4. How is the Welsh Government helping young people into employment? OQ57632

We are investing £1.7 billion in the young person's guarantee over the next three years. Working Wales is the single gateway for access to the guarantee, including Jobs Growth Wales, Communities for Work Plus and apprenticeships. Working Wales is also trialling a new job-matching service to assist with securing employment.

Well, thank you, Minister. It is hugely ambitious, not least the target of 125,000 apprenticeships to be created by the Welsh Labour Government during this Senedd term, but, of course, this programme relies on securing money that used to come from the European Union, and so could you provide an assessment of the impact that the lost EU funds could have on skills training here in Wales, and the extent of funding that Wales has lost and is likely to lose as a result of UK Government decisions since we left the European Union?

Yes. Well, we think we're going to lose about £1 billion up to the end of the financial year 2024, £1 billion that should have come to Wales to be spent in Wales, and, of course, previously, that Ministers here would have had responsibility for making those choices and we would have been accountable to Members elected to this Parliament for those choices. We know that money both isn't going to be spent and the smaller replacement sums are not going to have decisions made at present by Ministers here, and they're going to go through local authorities, cutting out further and higher education, cutting out the third sector, and, crucially, undermining the way in which we fund skills and training programmes. For example, we expect to have lost £16 million of European funding just to support the apprenticeship programme by the end of 2024. That means that, in the £366 million that I announced last week to support the apprenticeship programme for the next three years, I've had to take that money from other priorities. Because the future of that 125,000 apprenticeship target is so important for the future of our economy, for the future of young people in particular, to make sure they do have hope for the future, I now have to make up for that by deprioritising other areas of spending, and that is a problem for the economy. I don't believe anyone voted for that, either in the referendum to leave the European Union or at the last election. No party said, 'We want to see less money spent in Wales and less support for the future of our economy', but that is the choice that we face. But it also underlines the importance of skills for the future and our continued investment and support for the apprenticeship programme. 

Can I thank the Member for Clwyd South for raising the issue? Minister, at the end of last year, I raised the issue of opportunities available to young people in Wales after a constituent wrote to me highlighting their concerns about a lack of apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships on offer to their children. Such opportunities are important, as we just spoke about, to help those young people get into employment. I appreciated your response to my letter, and I know you referenced the young person's guarantee, which was officially launched, we know, November last year, and includes more support for apprenticeships. This is in addition to initiatives like the skills and jobs fund, which provided funding to incentivise employers to recruit and retrain apprentices. Whilst these schemes are welcome, it's vital that they not only result in apprenticeship opportunities, but actually improve outcomes for young people, such as leading to further training and good quality jobs. So, Minister, what assessment have you made of the impact of these schemes on the availability of apprenticeships in Wales, as well as the outcomes that have been secured as a result of the opportunities created by the schemes? Because it's not just about money—it's about the outcomes that that money is being used on.

I'd be very happy to provide a further note to Members on this, because, actually, every time we have looked in the past, certainly in my membership of this place, we've actually found that apprenticeship outcomes for people in Wales compare very favourably with other parts of the UK, in particular across the border in England. You can find more people completing their apprenticeships and going on to secure employment. And, to be fair, the previous questioner, during his time both as a Deputy Minister, when he had responsibility for skills, and then in his time as the economy Minister, has had oversight for a significant part of that success. I'd be more than happy to provide a note setting out the outcomes achieved and the benefit that apprenticeships provide for individuals and the economy here in Wales. 

In a recent labour market update, the unemployment figures for Swansea West were roughly three times the national average, at 10.3 per cent. One in 10 people in our second largest city are currently without employment. This situation becomes even more stark when you factor in that youth unemployment is typically higher than regular unemployment. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds in Wales is currently 12 per cent, with the figure for Swansea sure to be higher than this if we assume that youth unemployment figures follow the same trend as general unemployment figures for Swansea West. Could the Minister outline specifically how the youth jobs guarantee and other youth employment schemes will seek to address youth unemployment, not just in Swansea, but across South Wales West? And when does he expect to see these employability schemes bear fruit?

Well, some of the schemes that we're going to provide should bear fruit rather more immediately. For example, we've got the opportunity to carry on supporting young entrepreneurs through Big Ideas Wales—you can see those people starting up their businesses; you can see the barriers to employment fund that we're providing. So, you'll find some of them will have a more immediate impact and others will take longer, because, in the employability support we provide, for example, in the Job Growth Wales+ scheme, a range of the support schemes is actually about making sure people are ready for jobs, looking at the skills issues they have, looking to supporting them with a personalised range of support around them, so you're going to see a longer term impact of that.

And, actually, I expect to publish the new employability plan in the coming weeks, and that again will set out further detail on how we are going to use the responsibilities and the resources we have to be able to complement what the Department for Work and Pensions are now doing, and that will probably mean we're going to seek to address the challenges of people who are further away from the labour market. So, it's likely to cost more than DWP schemes, helping people who are, essentially, job ready, but also it may take longer to get those people ready. But, as we do publish the employability strategy, I look forward to being able to provide more detail on the points you make and how we'll then assess the outcomes that we think we're going to be able to achieve with and for people, whether young people or older people, in terms of the employment outcomes we want to see in every community across Wales.