes than their peers and, notably, they are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system.
Many companies, local authorities and other governmental institutions are offering modern apprenticeships. The City of Edinburgh Council recently announced a further 50 such apprenticeships. As there is a particular issue regarding the employment of young people leaving care—Liam McArthur mentioned the issue, too—I ask the minister to ensure that all local authorities share best practice and try to ensure that looked-after children are given every opportunity to take up such apprenticeship places where they are available, because future life chances for looked-after young people are improving where councils are focusing on getting care leavers into education or employment.
Third sector organisations such as Barnardo’s and Action for Children have expertise in supporting young people to maintain college, training and work placements, and funding support for such initiatives is very much preventative spending. Research by the University of York in 2010 showed that every young person who is not in employment, education or training costs public authorities an average of £56,000 over their lifetime. Demos has demonstrated savings of more than £90,000 where children in care leave at 18 with good qualifications and good mental health, compared with those who leave care at 16 and a half with no qualifications and mental health problems. We know, too, that 23 per cent of the adult prison population has been in care. That highlights the need for holistic and personalised employment support for these young people.
This week, the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee started an inquiry into underemployment that will investigate tackling in-work poverty without increasing overall unemployment. The issue was underlined by a Barnardo’s report this week called “Paying to work: childcare and child poverty”. It found that the introduction of the universal credit benefit system as it stands will mean that a lone parent who is in part-time, low-paid work will lose out financially if they increase their work hours, because they will need more childcare. The Scottish Government plans to increase flexibility and the number of hours of childcare, and I welcome that as it will help to remove barriers to young parents entering education or employment. That increased flexibility is urgently needed—and I raised that issue during our previous debate on colleges.
I feel uncomfortable with the apparent priority that universities have been given over colleges. I am extremely supportive of the Government’s aim to base access to education on ability to learn and not ability to pay, but it does not sit well with me that universities should be supported while colleges are made to feel the pain of £34.6 million-worth of cuts to their grants. Colleges are part of the answer to employability and are essential for optimal youth employability. Notwithstanding that many people would much rather learn on the job and gain work-based qualifications, colleges are the institutions that can provide the access and flexibility that many disadvantaged young people need.
I would also like to talk about enterprise. The stand-out fact in the FSB briefing this week was that the UK labour force survey demonstrates that, between 2008 and 2011, 88 per cent of people who moved from unemployment to private sector employment found work in SMEs, compared to 12 per cent who found work in large businesses. It is clear, as the FSB says, that employment in small firms is the most important route to employment for the unemployed and economically inactive. Annabel Ewing touched on that, too.
Our youth employment efforts must also focus on supporting businesses to recruit and train the right young people. I ask the minister to recognise in her closing speech the importance of microbusinesses and small businesses as employers of previously unemployed people, and to listen to the FSB’s wealth of experience in how existing microbusinesses can best be supported to recruit young people.
Finally, it is important to recognise the enterprising talents of young people who can, if given the chance, become very successful with their own businesses. The last motion in Parliament lodged by my predecessor, Robin Harper, called on the Government to create a microfinancing scheme for young people, and since then I have been pleased to see the Grameen microfinance model being set up in Scotland, as it has the potential to help those locked out of the financial system.
16:27
On Tuesday we had a debate on employability and it is good to have a debate on a related topic today. As I did on Tuesday, I would like to spend a bit of time looking at work experience, but first I will comment on some of the speeches that have been made.
I particularly note some of the Labour speeches. For example, Ken Macintosh seemed to be critical of the fact that cuts from Westminster were being passed on. Surely the cuts from Westminster have to be passed on because we have nowhere else to get money from.
Will the member give way?
Oh, straight in. Okay.
The point that I was making, which Mr Mason perhaps can address, is that Westminster has a particular agenda, which is to cut the public sector, but there is absolutely no need for the Scottish Government to follow the same agenda. [Interruption.] Why is the Government cutting the public sector and not protecting public employment in Scotland?
I missed some of the detail of that, because my fellow back benchers were heckling you.
Ken Macintosh’s first point was that there is no need to pass on Westminster cuts. There is nowhere else for the money to come from—we have to pass on the Westminster cuts. The question is how we do it and the point has been made—in the Labour amendment especially—that we are looking for more money for colleges, housing and transport, which we all support; however, there has been no suggestion from Labour or, I think, the Tories or Lib Dems, about where that money should come from. I give credit to Alison Johnstone, who suggested that we could trim university funding to give more to colleges. Is that what Labour is saying, or is it saying that the money has to come out of thin air?
