Item 4 is next, and that's a statement by the Minister for Economy: a young person's guarantee, ensuring a better future for our young people. And I call on the Minister, Vaughan Gething.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We launched our ambitious young person's guarantee in November last year, with the aim of supporting 16 to 24-year-olds to access work, education, training or business start-up support. We made this commitment so that no-one would be left behind, and have committed £1.4 billion a year to support young people across Wales. And the need for the young person's guarantee is as strong as ever. Against a backdrop of extreme economic volatility, the chances of a recession have increased, and there is still a need to help avoid a lost, disengaged generation as a result of the pandemic. That's why we are providing support for over 300,000 young people within the first two years of this Government term.

There is wide-ranging evidence that the disruption that the pandemic has caused has particularly affected young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The young person's guarantee will help us to prevent inequalities widening further, as a new generation moves towards the labour market. By focusing on people who are under-represented, on those young people who face disadvantage and inequality in accessing work, we will be creating a more equal Wales and a stronger economy. Fourteen per cent of young people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training. That rate is too high, and our support is wedded to the long-term ambition to reduce this rate to at least 10 per cent. This means reaching and maintaining an additional 13,600 young people through programmes like the young person's guarantee over the coming decades. This is part of the route to a stronger and fairer Welsh economy, where people are supported to fulfil their potential. And we're taking wide-ranging action, tailored to the needs of people facing barriers to work.

Since the young person's guarantee has launched, we have enhanced how young people gain access to high-quality advice and guidance services. Where once there was a confusing range of options, opportunities and advice systems, the Working Wales service now provides a single route to support, coupled with careers advice and guidance. The Working Wales job-matching service also helps young people to find the right employment opportunity. Since 1 November last year, 4,729 young people have accessed this service, of which 2,249 were NEET.

Last month, I also launched our new young person's start-up grant, offering up to £2,000 to help young people to start their own business. This help is backed by one-to-one business advice and mentoring—practical help for young entrepreneurs taking those first exciting steps in starting a business. I'm pleased to say that we have improved access to our apprenticeship programme and other work-focused support. For instance, I have recently launched two new programmes: Jobs Growth Wales+, which will help to support 5,000 16 to 18-year-olds each year who are struggling to gain access to training. The new ReAct+ programme will also support up to 5,400 young people each year, providing practical help with childcare and transport costs. We've also taken steps to extend support into our communities to help young people to start their employment and career journey, including providing community mentors through the Communities for Work Plus programme. Already, 1,700 people have accessed the programme for support since November last year.

The education offer of course remains a key part of the young person's guarantee. During the current academic year, we've invested £98.9 million in sixth forms, £271.8 million in further education, with an additional £4.7 million on personal learning accounts for young people. In order to help young people to find the right course, we've also established a new user-friendly course search platform called 'courses in Wales', with user-friendly information on over 13,500 courses.

However, there is, of course, still more to do. The young person's guarantee is not and will not be a static offer. We're listening to young people to build on our progress and learn lessons as we move forward into what are still deeply uncertain times. We will continue holding a series of national conversations and developing a youth advisory board to bring the voices of young people directly into the design of the young person's guarantee. Stakeholders like Children in Wales have been appointed as our national conversation facilitators and they will continue to help us to hold conversations with young people through a series of co-ordinated events until September this year. Evidence already gathered from early conversations with young people is helping to inform our next steps. That's why we've created a summer of opportunities for young people that focus on key topics, such as health and well-being, employability and life skills, equipping them with the confidence to progress onto their next steps.

Further education will also provide new employment and enterprise bureaux that will support learners with work search, work experience and encouragement to become self-employed throughout the next academic year. We also plan to enhance the self-employment offer by providing further outreach and an enhanced package of support to young people, including a financial grant.

The renew and reform project will work to support learners with their education and well-being. This includes the Careers Wales-led tailored work experience programme aimed at re-engaging year 10 and 11 learners. Working together with both the young person's guarantee and the youth engagement and progression framework, we should do our best to ensure that young people make a positive transition into education, employment or training when they leave school.

We intend to test some new ways of working via our generation Z pilots, helping young victims of modern slavery; delivering workshops on the social model of disability and commitments within our anti-racist plan; as well as taking the young person's guarantee into the secure estate. This will be underpinned by system-wide improvements to data and tracking systems for those young people who are not in education, employment or training.

