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Youth Unemployment and Bank Bonuses

If what the Minister says transpires, I will be a very happy Member of Parliament for Hackney South and Shoreditch, but I am picking up on the ground that that is not happening as it should be. The bulk of the business is going to private providers, for the easier-to-place people, and they are taking the money, but the harder-to-reach people are going to the voluntary providers, which are struggling to make the packages work because their funding is crumbs from the bigger table. There may be a structural issue, which I hope the Minister will watch closely as the programme is rolled out, because we do not yet know about the success of the Work programme. Ministers herald it as a success, yet we have seen no figures or results, for all the reasons that have been well rehearsed. This is an issue that the Minister, if he is serious about his job, needs to monitor. In my area, the third sector agencies are picking up the harder-to-place young people, after what we might call cherry-picking. However, I am not trying to be political; I am concerned that those young people should get that work. Ian Ashman, the principal of Hackney community college, has similar stories to tell. For example, he has told me about Kevin, a 23-year-old father of two with a baby on the way who had an accident going to work one day and, as a result, lost his job. After 100 job applications, he has not been able to find another job. When it comes to full-time college courses, although the college has a good relationship with the local jobcentre, the employment advisers there do not know enough about what colleges can provide. As the Minister is probably aware, that concern was shared by 44% of colleges in a recent Association of Colleges survey. Full-time courses such as those provided by Hackney community college are not always appropriate for young people such as Kevin, because of the impact on their benefits. Indeed, there is an issue with young people wanting to progress and improve their lives, but often being unable to undertake the extra qualification or study that they need. Where do they go in the meantime? As we have heard, some of the apprenticeships on offer are not really true apprenticeships. I am all for more apprenticeships if they are real apprenticeships, but not if they amount to cheap, unpaid work experience. Agencies, job brokers and colleges need long-term sustainable funding to help their work with the most difficult-to-reach people, which is something we need to look at. The young people in my constituency are not interested in party politicking; they want to know that there is a career path for them. We have seen huge improvements in schools in my constituency, with more than 84% at one school alone getting A* to C grades at GCSE, and seven young people placed at Cambridge, including one young woman who had a baby at 15 and is now at the university with her child. There is real opportunity and a real desire to achieve in Hackney. There is no poverty of ambition among the young people in my area. Most of all, however, we need to get those young people on pathways into jobs. We need work experience available, so that they can get the experience they need to compete in the job market. I want to see the unemployment levels in my constituency fall dramatically.