I have two suggestions, the first of which regards the rail improvement programme. The Government could borrow from the rail asset base and I would like to ask the SNP why it is not doing so.
Secondly, why has the SNP cut its own PFI by more than £330 million? What is wrong with using that money to get shovel-ready projects off the ground?
I will deal with the second point first. Traditional funding and, preferably, saving, which we should have been doing for many years, is what we should be using for capital projects, primarily.
If we can run eight-coach trains from Queen Street to Edinburgh on the railway system more cheaply than running more six-coach trains, which are harmful to the environment, I support the eight-coach trains and the cheaper option.
I agree with Mary Scanlon that grants are better than loans. That applies to students, the Prince’s Trust and the social fund. Grants are better than loans—full stop.
I agree with Jayne Baxter that universities are not the right way for everybody.
I was also interested in Neil Findlay’s criticism of Clare Adamson, saying that she was merely describing the problem, given that he then spent six minutes doing the same.
I said that I would like to spend a bit of time on work experience, which was mentioned in Tuesday’s debate. I welcome the report that most employers who take on young people find them ready for work; however, there is still a perception—or indeed the real problem—that many of them lack experience. As a result, I very much welcome the intention behind SDS’s make young people your business campaign to encourage employers to help young people to build up their skills.
The issue came up a number of times in the Finance Committee’s employability inquiry and the overall feeling was that there was room for improvement. Schools might be encouraging one-week placements—I have had a number of youngsters in for a week and, indeed, have another coming in next week—but the fact is that there can be a few hoops to go through. For example, in an evidence-taking session for the employability inquiry, a witness from Menzies Hotel said:
“Recently, Glasgow City Council surveyed the hotel for a work placement and, in its paperwork, it probably went into more detail than the environmental health officers go into. The person in question was not allowed to pull out a bed, touch anything in the leisure club or do this, that or the other.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 23 May 2012; c 1212.]
At the inspection that we had on Monday, we were told that the pupil must not use cleaning materials and there was a question whether the office was warm enough, as if it might not be—which might sometimes be the case.
Of course, schools have to be responsible about the places that they let their pupils go to, but I sometimes wonder whether they are making things too difficult for employers. Even a one-week placement is very little. It would be difficult to say that, after it, the employer knew the young person very well or the young person understood the job to any great extent.
That is a problem not just for school pupils but for graduates, who cannot get a job or even an interview because they have no experience. I agree, however, that taking on an unpaid intern for a year can be considered exploitation. What, then, is the answer? The motion refers to members being involved in this work and, indeed, as small employers ourselves, we can be involved and set an example. I have been trying to think of some of the things that I could do. In the autumn, I took on a graduate who had no experience and needed some; however, I decided to limit his work experience to 120 to 150 hours to ensure that it would not be considered exploitation. I think that he managed to get reasonable experience and we can now write him a reference that he can use elsewhere.
Moreover, real work experience has to be provided. Recently, there has been some media coverage about the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus encouraging employers to change real jobs into work experience in order to meet their targets. Allegedly one Glasgow nightclub took on 40 youngsters for the busy November and December season, had them work unpaid from 7 pm to 3 am and eventually took on only three as actual employees. That is not right and when I raised the matter with one of the agencies that work with the DWP on a recent visit, it said that it had refused to take part in certain schemes that it felt to be dodgy.
We all want to do more within our limitations. We can and will do more but we could do a lot more if we were independent.
We now move to closing speeches. I call Liz Smith to close for the Conservatives. Ms Smith, you may have a generous six minutes.
16:33
Some very interesting points have been raised in this debate, which I think has struck a very interesting tone. After all, tone is as important as the context in which we are discussing many of these issues, and several members have mentioned the fact that the debate comes on top of other debates that have a coherence with it. That is important because we all have a responsibility for tackling youth unemployment. We also have a responsibility to focus on employability because, as Mary Scanlon made clear in setting out the statistical facts as proof, it is essentially the main issue in this debate.
Mary Scanlon is absolutely right to say that there are some signs of progress that it would be churlish to diminish in looking at the overall picture. However, what remains clear is the considerable gap between demand and supply in different aspects of the labour market, not just with regard to the total numbers but in the qualitative adjustments required. I was struck by comments made from all parts of the political spectrum by Chic Brodie, Liam McArthur, Ken Macintosh and Siobhan McMahon about the need to drill down into some of this. After all, we cannot simply come out with blanket statements.
