Next week the Milburn report will be published setting out a response to the NEETs crisis. The Labour party must be prepared to call out the Conservatives’ record in helping to create many of the problems now facing these young people. For those that may not know there are around one million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Behind the statistic though are young people whose futures have been shaped by political decisions made long before they entered the labour market.
A crisis years in the making
Yet Labour has been remarkably timid in explaining how we arrived here. After 14 years of Conservative government, austerity, underinvestment and damaging changes to education, Labour needs to be making a far stronger case that this crisis is not a failure of young people, but a failure of successive Conservative governments.
The NEET crisis did not emerge from two years of Labour government. It was years in the making, and the Conservatives must shoulder a substantial share of the responsibility.
From 2010 and the Tory-Lib dem coalition onwards, Conservative-led governments pursued austerity policies that stripped resources from the very institutions designed to support young people. Youth centres closed, local authority services were reduced, and careers advice and early intervention became increasingly difficult to access.
These were not simply accounting decisions. They had real consequences for children growing up in communities already struggling with poverty, unemployment and limited opportunities.
For many disadvantaged young people, youth workers, community organisations and accessible training programmes provide the support that keeps them engaged with education and helps them find a route into employment. Removing that support while expecting young people to succeed independently was always a recipe for greater inequality.
The damage to further education was particularly severe.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, funding per student fell by 14 percent in further education colleges and 28 percent in school sixth forms between 2010–11 and 2019–20. Even after subsequent increases, funding has remained significantly below its 2010 levels.
This matters because further education colleges have traditionally provided essential second chances for young people who do not thrive in conventional academic settings.
Instead of strengthening these pathways, successive Conservative governments weakened the institutions responsible for delivering them.
At the same time, education policy increasingly prioritised academic performance, examinations and measurable outcomes. The reforms associated with Michael Gove intensified the emphasis on traditional academic subjects and high-stakes assessment.
While academic rigour has its place, an education system must recognise that young people have different abilities, ambitions and learning needs. We cannot accept a system where almost 30 percent of students fail maths and English GCSEs every year.
Not every young person will flourish through GCSE examinations, A-levels or university. Yet, as the Prime Minister has articulated so well, vocational and technical education has too often been treated as a secondary option rather than an equally valuable route to a successful career.
Exposed by the pandemic
The Conservatives also presided over repeated changes to vocational qualifications, apprenticeship funding and technical education. Rather than creating a stable, accessible system, these reforms contributed to uncertainty for students, colleges and employers.
The pandemic undoubtedly worsened these problems, disrupting education, increasing anxiety and weakening young people’s connections with the workplace. But COVID-19 did not create the underlying weaknesses. It exposed and intensified them.
This is precisely where this Labour Government should be hammering the Tories record on education and skills.
Labour’s Youth Guarantee, employment support and apprenticeship initiatives are welcome steps. However, programmes designed to help young people back into employment cannot, by themselves, repair the damage caused by years of underinvestment.
The NEETs crisis has its foundations in 14 years of conservative dogma and now they expect the Labour government to have quick fixes.
Labour should also resist the Tory narrative that implies young people are simply unwilling to work. Such arguments ignore the reality of insecure employment, regional inequality, inadequate public transport, rising living costs and the growing number of young people experiencing poor mental health.
As the TUC report on the background of NEETs found. For a young person living in a deprived community, where entry-level opportunities are scarce and affordable transport is limited, being told to find work is not the same as being given a realistic opportunity to do so.
The NEET crisis is therefore not simply an employment problem. It is an education problem, a health problem, a poverty problem and ultimately a historical political problem.
Labour is changing the direction of the Tories’ education policies. But it will require a properly funded further education sector, a serious rebuilding of youth services, stronger vocational pathways, accessible mental health provision and meaningful investment in disadvantaged communities.
Crucially, it also will require political honesty and patience. Education changes only take root years after the fact and so Labour must be ready to take on political attacks that will no doubt appear up until the next general election.
Not a lost generation by choice
The young people currently described as NEETs are not a lost generation by choice. Many have been let down by institutions that were supposed to prepare them for adulthood and support them through difficult transitions.
Fourteen years of Conservative government helped create the conditions for this crisis. Labour must now demonstrate that it has the courage not only to acknowledge that legacy, but to reverse it.
Because the real scandal is not that so many young people have fallen through the cracks. It is that successive Conservative governments allowed those cracks to become so wide in the first place.