Milburn Review to set out stark NEETS challenge and call for whole system reform

A long-awaited review into youth inactivity warns that without urgent action the number of young people in Britain who are NEET – not in education, employment, or training – will rise from 1 in 8 to 1 in 6 young people within five years, representing 1.25 million young lives.

At the launch of the interim report, Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary, is expected to say: ““Six in ten have never had a job. Twenty years ago, that figure was closer to four in ten. Detachment is no longer temporary. For too many young people it is becoming permanent. We are at risk of a lost generation.” 

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The interim report sets out stark details of co how the first rung of the career ladder has thinned and for too many young people it is now out of reach.

Milburn will say the current broken system is failing a generation. Around 60 percent of young people who are Neet are economically inactive, up from 55 per cent in 2015, making up around 580,000 of the population.  But 84 per cent of NEET young people want a job or training.

Alan Milburn is expected to warn today that Britain faces a “generational fault line” unless it confronts the whole-system failure that has seen nearly one million young people locked out of work, education and training.

The Blair-era minister was commissioned last year by Keir Starmer’s government to investigate why the proportion of people classified as Neets is higher in the UK than in other comparable economies.

The first part of the report was published on Thursday, with Milburn calling for fundamental system reform, recommendations for which will be released later in the year. 

The report offered stark findings about the challenges facing young people, identifying a variety of failings across the welfare, health and education system. It also sought to challenge myths around the reasons for the rising number of Neets.

The issue is seen as among the biggest challenges facing the government, with concerns about knock-on impacts on UK productivity and GDP.

Milburn’s recommendations to solve the problem are set to be published later in the year. Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, and Louise Casey, crossbench peer and social welfare expert, have been among those advising on the report.

He wants ministers to grasp the nettle and address the issues in the health and disability systems that are currently failing to get young people into the labour market.

Milburn told MPs earlier this month that the issue was “visceral” and that there is “almost a fear in society about what the next generation faces”.

In England, figures from 2024 suggest that Neets are nearly twice as likely to have a health condition than the rest of the 16-24-year-old population, while the proportion of young Neets with a mental health condition is around 19 per cent — two and a half times the rate in 2012.

After taking office, Labour embarked on a series of welfare reforms, with the aim of encouraging more people back into work, while also bringing down the rising cost to the Treasury of welfare spending.

However, a significant portion of those reforms unravelled last summer, after over 100 MPs threatened to rebel amid anger at cuts to personal independence payments.

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