Apart from the underemployment issue, which Ken Macintosh rightly raised, there are three main problems. First, there are those who are willing and able to work but who are unable to find work in an economy that is obviously demand-deficient at the moment and prone to some very serious cyclical downturns. Secondly, there are those who are willing and able to work but who cannot find a job because they do not possess the relevant skills and qualifications that would make them sufficiently attractive to employers who have jobs available. Then there are those who are able to work but who are, for one reason or another, unwilling to do so.
Each situation encompasses different problems in the labour market and, by definition, requires a different approach from Government. When we examine why just under half of 16 to 24-year-olds in Scotland are currently unemployed and why the youth unemployment rate here continues to be far too high, it is important that we look at the underlying trends and that policy focus distinguishes between different types of unemployment.
Several members said that many factors are at work, which is right. A concern that has been raised consistently, and which I think has emerged in almost every committee in the Parliament, given the consistent theme that employers take up when they make representations to parliamentarians, is the lack of employability skills among by no means all but too many of our young people. Employers say that too many school leavers have poor communication skills and a lack of understanding of the ethos that is expected and required in the workplace. Although employers acknowledge that there are outstanding programmes to address that issue, including many in the voluntary sector—we talked about the Prince’s Trust—time and again they make the point that policy is not sufficiently coherent across the country.
There is a wealth of evidence on the topic, and whether we consider the sophisticated economic analysis that the Confederation of British Industry produced or the sophisticated social analysis that Barnardo’s produced, we can see seriously worrying signs of personal barriers in the way of too many young people. Barriers can include poor literacy and numeracy skills, a lack of confidence and motivation, issues to do with housing and money management and, just as important, an inability to understand what is required in the workplace.
It is clear that an increasing number of commentators think that schools and colleges have the most significant part to play in tackling the problem. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce told the Finance Committee recently that a great deal more needs to be done to improve links between employers and schools and colleges and to address young people’s expectations. In that context, I congratulate Jayne Baxter on her thoughtful maiden speech. She made the point strongly that the transition between school life and working life is the most important one.
Members who attended the meeting of the cross-party group on colleges and universities just before Christmas, when we considered articulation, were struck by the contribution of Chantelle Robson, who is a classic example of the importance of successful articulation. The young lady is in her first job and made it clear that if she had not been lucky enough to get beneficial advice, she probably would not have succeeded. She argued strongly that careers guidance at school, particularly in secondary 3, should be much better.
I am interested in what the member is saying and I think that she is right. Does she have suggestions about how we improve careers guidance at school? Should we get teachers out into the workplace more often? Should we get more business people into schools?
The member has asked important questions. What the young lady said was that there must be a mixture of things. She argued that teachers should have additional qualifications, to help them to understand some of the problems that young people face. However, nothing beats work experience. As the member said quite rightly in his speech, it is important that people like us offer valuable work experience. A combination of approaches is needed and I do not underestimate their importance—I think that the Smith group made the same point to the Parliament.
I have great sympathy with the Labour amendment, because colleges are crucial and are central to the issue. I ask the Scottish Government again to reflect on how it can possibly justify the extent of the cuts that have been imposed on college budgets. The cuts are punishing the very institutions that have had the greatest impact on providing better and more flexible employment opportunities. Why on earth, at this time of such high youth unemployment, do colleges have to be punished?
I call Angela Constance to wind up—I beg your pardon; I call Kezia Dugdale. I will need to put my specs on.
16:39
I am quite happy to have the last word, Presiding Officer.
I take this opportunity to congratulate Jayne Baxter on an excellent maiden speech. The strength and depth of her experience is self-evident, and I think that her speech served as a timely reminder that we have a public duty, as politicians, to do everything that we can to help young people into work. Her words burst through some of the rhetoric and the back-slapping that we have heard this afternoon.
One thing that Jayne Baxter did not mention when she listed her impressive CV was the time that she spent as a youth club leader in Dunfermline’s Abbeyview, which was a pretty rough area back in the 1980s, full of unruly, challenging and cheeky young people, the worst offender among whom, I understand, was the young John Park. She is responsible for a lot in that regard.
I had not met Jayne until her election. Since then, however, we have put the world to rights on a couple of occasions, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I know that she will not only make a good parliamentarian but be a good friend to many people across the chamber.
