---

Youth Employment

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree that the Steps to Work programme should be investigated and explored further to see how it could be made more robust. The bottom line is that we—Members of this House, the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive—should all be working together to ensure that there are more job opportunities for our young people. They need more skills and training, so that they are better equipped to go out into the wider world and invest their training and expertise in the local economy, rather than being forced to leave our shores for a short or extended period. Tonight, I have discussed the social cost of youth unemployment, but we cannot be blind to the corresponding economic cost. The London School of Economics has found that each young person in long-term unemployment costs the Exchequer up to £16,000 a year. The Prince’s Trust has stated that youth unemployment in Northern Ireland costs up to £4.5 million a week, which is nearly £250 million a year. The economic cost of the failure to tackle the problem could not be more relevant. I do not seek to place all the blame on the Government—the Northern Ireland Office—and it is vital that the Northern Ireland Executive and all of us do not shirk our responsibility to our young people. It is a problem that must be tackled in the round because youth unemployment lies at the centre of a constellation of other problems, including local economic performance, education, welfare dependency and the state of local infrastructure. However, as the Government do not tire of telling us about the necessity of cuts to tackle the debt problem, I ask the Minister whether he will acknowledge the debt burden that will be brought about by increasing levels of chronic youth unemployment. The cuts are not a one-way street and they will incur both social and economic costs. The spectre of youth unemployment in Northern Ireland is a matter of grave concern not only to me, but to other hon. Members from Northern Ireland. People across the island of Ireland—north and south—need no reminding of the damage to society caused when young people are starved of opportunity, and they certainly need no reminding of the associated legacy of emigration and social deprivation. Youth unemployment threatens the recovery, restricts growth and, ultimately, fails the young people who are needed to rebuild the economy on these islands. There is absolutely no doubt that our economy needs to be sustained and, in many instances, rebuilt. If we believe some of the reports of the past few days, we could be entering a further double-dip recession with serious consequences for all our population. Such a situation would lessen the opportunities for employment, training and skills development for our young people. We must ensure that every opportunity to be retained and sustained in existing employment is made available to our young people in Northern Ireland, so that they are able to use the skills and expertise they have gained at school and in further and higher education—in the vocational or the academic sector—and to invest those resources in the local economy, providing for themselves and their families, for this and future generations. I ask the Minister to work with the Northern Ireland Executive and to provide us with some bright light for the future.