Nick Clegg: Charity and Business can take care of 'Neets'

 
In the UK there are currently 1,163,000 Neets – young people 'not in education or training'. Today, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced it was these 16- and 17-year-olds he was targeting through a £126m payment-by-results scheme.

Under the scheme, charities or businesses will bid for contracts worth up to £2,200 for keeping a teenager in work, education or training for 12 months. It’s an extension of The Work Programme which was announced last summer to encourage 500,000 adults back to work, and was named “the biggest experiment in public service reform”.

There’s a mixed response as to whether payment-by-results for Neets will reverse what has been dubbed a “ticking time bomb”. The government promise is to help 55,000 of the hardest hit youngsters. The opposition says the scheme will only help a few, while the teachers’ unions have hit back with “deep misgivings” about handing over the support of Britain’s unemployed youth to charity and business.

But it’s perhaps the announcement’s timing that’s a little more telling. It comes a week after the jobless figures show that in the three months up to last December, 22,000 more 16-24-year-olds were out of work.

It also comes only months after the Educational Maintenance Allowance was abolished – the weekly allowance awarded to youngsters who stay in education or training and which saw more boys in particular stay on to study. Having been given the chop, many feared 16-19-year-olds would be left out in the cold.

With payment-by-results, that still could happen. In launching the scheme the government say they have a “moral duty” towards this disadvantaged group. Yet to reach the most disadvantaged teenagers in society you need to travel to some of the most disadvantaged places.

These are the places where the recession has taken its toll. Places where private contractors will struggle to find work for teenagers, let alone support those who may have complex backgrounds, have grown up with economic and social disadvantage, and in some cases are likely to suffer with serious health or drug and alcohol problems.

If contractors carry the initial risk for employing people, there is every danger they’ll contract in places where they are more likely to get people into work to secure a return on their investment.

Handing the reins over to civil society and business may weaken the commitment to work with the most difficult and disadvantaged youth. Cherry-picking may win bidders contracts, but it will only skim the surface of Britain’s youth unemployment disaster.