Toby Whelton, IF Senior Researcher, examines the newly announced National Youth Strategy and analyses the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The launch of the National Youth Strategy
Last week, Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, launched the government’s National Youth Strategy − England’s first national youth strategy in over two decades.
The launch was accompanied by a slew of policy papers, including a State of the Nation report. The document was “co-authored” with over 14,000 young people aged between 10 to 21, or up to 25 for individuals with special educational needs and disabilities. It lays out the challenges young people face, ranging from isolation in a digital world to a lack of access to trusted adults and third spaces.
The report was released alongside a strategy paper outlining new measures, including more employment support for school leavers, ensuring every teenager has access to a trusted adult, and increased investment in local communities.
What should we make of it?
On the surface, a national youth strategy seems to be a huge win for intergenerational fairness. Young people’s interests have been continually ignored or overlooked by successive governments, so it is encouraging that this is starting to be rectified. Some of the policies are long overdue, and the government deserves credit for implementing them.
However, in many ways, the proposals, but in particular the government’s rhetoric, are disappointing. The papers fail to acknowledge the scale of intergenerational inequality, and with only a partial diagnosis, the solutions that follow are inherently limited.
Bring back the youth clubs
The strategy does contain some major policy wins. It was announced that there will be an additional £500 million invested in youth workers, alongside the construction or refurbishment of 250 youth clubs.
The decimation of youth clubs has been a national tragedy. Since 2010, funding for youth clubs has been cut by 73%, 4,500 youth worker roles have been lost, and 1,200 council-run centres have closed.
The underlying causes of why almost a million 16−24 year-olds are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEETs) are not entirely known, but the closure of youth services has undoubtedly played a role. Youth clubs provide a vital third space and give teenagers access to trusted adults, whom some may be more willing to confide in than teachers or parents. Beginning to reverse the decline of youth services, even if still well below 2010 levels, is highly welcomed.
So too is the Youth Guarantee announced in the Budget. Those aged 18−21 who are on Universal Credit (UC) will be given guaranteed paid employment for six months, with their wages covered by the state. The policy will only cost an additional £200 million across the parliament, partially offset by less UC recipients. Given that young people have faced the brunt of a stalling job market, this kind of targeted employment support is desperately needed.
Is youth the best framework?
Reading through the supporting documentation, there are persistent references to the fact that young people have been neglected and cheated by the political system. Lisa Nandy described young people as facing “violent indifference” for decades in a recent interview. This was more eloquent than Labour minister Josh Simons, who last week declared the economic outlook for under-50s as “frankly, shit”.
In which case, is the National Youth Strategy enough?
It is a mistake to place too much of a distinction between “youths” and Gen Z as a whole. The written testimonies reveal that under-21s are aware of the broader pressures their generation faces. In many ways, young people are just as concerned about their future as much as their current struggles:
“I would say the biggest worry for me is not doing well at school. Even though I do well, I’m constantly worrying about my future. And, it kind of links to money, stability…”
Better support for teenagers is vital, but it will not restore the intergenerational contract alone, if young people do not believe that they will be met with secure employment, affordable housing and accessible further education. Focusing just on youth policy will not fix the woes of a generation, even for the beneficiaries of such policies. For faith to be restored in the policial system, young people must begin to be treated better as a collective.
Whose responsibility?
The National Youth Strategy it being led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. This in itself trivialises the pressures young people face to some degree.
The paper consistently returns to the impact of digital technology, and at points comes close to blaming young people themselves:
“Too many young people have retreated into their bedrooms where the online world presents serious challenges to their safety and wellbeing.”
The impact of social media is undoubtedly pivotal to the lived experience of young people. However, overemphasising the issue disguises the fact that many of the pressures young people face are rooted in the real world and are the result of policies that the government can very much control.
Will somebody think of the students?
Throughout the strategy, young people’s concerns around the cost of living are dismissed as an issue of anxiety, not so much driven by their material living conditions.
This may be due to the fact that across the six documents, there is barely a reference to university students, despite them making up effectively half of 18−21 year-olds. Student poverty is at record highs due to government policy that has slashed student support. The maintenance loan threshold has not been uprated since 2008, so now even the child of a single parent on minimum wage will not be entitled to full support.
These pressures have trickled down to young people in schools, who fear the ever-increasing cost of university. Rising costs are putting off young people from attending university and even for those who do, moving out of home for university has become a luxury that many cannot afford due to the absurd costs of the student housing market.
University, and in particular moving out for university, is a key rite of passage for millions of young people, yet many feel it is no longer accessible. The strategy’s failure to address issues surrounding higher education, which concerns millions of young people, is disappointing.
A generational lens
The National Youth Strategy is fundamentally limited due to its failure to engage in more honest debates around intergenerational fairness.
For example, if more youth clubs are effectively funded through higher taxes on younger and future workers, as well as higher tuition fees, have younger generations even benefited?
If young people truly have been given a raw deal, which the government seems to suggest, does this mean older generations have been unfairly advantaged by government policy? If so, should we address this?
The government’s unwillingness to tackle intergenerational unfairness was epitomised in the Autumn Budget. It was confirmed that the triple lock on the State Pension will stay in place, which will cost the government an additional £11 billion by 2030, dwarfing the £1.1 billion that will be spent on the National Youth Strategy. It was even announced that pensioners who only receive the State Pension will be exempt from income tax. This will create an absurd situation where some younger workers will pay both national insurance and income tax, while pensioners on similar incomes pay neither.
The only way to truly achieve a fairer deal between generations is to think more broadly about how we distribute resources and burdens across generations, old, young, and future, both in how the government spends money but also how it raises revenues.
A National Youth Strategy that fails to do this will ultimately have little chance of meaningfully improving the lives or prospects of younger generations.
Help us to be able to do more
Now that you’ve reached the end of the article, we want to thank you for being interested in IF’s work. We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved so far. And with your help we can do much more, so please consider helping to make IF more sustainable. You can do so by following this link: Donate.
Photo by Aedrian Salazar on Unsplash