Dirprwy Lywydd, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales will also fund the Reaching Wider programme to engage with primary and secondary schools, and adults aged 21 and over who don't have higher education qualifications.

We will continue to ensure that the young person's guarantee evolves and continues to address these challenging and changing economic times, as we strive to support the people who will determine the long-term success of the Welsh economy.

Can I thank the Minister for his statement this afternoon? As I've said on previous occasions, I broadly welcome the Welsh Government's intention to provide everyone under 25 in Wales with the offer of work, education, training or self-employment, and today's statement provides us with a useful update on some of the work that has been done in this area.

There's been some welcome progress in supporting young people who want to set up their own business, and today's statement refers to the young person's start-up grant, which offers up to £2,000 to help young people start their own business. The Minister will know that I've called for targeted support for young people who want to start their own business, so I'm pleased to see this funding, and I hope this funding will make a real difference in due course. 

Of course, it's absolutely crucial that there is as much collaboration as possible with the HE and FE sectors, and whilst today's statement gives us a little bit of information in this area, I'd be grateful if the Minister could expand on the points highlighted in this statement, and tell us a bit more about the Welsh Government's plans to foster further collaboration in the future. 

Today's statement reinforces the importance of supporting young people to gain the skills and experiences they need to succeed, and we need to ensure that young people from all backgrounds are able to access opportunities. The Minister made it clear at the start of this Senedd that there would be a national conversation with young people to ensure their views were central to the delivery of the programme, and I'm pleased to hear from today's statement that that is taking place over the summer. So, perhaps the Minister can tell us a bit more about how that engagement will continue to take place after September, so that they continue to play a part in shaping this programme.

It's important that nobody is left behind, and that young people with additional learning needs, for example, also have access to opportunities. Therefore, I hope the Minister will tell us more about how the Government is working to ensure young people with disabilities are accessing employment and learning opportunities under the young person's guarantee, as well as ensuring that young people from all backgrounds are accessing opportunities, particularly via the generation Z pilots.

Now, today's statement also refers to the ReAct+ programme, which builds on the current ReAct programme and helps empower people seeking work in Wales with a direct application process, financial support and free careers advice. It's great to hear that up to 5,400 young people each year are being supported with practical costs like childcare and transport costs, and perhaps the Minister can tell us what plans he has to build on this really important work. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, the young person's guarantee has the power to help raise aspirations, and the delivery of high-quality apprenticeships is also important. As the National Training Federation for Wales has said, more than a quarter of Welsh businesses rate apprenticeships higher than any other qualification, and we know that they play a vital role in developing a future pipeline of talent, and offer apprentices the chance to gain valuable experience whilst continuing their studies. The Minister has rightly invested in apprenticeships in the past, and perhaps he can tell us a bit more about any plans to increase the number of apprenticeships available, and also tell us how the Welsh Government is promoting apprenticeships to businesses and organisations in all parts of Wales, so that young people have access to these opportunities in whatever part of Wales they live.

As the young person's guarantee starts to really develop, the Welsh Government must ensure that there are robust milestones in place to ensure that it's delivering what it's meant to, and to ensure that any funding allocated to the programme is being used effectively and delivering value for money. Therefore, I'd be grateful if the Minister could explain just how the Welsh Government will be assessing the young person's guarantee, so that we can be confident that not only does it have the resources that it needs, but that those resources are being used to maximum effect.

And finally, the Welsh Government can learn lessons from other administrations across the UK, such as the Scottish Government's young person's guarantee, who have also been pushing ahead with the delivery of a similar programme there. And so, perhaps the Minister could tell us whether he has reached out to Scottish Ministers to hear more about the work that has been done in Scotland on the young person's guarantee, and if there's been any useful feedback from those discussions that could help shape the future delivery of the programme here in Wales.

So, in closing, can I thank the Minister again for his statement today and reaffirm my commitment to constructively working with him on this agenda, so that all young people in Wales have access to education, employment and training opportunities? Thank you.

I thank the Member for his series of questions, and the constructive nature of the tone and content of them. On the start-up grant, it's worth mentioning that, today, the application window's gone live on the Big Ideas Wales website. So, if there are young people who are watching these proceedings, there may well not be, but, if there are, then they can go onto the Big Ideas Wales website to find more information about how to not just apply for that support, but, crucially, the pre-start-up and post-start-up advice, support and mentoring that is part of that offer.

