Ministers are meeting this week to discuss the success of the holiday activity fund, and good progress has been made on the digitalisation of Healthy Start vouchers. We will continue the ministerial meetings on developing support for families and family hubs.
I thank my right hon. Friend for her remarkable work on universal credit during the pandemic. With the forthcoming changes to UC, will my right hon. Friend continue to target financial support on families who need it most, and will she work with the Department for Education to use existing funds from the sugar levy to expand breakfast clubs for disadvantaged children? We know that breakfast provision significantly increases educational attainment. Children with free breakfast provision achieved an additional two months’ progress in educational attainment.
I am conscious, especially with my right hon. Friend’s leadership of the Select Committee on Education, of how passionately he feels about this particular area. My Department is supporting the Department for Education’s family hubs work, which includes investing up to £24 million to continue our national school breakfast programme over the next two years, and that includes the recently announced additional £20 million investment from the Treasury’s shared outcomes fund.
Kickstart provides exciting opportunities for young people most at risk of long-term unemployment and with the greatest barriers to progress. Young people are commencing roles daily and thousands are starting each week. New Department for Work and Pensions data released to Parliament today confirms that as of 8 September, we have reached more than 69,000 starts, pleasingly, with more than 188,000 roles remaining for work coaches to refer young people to.
While kickstart has been well received by many, there have been frustrations for some. My constituent, Francesca Harding, who runs Butterwick Kennels in Sedgefield, has been particularly disappointed by the performance of Adecco as a gateway provider and the working relationship with Jobcentre Plus. The rules around advertising positions, citing potential age discrimination and all of that, have frustrated the process of getting young people in. It concerns me whether that is a local misunderstanding or whether we need to look at the rules to get even more young people engaged in these schemes.
DWP has worked closely with Adecco Working Ventures to help support young people via kickstart. As a gateway-plus, it plays an important role in allowing sole traders and other small employers to access the scheme. Employers in gateways can promote involvement, including advertising any approved roles, once they have a grant agreement in place. However, referrals of young people to kickstart jobs must be made by work coaches to ensure that candidates are eligible and suitable, but I am happy to look at the case.
My constituent Deb Barrow runs a recruitment agency, and she focuses on employing local young people. Unfortunately, the system of kickstart has let her and the local young people of Gower down. It takes, from the point that she gets the job given to her, nearly four to five months for that person to be recruited. That job has by then gone.
I am sorry to hear about the hon. Lady’s challenges in Gower. We have got 69,000 young people into work, and it is not as simple as getting any young person into any job. We have to work with local people to get the right roles and the right opportunities, so that we get the right outcomes, and I am delighted that her local employer is taking part.
On Friday, in the youth hub in Darwen and Blackburn, we launched the first kickstart programme in that sort of venue. We look forward to sharing our experience with the Department, because as you know, Mr Speaker, where Lancashire leads, many others will follow.
I am delighted about that additional youth hub. We have around 150 youth hubs open. Most of them are now physical, with a few working virtually. The hub will really make the difference in that community, and I was delighted to join the opening. It will make that change locally for young people.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
LabourBristol South
15. If she will reverse her Department’s planned removal of the £20 uplift to the standard allowance of universal credit.
Time and again, the Government have promised investment into areas such as east Hull, but the Minister knows full well that this savage cut to universal credit will pull £35 million from our local economy and leave families worrying about putting food on the table to feed their kids. Is it not time that the Government matched their rhetoric with actions and cancelled the cut for decent, hard-working people?