Whatever the uncertainties we face, we can be sure of one thing: failing to step up to support young people today guarantees economic failure tomorrow. The guarantee is supported by wide-ranging provision to ensure that young people can take up effective support that works for them. In this year alone, the Welsh Government has invested £390 million in sixth forms and further education, providing thousands of young people with a range of academic and vocational courses; £16.4 million in educational maintenance allowances; £5 million for extra places; and an additional £33 million to support young people in education to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

We have provided £152 million for apprenticeships. This includes £18.7 million for employer incentives encouraging the recruitment of young people. While apprenticeships are an all-age programme, around 39 per cent of apprentices starting in 2019-20 were under the age of 25. We have provided over £1.2 billion in higher education student support for 2021-22. In the previous year, around 60 per cent of Welsh higher education students were aged 16 to 24, meaning that our innovative package of maintenance grants and loans enable students, regardless of age, household or family income, to access higher education. In the past year, we have also provided £122 million of additional funding to build capacity and enable our universities to increase their hardship funding and support services to students affected by the pandemic. We provide £70 million per year to help people into work through a range of employability programmes, including ReAct, traineeships and community employabilty programmes. 

In June of this year, I announced our intention to develop the guarantee, and this week, I launched phase 1, which focuses on enhancing employability and skills provision. The comprehensive package brings together programmes designed to provide the right support at the right time, for the diverse needs of young people across Wales. This includes new user-friendly services to help young people more easily find opportunities. The young person's guarantee offer provides young people aged 16 to 24 in Wales with access to one simple route to the guarantee through Working Wales, with support and advice from advisers provided on multiple forums, including virtually, on the high street, and improved outreach facilities across Wales; a new user-friendly course search platform for those wanting to enter further or higher education; training and wage incentives through the ReAct programme; a place on one of our outreach community employability programmes; or self-employment advice and support through Big Ideas Wales, which is part of Business Wales; traineeships that provide work experience and training; help to find an apprenticeship; and a referral to one of the programmes funded by other partners, including the Department for Work and Pensions or local authorities.

Working Wales is also trialling a new job-matching service to assist young people with securing employment and to help employers fill vacancies. Our next steps in the development of the guarantee will include an enhanced programme for young people, aiding their transition into self-employment, with a package of business and financial support and advice. We will increase our focus on fair work and jobs. People aged 16 to 24 accounted for 16 per cent of all UK redundancies during 2020, so we have been developing new approaches to support the guarantee. There will be specific pathways to support recruitment into growth sectors, preparing people for jobs of the future, with two new flexible employability programmes—ReAct plus and Jobs Growth Wales+. We are expanding our jobs bulletin approach that has, this summer, advertised 20,000 jobs to young people, and we will be reaching out to employers through our 'We're in your corner' campaign, inviting employers to connect with Business Wales and to play their part in making the guarantee a success. We are prioritising young people and net-zero skills within the apprenticeship programmes.

With one in seven people in Wales self-employed, we need to ensure that the next generation fully understand this career path option. So, we will continue to inspire and support young entrepreneurs across Wales, and stimulate their ambitions to start their own businesses through Big Ideas Wales. We'll continue with our collaborative approach. So, regional skills partnerships will commence engagement events to shape guarantee provision within their area. Work is already under way nationally with the Department for Work and Pensions to try and ensure that programmes like Kickstart and Restart are ones that complement rather than compete or duplicate with provision that we provide. We do continue to call on the UK Government to work with us to shape a co-ordinated response in Wales and, in our view, to mitigate the impact of proposed cuts to welfare benefits and inequalities that will be created through the UK Government’s current approach to community renewal funds.

We will continue to listen to our young people through a series of focus groups between now and December, to understand how they view the support and offer available; what they want to see; and the barriers that they face. Tomorrow, I'll be launching the SkillsCymru event, and using it as a further opportunity for us to listen and engage with an audience of around 5,000 young people from across Wales on the jobs and skills agenda. This will, of course, feed through to the next phase of development for the guarantee in Wales.

As I have said before at the start of this statement, young people hold the key to Wales’s future success, and I am proud to lead the work on the young person’s guarantee. I will, of course, continue to keep Members informed on progress.