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Youth Employment

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Down on securing this debate so soon after the one she secured in the Chamber. As a former Minister for Social Development in Northern Ireland, she will be aware more than most of the challenges that the young unemployed face. The Committee of course knows that this is a devolved matter, and that the connected aspects, such as tax and national insurance, which lie in the excepted and reserved fields, are not matters for which I or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State have any ministerial responsibility. No doubt the hon. Member for East Antrim will be listening attentively. Despite that, the matter is important and I am happy to set out what the Executive are doing in Northern Ireland. We are all aware of press reports stating that nearly 1 million young people are unemployed, and it goes without saying that my right hon. Friend and I stand ready to discuss the matters further with devolved Ministers and ministerial colleagues in the relevant Whitehall Departments because, as the hon. Lady says so succinctly, young people without hope are young people with no future, and it is our job to help give them hope and a future. I would like to provide some statistical background, which I hope the hon. Lady and others find useful. In this context, ““youth”” is usually taken to mean people under the age of 25, and there are 255,450 16 to 25-year-olds in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the youth unemployment rate from May to July 2011 was 18.1%, which was about 1% lower than the corresponding figure for Great Britain, and was up from 12.1% before the economic downturn, in May to July 2008. Interestingly, the unemployment rate for all ages in Northern Ireland is 7.5%, in the UK as a whole it is 8.1%, in the EU it stands at 9.5% and it is 14.5% in the Republic of Ireland. A bigger problem is that economic inactivity in the UK as a whole is 23.3%, whereas in Northern Ireland it is 27%. The number of young people claiming unemployment-related benefits such as jobseeker’s allowance has grown sharply in Northern Ireland, standing today at 19,400, but let us not forget that youth unemployment has dogged successive Governments. Under the previous Labour Government it increased by 40% from 1997, at a time of economic prosperity. On a positive note, when jobs are scarce, some of our young people realise the benefits that education and skills training can bring, and the data clearly show a considerable rise in the number of students enrolling in education courses at further and higher education institutions since the start of the downturn. The number of young people enrolling on full-time professional and technical courses at FE colleges in Northern Ireland in 2009-10 rose by 5% to 14,251.