Laura Trott: Labour love to think of themselves as ‘fair’ but they are failing our young people

Laura Trott MP is the Shadow Education Secretary.

This government is failing the young people of Britain.

They claim the mantle of fairness, but youth unemployment has climbed to its highest level in over a decade and graduate recruitment has fallen to record lows. Around 700,000 graduates are now on benefits. For the first time, Britain’s youth unemployment is higher than the European Union’s. This is a tragedy for young people and the future of our country.

In the face of this, the government still insists that expanding university participation automatically expands opportunity. They argue that questioning this is tantamount to pulling up the ladder behind you. But for many of the young people now leaving education into unemployment or trapped on welfare, the ladder has already been pulled away.

The expansion of university education in the late 1990s rested on a world of stable graduate jobs and predictable career ladders, where a degree reliably widened the prospects for a young person leaving university. Tony Blair’s ambition that half of young people should go to university belonged to that, very different, era.

The economy facing school leavers today is very different, and far less forgiving. Too many are channelled into courses with minimal teaching, leaving them saddled with debt and minimal job prospects. If we are to be honest, this cannot be described as a fair deal for young people. We can and must do better. And that is why last week I set out our Conservative vision, entitled ‘Our New Deal for Young People’.

The purpose of that New Deal is straightforward.

To restore real routes into work, not to punish aspiration, for a generation that has been sold credentials instead of real prospects. It rests on three changes that together would widen choice at 18, restore fairness in higher education financing and ensure that entering work allows young people to build something of their own that is durable.

The first is to make apprenticeships a genuine alternative to university rather than a rationed one. For too long policy has nudged school-leavers in one direction while treating other paths as second-best. This is not right.

Demand from young people to go into an apprenticeship already outstrips supply. Expanding high-quality apprenticeships by 100,000 places a year, backed by targeted wage support for firms that invest in young recruits, would open a route that combines earning, training and progression without the burden of debt. We also know the employers are taking a risk and making a big contribution when hiring an 18-year-old and we want to recognise that contribution.

We will provide employers up to £5,000 to go towards their wages – a third of the average wage of an apprentice – for each 18–21-year-old apprentice they take on who is a British citizen. We know incentives like this work because they have increased apprenticeship starts before.

The second is to restore basic fairness to student finance.

Plan 2 loans increasingly resemble a debt trap rather than a graduate contribution. Interest rates set three percentage points above the RPI measurement of inflation means balances can rise even as repayments are made, and the average graduate would need to earn around £66,000 simply to keep pace. The decision to freeze repayment thresholds has pulled more young earners into repayment, while also changing the terms of the loan after they had signed up. As with so much Rachel Reeves touches, the effect has been to make a bad system worse. Ending real interest on these loans would ensure that those who repay see their balance fall in real terms and would draw a line under debts that expand faster than they can realistically be cleared.

The third is to ensure that the first years in work allow young people to accumulate assets rather than merely service costs incurred in reaching employment. Redirecting the first £5,000 of National Insurance paid by someone entering full-time work into their own savings would help build a deposit or financial buffer at the very point when it matters most. The principle is simple work should help you get ahead, not just get by. That is something that all Conservatives should be able to get behind.

Taken together, these measures form Our New Deal for Young People. This plan recognises how far the world has moved on from the assumptions of the 1990s. Britain still needs strong universities and many degrees remain transformative. But pretending that ever-rising participation automatically delivers ever-rising opportunity has left too many young people with debt and too few prospects. That is why we want to fundamentally change the system.

The real injustice today is not that the old consensus is being questioned. It is that a generation is living with its consequences long after the whole system stopped working for them. A fair society should offer routes into work and a chance at genuine independence, not simply the old reassurances.

That is the change that Our New Deal for Young People is intended to bring about.