There were a number of questions about the engagement of young people. I'm very pleased to have more questions on this, to expand a bit further. So, in the events we're running up to into September, we've got a range of work that's going to take place over this summer. But, as I indicated in the statement initially, we've already made some changes and reflected on some challenges for us with our initial engagement. We've had 10 different events as part of the start of that national conversation, including direct engagement with a range of people who have greater challenges.

The Member mentioned disabled young people; we know that employment outcomes for disabled people are significantly less advantaged than the rest of the population, as they're much less likely to be in work and much less likely to be in good work as well. So, we've deliberately had part of that engagement with disabled young people. We've also looked at a range of people who face barriers, like, for example, homeless young people, and we've been able to work together with local government, actually, on that, with their homeless service co-ordinators. So, there is work with a range of partners across the piece, to try to understand the particular challenges that young people face.

One of the key issues, actually, was that there's still a lack of awareness about where to go for support. So, there are some practical barriers in getting people to engage in the service, but even if they want to engage, we need to make more visible Working Wales's role as a single gateway. So, we've done the right thing in slimming down all of the different front doors, to have one front door for people to get through, but we still need people to understand where and how to go about that, so that work is going to be ongoing. But I think, for example, the work we're doing in further education will be helpful with that, about a new access point where a lot of our young people already are, to get them to the right place for their future aspirations.

When we go through, not just the continued delivery and engagement we'll have with young people in the programme, but your point about from September onwards, we're looking to establish a young person's board around this. We've got a range of stakeholders helping us to do that, and that should help us to make sure that we continue to engage with a group of young people, to understand if the offer is meeting the aims and objectives that we have as a Government, but, crucially, the needs of young people themselves.

I think that won't just be an important point for the direct feedback, but the numbers and the figures that we'll continue to publish and make available to Members and the wider public will be an important part of understanding how successful the young person's guarantee is going to be. Some aspects of that, for example, the apprenticeship figure, there are numbers within that, to see if we manage to reach those apprenticeship start figures. There'll also be figures about whether we're going to be able to see a continued improvement in the numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training. So, you will see a number of areas where we'll be able to assess and update on how successful the guarantee is being in all of the different programmes of work.

On your point about promoting apprenticeships, we continue to promote apprenticeships both to young people themselves, as opportunities, but also to businesses. Members may not have noticed this, because not every Member will be running a business, but the A Genius Decision campaign has actually had pretty good take-up from businesses, and has helped to raise awareness of the value of taking on an apprentice, because we need to make sure that all businesses are aware they can do that. And literally, I met a medium-sized business yesterday, and they were enquiring about the opportunities for apprentices and interns. So, even in relatively established businesses, of several dozen people, there isn't always the awareness of where to go to help get support to take on new apprentices.

And, when it comes to our engagement with the Scottish Government, we do engage on—. We have different political priorities at various points in time, but official to official we do have engagement, and we have looked at some of what they have done, and, equally, it's my understanding that they're going to look to refocus their work on young people furthest from the labour market in the way that we have done as well. So, there, it's not just a one-way process; they're looking at and looking to improve their own programmes by looking at what we are doing as well.

And, finally, on your point about funding, I talked about ReAct+ and Communities for Work Plus, the work that they're doing to help remove barriers to work, employment, education, training and starting up a business. The challenge in maintaining the funds isn't any lack of goodwill from the finance Minister, it's just the reality of managing with a really difficult budget position, with the reality that we have fewer EU funds, because the replacement funds aren't there. That used to fund significant chunks of all the programmes I've just run through, and the mainstream Business Wales support service as well, and then you have the backdrop of the fact that our Government's budget is worth £600 million less than it was in October last year. So, there are real pressures, but despite that, we have a headline commitment to the young person's guarantee in all its forms, and we will continue to make difficult choices in Government to make sure that we can deliver on our top-six pledges and the rest of the programme for Government as far as we can. But, as I say, I'm more than happy to update the Chamber on the progress we are making.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Luke Fletcher.  

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you, Minister, for the statement. Certainly, it's good to see progress being made in this area.