When I saw the title of today’s debate, just before Christmas, I thought, “Great! The word ‘action’ finally appears in a Scottish Government motion,” and was glad that there would be no talk of strategies or consultation processes. I assumed that we would hear more details about the Government’s employment recruitment incentive, which is a long-standing Labour policy, whose implementation we have been calling for since the minister’s appointment. I was pleased to see it in the budget and I understand that it will be on stream from April. Surely today would have been the day to tell us more about it, as that would give business three months to get its head around the detail. It would certainly give people time to find the policy—I will deal with the complexity of the employability landscape shortly.
I am pleased to hear that the employment recruitment incentive will be focused on 18 to 24-year-olds, because I am becoming increasingly concerned about the focus on 16 to 19-year-olds, having met a 20-year-old guy in the Wester Hailes job centre recently who was desperate to be a mechanic but had been told that he was too old for Government help. That is just one story, but it represents a depressingly regular trend.
The latest figures show that the unemployment rate for 20 to 24-year-olds is on the rise, going from 8.9 per cent to 17.7 per cent in the past year alone. I say to Kenneth Gibson that he would perhaps be less enthusiastic about the opportunities for all proposal, which focuses on 16 to 19-year-olds, if he looked at the statistics in his constituency, where 33.6 per cent of 20 to 24-year-olds are out of work, which is almost double the national average—a generation of young people written off for not being young enough.
I am trying to do something about that, which is why, unlike any of the Labour members in the West Scotland region, I have organised a jobs fair.
Does Kezia Dugdale share my disappointment that, under the last Labour Government, 14,500 manufacturing jobs—more than half the total—were lost in Ayrshire?
So it is all Labour’s fault—we are back to the blame game.
I point out to Kenneth Gibson that Margaret McCulloch, who is not here today, has organised a jobs fair, and I know that she is not alone on the Labour benches in that regard. She has made a number of speeches in the chamber about that.
Surely, rather than having to set up his own jobs fair, Kenneth Gibson would prefer that his Government was taking action. I commend him on his action, but surely he would like his Government to do the same.
I mentioned the young guy in Wester Hailes, which is, of course, in Gordon MacDonald’s constituency. I admit to being truly shocked by his “everything is rosy” speech. He might have thought that the speech went down well with his front bench, but it would not have gone down particularly well in the Wester Hailes job centre. He also made great play of the importance of free higher education. He should take no joy in free higher education in his constituency when it is coming at the expense of college places. Under his Government’s education policy, in 2010-11, just three kids from Wester Hailes went to university. That is a classic case of free tuition contributing little to widening access to higher education. It is his Government that is cutting £900 from the bursaries of the poorest students, who I bet come from Wester Hailes. Far from widening access, his Government is ruining the chances of kids in his constituency of going to university.
Will the member give way?
No, I am afraid that I am not done yet.
Thirty-eight kids in Wester Hailes went to college in 2010-11. The member should look at the statistics.
Since 2008, under this Government, there has been a fall in student places of 79,000. Someone who lives in Sighthill can see Stevenson College across the road but cannot get in the door. I thought that the member’s speech was truly shameful.
Now you are scaremongering.
The cabinet secretary says that I am scaremongering, but I have the school leaver statistics on my desk and I can share them with him afterwards.
Will the member take an intervention?
I would rather not, if that is okay with Mr Findlay. I have a lot to get through.
Kenneth Gibson was, however, right to point to the fact that I welcome the Government’s “Make Young People Your Business” document. I spoke at great length on Tuesday about how much I welcome that. It is particularly important that we say to businesses that it is about not a moral duty to employ young people, but the opportunities that they give companies to build and grow. I completely welcome that, but I want to see more emphasis placed on getting that message out to businesses. I do not want this to be a glossy leaflet that sits in a council office, which businesses can rush by without picking up. We need to make sure that the message is getting out to businesses.
Earlier this week, the cabinet secretary talked about a website dedicated to promoting that, called “Our Skillsforce”. I have looked at the website and I am afraid that it has many of the same problems as the “My World of Work” website. I will share those with the minister. I hope that, if she takes one message away from the debate, it will be the need to look into this. Just before Christmas, the minister and I shared a platform not about youth unemployment, but about sexism and gender inequality. On that subject, we had a lot of views in common. On the home page of the website, there are 10 photos, nine of which are of young men and just one of which is of young women. I am sure that the minister will want to look at the presentational impact of that. There is also a page on the website about recruitment, with a message for businesses on how to access Government programmes. That one website page still has four different contact telephone numbers for businesses to access support. Once again, businesses are faced with the complexity of the employability landscape. Surely one telephone number would have been enough.
