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Is the government doing enough for young people?

ended 14. May 2026

The King's Speech specifically mentioned what the government plan to do to help young people in the UK.

He spoke of the government wanting "a country that is fair for all and a nation where every child is included in the nation's highest aspirations".

King Charles said the government think children should not be held back due to things like poverty and special educational needs.

Part of that included bills to "raise standards in schools and bring generational reforms of the SEND system".

He also said the government would continue to invest in apprenticeships for young people looking for work.

  • But is the government doing enough for young people?
  • Is it too little, too late for this generation of young people?
  • What other plans do you want to see?

Responses by tomorrow.

5 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
The 2026 King's Speech promises "generational reforms" for UK youth, touting a Youth Guarantee and SEND overhauls, yet these arrive years after Covid-19 inflicted deep scars on education and mental health. A £500m strategy feels inadequate against 16% youth unemployment and a broken CAMHS system. The private school VAT reform has proven particularly damaging: rather than raising the forecast £1.5bn, the 20% levy triggered a mass exodus of 65,000 pupils and over 100 school closures, hitting specialist SEND settings hardest. The resulting state sector migration has cannibalized tax gains while saddling already overstretched schools with thousands of new students. For a generation still reeling from lost learning, these reactive and poorly executed policies suggest the government is offering too little, too late.
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Harry Goodliffe
Director at HTG Mortgages
It’s hard to say the government is doing enough for young people when so many feel like they’re working hard and still getting nowhere. Housing feels out of reach, rents are ridiculous, and even decent jobs often don’t pay enough to build a future. The promises sound nice, but a lot of young people have heard promises over and over and are still waiting to actually feel the difference.
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Antonia Medlicott
Founder & MD at Investing Insiders
The King's Speech promised better schools and more apprenticeships, but neither addresses the structural financial disadvantage that young people today face compared to every generation before them. I analysed official figures, and for someone earning £42,000 at 21, they will see a shortfall of hundreds of thousands; income tax, council tax, and rent add up, along with high house prices and mortgage rates to contend with if they can afford to purchase a property.

What would actually move the needle? Serious expansion of the Lifetime ISA government bonus, which has been frozen since 2017, despite inflated house prices, which first-time buyers are already struggling to meet. We also need a conversation about housing supply rather than demand-side subsidies that cause these prices.

There needs to be a genuine commitment to the triple lock that young workers are paying for and will almost certainly not benefit from themselves, or else we risk a future with poverty-stricken pensioners.
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Debbie Porter
Managing Director at Destination Digital Marketing
Government after government continue to fail young people. Until we have politicians from educational stock other than Eton and Oxbridge, it’s unlikely to change. The proof is in the high number of NEETs; represented as a 15.8% unemployment rate amongst 16-24 year olds. This is at an 11-year high save the Covid pandemic period. Apprenticeships have been pushed for a number of years, yet are inaccessible to many young people due to the barrier to entry being attainment of GCSE Maths and English. If you go back 30 years, it was exactly the people who failed Maths and English that undertook apprenticeships, giving them a vocational alternative to academic learning and those adults are thriving having had another route open to them. There’s no provision for young people incapable of attaining these two subjects now, and often these people fall under SEND streams in school. ‘Raising standards’ often means pushing for higher grades, when that’s the opposite of what these kids need.
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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Nearly a million young people are NEET right now, and the government's flagship SEND reforms won't land until 2029. The speech mentions apprenticeships but the government's own briefing contains no new detail on how they'll be expanded, funded, or targeted. Meanwhile, employer vacancies keep falling and the national insurance rise has made hiring young people more expensive, not less.

Lifting children out of poverty matters. However, doing that means the government is now spending £333 billion on welfare while raising £331 billion in income tax. That arithmetic doesn't generate aspirational opportunity, it creates managed decline for everyone.

The nation voted for real change in their daily lives. What they're getting is consultation language, endless apologetic "reviews", and talk of legislation that won't land for 3 years. A generation of young people doesn't need higher aspirations. They need an economy that has room for them, not doors slammed in their faces.