Why were young people punished in the budget?

They won, received a certificate in recognition for their work and a £362 prize. Her local Conservative MP was present; he said how impressed he was with their young people’s work and had hoped they would win the prize. Julie found this somewhat confusing as 24 hours earlier his government had delivered the most anti-young people Budget witnessed in modern times. Julie formerly introduced Sinead to the MP. Julie pointed out that if the policies outlined in the Budget were implemented, Sinead would be made homeless. She would be too young to claim housing benefit under the proposed cuts. A debate ensued between Julie, Sinead and the MP.

That previous day, I’d listened intently to George Osborne’s Budget speech. I didn’t recognise the world he described to me. I was told we were all ‘part of one nation’, ‘in this together’, and that difficult decisions would be taken with ‘moderation but determination’. I searched high and low for the small print that said ‘unless you are under 25’ but couldn’t find it, despite the fact that none of his rhetoric seemingly applied to young people. It was as if war was being waged on anyone unfortunate enough to be young. I was left thinking that David Cameron’s aspiration to ‘effectively abolish youth unemployment’ looked more like he wanted to completely abolish youth. For example, following the Budget:

There will be a new living wage paid - but not to anyone under 25.

University grants will be abolished – hitting the poorest students.

Housing benefit will be scrapped for 18-21 year-olds.

Support provided through tax credits and Universal Credit will be limited to two children.

Young people will have to do community work if they’re out of a job for longer than six months or face sanctions.

These announcements accompany the ongoing destruction of the youth service (no money is currently ring-fenced for youth work). It appears our young people are paying the price for the catastrophic failure of our banks and policymakers that caused the financial crash of 2008. This is entirely unjust. 

All of this compelled Gill Millar from the Regional Youth Work Unit at Learning South West to ask: ‘Does England really hate its young people?’. Writing in The Guardian, journalist Polly Toynbee questioned: ‘What have young people done to Osborne to deserve such contempt?’. In my local area, John Leighton, operations manager at housing provider Framework, described plans in the Budget as an ‘assault on young people’, while MTV said young people had been ‘properly screwed’.

Many questions remain unanswered by the Budget proposals. Why, for example, should someone who is aged 24 be paid less than someone aged 25 doing exactly the same job? What will happen to young people in crisis facing the prospect of having their housing benefit stopped? Where will they live? In our Out4Good work with vulnerable young people, we have never come across a young person who has chosen to be homeless; housing benefit has been a vital support in helping them get back on their feet. Without it, what will happen?

We are told by the government that the vulnerable will be protected - what does this mean? The track record of those currently in power does not bode well: they have borne witness to a huge rise in the vulnerable seeking help in foodbanks, cut support for disabled people, perpetuated policies that have led to continual child poverty and told people they are fit for work when they are not – some have died within weeks of being told as much. None of this sounds very assuring or much like protecting the vulnerable to me. There was one positive in the Budget for young people: the number of apprenticeships will increase. However, even with this initiative I have to ask if this is only a political gesture to placate those who can no longer afford to go to university?

For young people like Sinead, the future does not look promising. To his credit, the MP did encourage Julie to write to him setting out her concerns. No doubt Julie will as she stands up for the rights of the poor and oppressed and speaks out against injustice (as in Proverbs 31:9). Only time will tell if a letter will make any difference given the wholescale onslaught this Budget administered against young people, an onslaught the likes of which we have not seen in my lifetime, if ever.

Just as despair threatened to overwhelm me, there was a moment of hope, one truly inspiring intervention. The nation’s youngest MP, 20 year-old Mhairi Black, made her maiden House of Commons speech about the Budget assault on young people. If you do nothing else this summer, I wholeheartedly recommend you seek it out on YouTube. She represents all I think is best about our young people: passion, compassion, humility and a challenging prophetic voice. I can only pray that in the future people like Mhairi will write the Budget, rather than privileged millionaires seemingly intent on punishing young people. NP