We must fight for young people's future

Taken together, the cuts to Sure Start, libraries, school sports partnerships, the education maintenance allowance (EMA), the Future Jobs Fund and the higher education budget are a devastating blow to children and young people. Meanwhile, the cost of running even a reduced network of children's centres has left little else for early intervention. The Fawcett Society estimates that women have shouldered 72 per cent of the burden of welfare and tax reforms so far, but once other factors such as childcare are taken into account they say it is likely to be more.

The government argues that short-term pain will help to create stability and prosperity in the long term. Yet, even if this strategy is a success, it poses a particular problem for younger children and older teenagers whose needs are immediate and who suffer disproportionately for every year they are denied support.

At one end of the spectrum, the evidence is clear that intervention with the under-fives is crucial in order to create equal life chances. Most recently, the coalition's poverty adviser Frank Field recommended ministers should focus on this group, even while a raft of services for them is disappearing. These problems are exacerbated because the cuts to local authorities have been frontloaded, meaning they will suffer the steepest cutbacks in the next financial year. So for many council leaders, pooling resources to protect services and seeking out voluntary redundancies is not an option - staff and services will have to go.

At the other end of the age range, young people leaving school or college in the next few years will have a particularly hard time. More than 700,000 young people are out of work - nearly one in five - and many say it will be hard for them to stay in college without the EMA, which ends in August. Seventy-five per cent of students in my local Wigan and Leigh College fear they may have to quit their courses next year. What's more, high tuition fees will make it harder for young people to get the qualifications they need to compete for jobs, and for every year young people are out of the labour market they suffer a "wage scarring" effect. One study estimates that young people that face prolonged periods out of the labour market at an early age are still affected by lower wage rates 20 years later.

Campaigns across the country have highlighted this impact on young people with some success. Pressure from the NUS helped to create a new package of help for the poorest university students. And the inspirational young people who travelled from across the UK to defend school sports partnerships last month prompted Education Secretary Michael Gove to reconsider his decision, at least in the short term.

Yet, given the seriousness of the situation there is still too little focus on young people and, it seems, no united response from the children's sector. Parliament last week debated a motion calling for the government to rethink plans to scrap the EMA. My colleague, shadow education secretary Andy Burnham, argued that social mobility will be "thrown into reverse by its abolition", which would mean "stacking the odds" against young people and "kicking away the ladder of opportunity". I am hoping that pressure from politicians and from young people across the country will persuade ministers that if young people work hard and play their part, they need and deserve their government's support. If young people are to have the hope they need for the future, it is a fight we have to win.

Lisa Nandy is the Labour MP for Wigan and a member of the education select committee