4. Statement by the Minister for Economy: Young Person’s Guarantee — Ensuring a better future for our young people

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:35 pm on 12 July 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:35, 12 July 2022

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.