The scandal of a million young people with nothing to do must end | Politics | News
When you start a new ministerial job you are shown dozens of slide presentations. That is particularly true in the Department of Work and Pensions which deals with every age group and a whole range of state support from the youngest children to the oldest pensioners.ย Welfare is where policy meets life.
The slides that stood out for me were those which showed the rate of young people, 16-24 year olds, who enter a life on benefits and become NEET. โNEETโ describes someone not in education employment or training. But behind this somewhat bloodless term lie a million human stories – young people who are being robbed of opportunity and the chance to make the most of their lives.
Their situation is also a lost opportunity for the country โ lost energy, commitment and contribution.
Financially someone leaving the workforce in their twenties could lose out on over ยฃ1 million in lifetime earnings – with the state incurring a similar cost.
But even more important than the financial cost is the human cost.
Being NEET can scar someoneโs entire life.
With poorer health, reduced wellbeing and life satisfaction commonplace, their future is being written off before it’s truly begun.
Once young people are in this cycle it is very hard to get out of it. If you are on incapacity benefits you are likely to be stuck there on average for seven years.
This is about opportunity and about inequality too โ because the rates of NEETs are often highest in the poorest parts of the country.
If we care about life chances and about inequality, we should want to do something about this.
It is not a new problem, but it has been getting worse in recent years.
Which is why we are investing ยฃ820 million over the next three years to tackle the issue of young people not earning or learning – by ensuring every young person has access to work or high-quality training opportunities.
At the heart of this is our new Jobs Guarantee.
Every eligible 18- to 21-year-old who has been on Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months will be guaranteed six-month paid work.
We’ll cover the full employment costs for 25 hours a week at the relevant minimum wage and provide support to help young people succeed.
These are real jobs with real pay, offering young people the opportunity to gain work experience and the confidence needed to launch their careers, getting them into the habit of getting up, having to be somewhere to work and experiencing the sense of pride and purpose that comes with having a job.
But I believe that in the future we can go further, which is why I have asked former Health Secretary Alan Milburn to do a report on young people, inactivity and work over the next few months, to ask what lies behind increasing rates of inactivity and what further policy responses across government should be.
We must not write off young people to a life on benefits when they could be building good careers and filling the jobs desperately needed to drive our countryโs growth.
I want to make the Department of Work and Pensions a department for opportunity which does not leave young people behind but gives them a chance to succeed.
I believe in Britainโs young people. We should back them and be more ambitious for them. If we do it will be good for them and good for the country.
