Insight: Realising the “Opportunity Welfare State”

Our Director of Public Affairs, Andrew Bell, reports from the Labour Party Annual Conference 2025 on realising the "Opportunity Welfare State":

“Conference, we won't leave a generation of young people to languish without prospects, denied the dignity, denied the security and the ladders of opportunity that good work provides. Just as the last Labour government achieved that with the New Deal, I commit this Labour Government to nothing less than the abolition of long-term youth unemployment.”

This week at Labour Party Conference there has been a dominant theme: young people and opportunity. The headline policy announcement coming out of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ speech was a new Youth Guarantee, a commitment from the Government to ensure young people who have been out of work for more than 18 months will receive a paid work placement. In tabling the Youth Guarantee, the Chancellor invoked the spirit of the New Deal, a successful policy of the 1990s Labour government that was transformative for young people’s opportunities. At Reed in Partnership we know a lot about the New Deal as we were there on its first day. In 1998 we began delivering the New Deal for Young People in Hackney, East London. It was our first contract and we’ve been working with government to support people into employment ever since.

Building on the Chancellor’s remarks, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden set out his vision for what he called an “opportunity welfare state”: “not a system that counts the cost of failure, but one that invests in success and protects those who need it most… not a dependency welfare state, but the opportunity welfare state”. At the heart of the opportunity welfare state is the Youth Guarantee, a policy that the Secretary of State said will mean “opportunity is not just for the few, but for all”. The forerunners to the Youth Guarantee are the Youth Guarantee Trailblazers, eight English pilot areas which are testing out some of the principles for successfully supporting young people into employment and training.

Just as we were there at the beginning of the New Deal all those years ago, Reed in Partnership is also involved in the first wave of the Youth Guarantee, we are delivering support in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority area. It’s early days, we are three months into the pilot, but we are already seeing very high engagement and positive outcomes.

The initial wave of Youth Guarantee Trailblazers will complete next year and the Government will use their results to inform next steps. As we await this and further detail on the Youth Guarantee announced at Labour Party Conference this week, here are three lessons from the New Deal for Young People, the 1990s policy that in many ways is the inspiration for the Youth Guarantee, that could be helpful to ensuring this exciting new policy achieves the transformative outcomes which it promises to.

1. Personalised, intensive support: A key feature of the New Deal for Young People was the allocation of personal advisers to help participants overcome barriers and stay motivated. If the Youth Guarantee ensures every participant receives tailored mentoring and guidance, not just generic help with finding a job, it will be more likely to lead to successful employment and training outcomes.
2. Good work, not any work: Where the New Deal for Young People added most value was when it found actual paid employment for participants, there is no substitute for this. A Youth Guarantee which prioritises access to quality apprenticeships, training and employer-led roles will have the best opportunity to deliver real progression.
3. Partnership with private and voluntary providers: The New Deal for Young People benefitted from the expertise of private and voluntary providers offering specialist skills and employer skills. The Youth Guarantee can build on this by developing strong partnerships with national and local providers to create opportunities which are more responsive to labour market needs.

We are unquestionably facing a crisis of youth unemployment. Nearly one million 16-24-year-olds are today out of work. The announcement of the Youth Guarantee is an important step in the fightback against a situation which is letting too much young talent go to waste. Just as in the 1990s with the New Deal for Young People, we have an opportunity to change lives for the better.

In his own speech to the Labour Conference this week, Keir Starmer referenced Euro 96 as the embodiment of the kind of national spirit he wants a renewed Britain to embrace. Football didn’t quite come home nearly 30 years ago, but the Labour government’s New Deal did positively transform communities. If we could abolish long-term youth unemployment it would be a prize greater than lifting the Jules Rimet trophy. Just as we did with the New Deal for Young People back in 1998, Reed in Partnership is today already on the pitch and working with government to make the Youth Guarantee a success.