From the outset, I'd like to reiterate Plaid Cymru's support for the young person's guarantee, and our desire, similar to that of the Welsh Conservatives, to work constructively with the Government on this. Especially during this cost-of-living crisis, I think it's important that young people feel that there is an opportunity in Wales, and this, of course, plays a part in ensuring that. Of course, we are currently seeing workers across the country demanding fairer pay and better workplace conditions. Young people often are the most likely to go into uncertain, precarious and low-paid work. So, to that end, I'd be interested in learning more about how the young person's guarantee is working to ensure that young people are aware of their workplace rights and entitlements. Is there, for example, scope to create a 'Know your rights' campaign, for example? 

Now, Chwarae Teg recently published a report titled 'Towards a Gender Equal Wales: Responding to a Transforming Economy'. There were a number of interesting findings on apprenticeships in particular. For example, apprenticeships, despite being a key route into many industries, remain heavily segregated on the basis of gender, and, to date, there have also been no targets placed on providers to help address the gender imbalance in apprenticeships, and progress towards closing these gaps remains slow. There was an acknowledgement of some of these challenges in your statement, but, given the stark gender discrepancies between different apprenticeship choices that have been revealed by Chwarae Teg, how is the young person's guarantee working to tackle these imbalances? And would the Government consider placing requirements on apprenticeship providers to tackle these inequalities?

Of course, an important element to also consider, as we head into the future, is the risks posed by automation. It is estimated that 25 per cent of jobs will change due to automation and 10 per cent of jobs will become fully automated. And this links to the Chwarae Teg report, because women make up 70.2 per cent of the workforce in roles that are at high risk of automation, 50.3 per cent in medium risk and 42.6 per cent at low risk. On top of reducing gender discrepancies in educational course selection, what systems are in place to ensure that women and girls are being given an equitable opportunity to be represented in the next industrial revolution of automation and green industries?

An important element to further consider is those who are self-employed. Self-employment has increased in Wales over the last 10 years and now accounts for nearly one in seven workers across Wales, and it's welcome that the young person's start-up grant is offering up to £2,000, as well as the additional support through the one-to-one mentoring. Given the Bevan Foundation's recent report that found that the average income of a self-employed person is less than two thirds the income of an employee, and also noted that it carries risks of financial insecurity and poverty, what safety nets are in place to support those young people who struggle with being self-employed, especially during such uncertain times, as we recover from the pandemic and are in the midst of an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, beyond, of course, what you've already outlined? Long-term support will be key to their success. 

Finally, Dirprwy Lywydd, the proportion of the population aged over 65 years old in Wales has increased from 18.4 per cent in 2011 to 21.3 per cent in 2021. That's over a fifth of our population now over 65. Meanwhile, the proportion of 15 to 24-year-olds in Wales between 2011 and 2021 has dropped. Given the census results, how will we monitor the effectiveness of the guarantee, not just for improved outcomes for young people, but in terms of the impact on the Welsh economy, for example the retainment of talent in Wales generally and in our rural communities to tackle the brain drain? Diolch.

Thank you for the series of questions. I think it might be helpful to say that a number of the questions you asked were really about how effective will the support and guidance aspects of the variety of programmes we've put in place be.

On the point about knowing your rights, about understanding what you're entitled to in a workplace on a basic level when it comes to pay, but then you get into other challenges, frankly, as you go up through your time in working life and understand how your pay reflects around other people's, it's part of the reason why this Government is positive about trade union membership. Trade union workplaces are safer, more productive on average, and better paid than non-unionised workforces. I should, of course, note that I'm a former trade union steward myself, as well as a former trade union lawyer. But, there's a serious point here about knowing your rights and what you could and should expect in the workplace as well. But actually, much of the young person's guarantee is with people who are near the labour market or job ready. Some apprentices know what they want to do and they don't struggle with the choices they make. Lots of young people in further education have a career path that's mapped out for them. Lots of the other work we're talking about, though, is persuading people to get nearer to the labour market, to be ready, and that's where lots of the support is there and available. 

Jobs Growth Wales+, for example, is about young people who may not be job ready. It's taking on the best of both Jobs Growth Wales and the traineeships. There's a wage subsidy to help people into doing things as well. Our challenge is we're dealing with more than one cohort of young people in the sense of how job ready they are and the support they'll need. So, different people will need a different range of support. Interestingly, that's been really important from young people's feedback already, that they want more personalised support that understands them, how ready they are, and whether they're actually ready to plan their longer term future or not. There's still a fair amount of uncertainty, and we're still not sure how much that relates to the pandemic or a broader generational difference that you may be closer to than me, but there's a challenge about understanding how the support we want to provide is actually going to be useful for the people we want to work with and for.

