Milburn report to urge local drive on jobs to tackle youth unemployment crisis

Local leaders will be urged to get young people working through new devolved powers in a bid to tackle the youth unemployment crisis, reports suggest.

Alan Milburn’s long-awaited report will be published this month, and is expected to recommend “tough love” alongside a major new “participation” programme that will be run by local authorities.

The Times reports that combined and local authorities will be given funding by the government to get young people in their area into jobs in a move the Treasury hopes will reduce the welfare bill in the long term.

It comes after Mr Milburn’s review warned that the youth unemployment crisis is costing Britain £125bn a year after the number of young people not in work or education (NEET) reached more than 1 million for the first time since 2013.

The former Labour health minister described the statistic as a “scar on the country” and said Britain is in danger of creating a “lost generation” unless it takes serious action to tackle the issue.

He previously rejected the characterisation of young people as not trying as “a myth”, adding: “The story of not trying, being soft, being a snowflake generation – I just don’t buy it.”

Instead, he said, the issue is that the system is “no longer working”: “The problem is that for too many young people, opportunities are not growing – they’re shrinking.”

Reports suggest his review will lay out a national framework, including a youth guarantee model where all young people are offered a job, training place or apprenticeship, on the provision that they engage with the help available.

But the details of the plan will be left to local leaders, with Mr Milburn taking on a role in a central taskforce to ensure local authorities are making progress.

A source told the newspaper: “The upfront costs will be high but there is a genuine feeling that local leaders know about the issues in their areas best and will be able to deliver results. In the long term more young people will be going into work, not into a life on benefits, bringing down the welfare bill.”

Mr Milburn’s review is also expected to propose changes to career conversations at school, with teachers helping teenagers map out their future careers from the age of 14.

Chancellor John Healey on Sunday called the NEET crisis a “moral shame on this nation, a million youngsters written off, without any prospect of being helped into work and making a contribution to this country for the future”.

But he refused to say whether Labour will meet its manifesto pledge to ensure younger workers on the minimum wage are paid the same as others by the next election.

“We’ll take one step at a time,” he said. “I legislated as a new MP for the national minimum wage when we first brought it in, and so we’re going to have to continue to make those trade-offs between jobs and wages.”