It gets worse. I thought about how, if I were a business, I would access support for youth recruitment. I googled the words “help recruiting a young apprentice in Scotland” and that website did not come anywhere in the first 10 listings on Google. I tried again, googling the words “our skillsforce Scotland”. Again, the website did not appear in the first 10 listings on Google. How are businesses going to access the website and find the support if it does not come up in a web search? I ask the minister to think seriously about the approach from a business perspective. How can businesses access the information and make the best of it? It is of no use if it is just in a glossy document.
In the time that I have left, I will say why Labour cannot support the Government today. We support an all-Government, all-Scotland approach but we do not think that the Government is doing enough. Where is the report on what the Government agencies are doing to tackle youth unemployment? Do they have their own strategies? What are Government departments doing across the board? How is the Government taking best practice from different local authorities and sharing it across the country?
The other big factor is the statistics. Of course, we welcome the fall in unemployment but we cannot help but point out that, when the figures were rising to over 100,000, the minister said that she could not do anything about it without the economic powers; yet, when the numbers are falling, she is claiming the credit for it as if it were all her own work.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am afraid that I have only seconds left—in fact, I am over my time. I am sorry, Mr Brodie.
We have supported every youth employment motion that has come from the Government to date, but our patience has worn thin. Today will be the day that we break that pattern. I am afraid that the lack of action and the hypocrisy of the way in which the Government has treated the statistics have led us to this position and that we cannot support the Government today.
I support the amendment in the name of Ken Macintosh.
16:48
I add my congratulations to Jayne Baxter on an eloquent maiden speech. I listened with interest to the activities that her colleagues on Fife Council supported—in particular, the appointment of a youth ambassador. She might be interested to know that North Lanarkshire Council has also appointed a youth employment ambassador, who even attended Alex Neil’s jobs fair in his constituency. I was thrilled to hear her talk about her contact and work with Jim Leishman. I am known to Jim from his days at Livingston Football Club. Far be it from me to cause any problems among the rank and file of the Labour Party in Fife—I hope that Jim will forgive me for saying this—but he spoke at a fundraising dinner on my behalf before I was elected in 2007. Jayne Baxter can take back to Fife my best wishes to Mr Leishman for all the work that he continues to do.
I hope that Mary Scanlon will forgive me, but we got a bit of light relief when she gave her grants-not-loans speech. Alasdair Allan and I looked at each other and thought, “Where was Mary Scanlon in the late 1980s, when we were fighting the Thatcher Government over the introduction of student loans?” However, I think that she has clarified her position on that.
Will the minister give way?
No. On a more important point, I want to reassure Mary Scanlon that there is no reduction in the number of training places for young people. The number of modern apprenticeships is up and we have delivered our commitments to the national training programmes. Also, in accordance with outcome agreements, 70 per cent of college provision will be targeted at 16 to 24-year-olds, which is actually a 5 per cent increase.
Liam McArthur and others raised a genuine point about looked-after children. We need to ensure that looked-after children get their fair share of opportunities, whether in the national training programmes or in the modern apprenticeship programme.
The third sector has an invaluable role in working with young people who are furthest away from the labour market—
Will the minister give way?
No, I have moved on.
I am very familiar with the Barnardo’s works project—in fact, I visited the project in my constituency last Thursday—and I know the work that it does in linking up with employers and reaching out to some of the most disadvantaged young people in our communities. I should emphasise that one reason why the Government funds the modern apprenticeship programme in every framework between the ages of 16 and 24 is, among other things, a recognition that quite often care leavers may not be ready to participate in a modern apprenticeship between the ages of 16 and 19 and may be in their 20s before they can do so.
As one of the children’s charities highlighted in its briefing paper—Alison Johnstone also raised this point—we need to do more to promote the modern apprenticeship programme among all children and young people. Members may be interested to know that the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration is a good public sector employer that leads by example in employing looked-after children, but I accept that much more needs to be done. As we go into 2013, as always we must seek to raise our game in terms of looked-after children. Yes, positive destinations for looked-after children have increased from 44 per cent to 55 per cent—those figures relate to sustained destinations—but that is still simply just not good enough.