That includes your point on the risks of automation. There are opportunities in automation and AI, and lots of things we're doing. In fact, lots of young people coming through their education today have an entirely different view on the way the world already works and how it should work, and that's why lots of the challenges are actually going through education in the way we're trying to help teach young people not just to be able to use technology, but to design and build it. I regularly reflect on the lectures I've had from my colleague the climate change Minister on the importance of coding and making sure it's something that is seen for both boys and girls, because the talent isn't distributed in just one gender and not the other. You'll see that there's a lot of proactive support that we're doing to try to make sure that boys and girls see opportunities in a whole range of careers. It is often about getting women into careers that are still seen as traditionally male-dominated ones. That's part of the reason why that support and advice is important. I'll continue to reflect on the points about what more we can do with providers as well as encouraging people themselves to have a broader view on what they could and should do with the talent that they have.

On your point about self-employment, I do recognise there are risks in self-employment, but then there are also opportunities in doing so as well. That's why the money we're providing in the start-up grant is accompanied by practical support. I recently had a really inspiring but very loud evening with a range of start-up businesses in the Wales StartUp Awards. It was really inspiring seeing lots of people over the last three years who have started their businesses and been successful. In the room, there were lots and lots of people of my age, but the great majority of people were much younger. Lots of young people have been successful entrepreneurs in one of the most difficult periods of time to set up their own business. I'm delighted to say the big winners were non-alcoholic brewers, two women running a firm, and I look forward to sampling more of their produce—it won't stop me from working.

We do have lots of talent. It's about reflecting on that and it's about being able to point out that this is possible, and that's why support is there. We talked before about the challenge of our age profile; we need to be better at persuading people to move to Wales, we need to be better at persuading people they can plan to have their future here, with both the educational and the work opportunities, but a great place to grow your business and to look forward to a future. That's an economic imperative, not just a challenge for public services.

Thank you very much for your statement and your description of all the varied things that you're doing to try and capture all these young people. Because I agree with you that 13,600 young people who are not in education, employment or training is a really worrying statistic, because everybody needs to make some form of contribution to society, and if you're between 16 and 24 and you're not doing anything, obviously a lot of young people become agoraphobic, mentally ill or get dragged into activities that are harmful, whether they're legal or illegal. So, everything that we can do together to sort them out is really very welcome, particularly as disabled young people have had a really challenging time during the pandemic, because they've found it that much more difficult to continue their learning online, and some of them, including some of my constituents, are feeling they're falling between cracks. So, I'm hoping that we'll be able to pick them up.

I've had recent discussions with the Construction Industry Training Board and Community Housing Cymru about the retrofit skills training programme that we obviously need to have to decarbonise all our homes. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario, and I'd welcome your views on how we approach this. Because we can't be training people up if the work isn't there, but equally, if CHC are saying they can't find the people who've got the skills to do the sort of work that's required, it's a very difficult situation. So, I wondered how you're approaching that, and how many people have started, if not completed, retrofit skills training courses, so that we have some idea of the programme that we need to do over a period of years.

I can't give you a figure for your last question, Jenny, about the number of people who have started a course for a retrofit programme, but this is an active not just topic of debate but practical delivery from myself and the climate change Minister. The optimised retrofit programme should mean that we improve the quality of housing stock, make it more sustainable and actually end up giving people a helping hand to a career that will be more useful as we carry on in the future and, frankly, more and more expected. You know, the housing stock of the future is largely built. We'll continue to build new houses, but actually, what we need to do is improve the stock of the housing that we've got. That is something that will be deliberately taken account of in the net-zero skills plan that I'm due to bring back in the autumn, and there'll be plenty of challenge, both within Government as well as outside, about what that's going to look like. Because, as I say, there's a real economic imperative as well as a whole range of things that go right across the programme for government, so you can expect more than one Minister to take an interest. I'm confident that I'll continue to face questions from you, in and outside the Chamber, about the practical progress we're making, and I recognise the importance of the issues.

I thank the Minister.