Regarding Mr Macintosh’s speech, I say to him that I think that we agree on the scale of the problem. We know and understand the scarring or life-changing impact of youth unemployment that David Blanchflower has described. I also share Mr Macintosh’s concerns about long-term unemployment. That is why we have introduced, among other things, an employer recruitment incentive. I also share the concerns about underemployment, which is an issue for young people, is bad for our economy and is also an issue for women workers and for some graduates. Like others, I look forward to learning more about the issue from the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee’s inquiry.
I also agree with Mr Macintosh on the importance of capital investment, given that every £100 million of capital investment is estimated to support 1,400 jobs. Yes, the challenge is to ensure that, when we get economic growth, our young people are given the opportunity to benefit from that growth, and that is where procurement comes in. I began work with Mr Neil on the sustainable procurement bill—this is an all-Government approach—and, as part of our legislative programme, that work will continue with Ms Sturgeon.
On housing, which is mentioned in Mr Macintosh’s amendment although he did not say much about it in the debate, all that I will say is that our record is better than his. Perhaps, just now and again, Mr Macintosh and others could, with a bit more good grace, acknowledge the positives. We cannot allow ourselves to succumb to a cycle of despair. We must give out a strong and clear message that, whatever the scale of the challenge, we will strain every sinew to tackle the challenge. We must ensure that our young people receive a message of hope and not a message of despair.
I would have been more reassured if the Opposition had welcomed the recent drop in youth unemployment—25,000 fewer young people are unemployed now than were at this time last year. I know that this is no time for us to be taking our foot off the pedal, but that is a welcome step in the right direction.
Mr Macintosh talks about action. As part of our all-Government, all-Scotland response, we have identified an additional £80 million to assist 23,000 young Scots towards and into work. He talks about evaluation, too. I agree that that is important; we had a debate about that on Tuesday. However, the Labour Party never says which programme is not working, which programme it wants to improve or which programme it would scrap. Our national training programmes deliver a good job, but they can do much better. That is one of the reasons why we are moving towards an employability fund and moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach, and why we are having pre-vocational and pre-employment training that meets the needs of young people—including those young people most disadvantaged and far removed—and local economies.
I would have hoped that there would be some cognisance of the record levels of modern apprenticeships, the employment recruitment initiative, initiatives such as community jobs Scotland and the third sector challenge fund. We are taking a plethora of action.
Bruce Crawford made the sensible point that the Opposition never says how it will pay for its proposals for additional expenditure. I very much believe in social democracy, but I also know that we have to be able to pay for that.
A good thing about the debate is that we have, in a consensual manner, articulated that there are three strands to tacking youth unemployment. First, there is what we can do as individuals. We have heard about the jobs fair. I had one in my constituency and James Dornan had a hugely successful one. Labour members have also organised activities in their constituencies with a view to addressing issues relevant to their local needs. I urge all members to get behind and promote, in their constituencies, opportunities for all and the helpline, our modern apprenticeship programme and the make young people your business campaign, and to promote the employer recruitment incentive among small business, because that is where it is targeted.
One change that has occurred over the past decade that has adversely affected young people in the labour market is the reduction of large business and the rise of small business. Small businesses invariably want to recruit those who are tried and tested. There are other structural changes in the labour market that have had an adverse impact on young people. We need to create more entry-level jobs—that ladder of opportunity has been taken away from many school leavers who have reasonable qualifications.
We need economic and structural change to tackle youth unemployment. There is a case for structural reforms in relation to the early years, curriculum for excellence, colleges and career guidance. We have to make tough decisions in response to Tory cuts and adversity. However, we are also reforming public services in terms of prevention and early intervention. I hope that all members will unite behind the European Commission’s call and support its proposal for a youth guarantee to all young people up to the age of 25 that, within four months of unemployment, they can secure a place in education, get a job or get further training. That is something positive that we could engage with the UK Government to achieve. I hope that I will receive members’ support for that.
Change always happens. If we consider the NEET rate and youth unemployment at a time of economic growth, we see that we need change. Can any member look me in the face and say that it is not necessary? There are other countries in Europe that, despite the economic recession, have youth unemployment levels of less than 10 per cent.
I commend the good work that is taking place. We should celebrate the reduction in youth unemployment as a step in the right direction, but I assure the Parliament that we will most certainly not take our foot off the gas. We will, indeed, strive for a Parliament that has the full range of job-creating powers.