The NEET crisis is a failure of the state, not the individual
The first step in solving the NEET crisis is honesty about why so many young people are now trapped in the benefits system, writes Brandon Lewis
Alan Milburn’s interim report on Young People and Work exposed a painful reality: the system has failed a generation of young Britons. For years this was a crisis that existed at the fringes, until Milburn announced last month that nearly 1m people aged between 16 and 24 are not in education, employment, or training (NEET). That is one in eight young people in this country.
This isn’t just a problem for the future, it is a problem now. The UK’s welfare bill is now north of £333bn, over 10 per cent of GDP. The answer isn’t simply shrinking the number of those not in education, employment or training claiming benefits, rather the government has to create a system in which those struggling can have the opportunity to build a happy and fulfilling life through work and further education.
How did we get here?
The starting point has to be honesty about why so many young people end up stuck on long-term incapacity benefits or Universal Credit with no route back. It is rarely idleness. Far more often, it’s the absence of a next step: no university placement, no entry-level job, no opportunity at all. Leaving someone unsupported and unseen in that position is a failure of the state’s institutions, not of the individual.
It’s encouraging, then, that the Prime Minister has moved fast on this. Barely a week into the job, Andy Burnham unveiled plans to put technical and academic education on an equal footing, extending nationally the kind of model he introduced as Mayor of Greater Manchester with the MBacc. This is a good idea. Expanding the number and the value of vocational routes will open up real pathways for young people to build their own version of a good life, rather than forcing them all down one.
For too long, we’ve treated the school-university-career pipeline as the only respectable route through life. People are varied, their goals won’t always align with the views of Westminster, and the opportunities on offer from a young age need to reflect that.
How to solve the NEET crisis
So what would actually work, for a government that genuinely wants to fix this rather than just look tough on it?
Start with employers, because no amount of conditionality matters if there’s no job at the other end. A time-limited National Insurance relief for hiring under-25s would lower the cost of that first, riskiest hire (i.e. the one many small firms currently can’t justify). Pair it with real flexibility in the apprenticeship levy, so SMEs can access training funding without navigating a system built to benefit larger corporations, and apprentices can choose between a diverse range of opportunities, and not just be forced to work within large businesses.
Then there’s the obvious one: AI. The instinct to treat AI as a threat to entry-level jobs is naive. The truth is it’s a chance to build apprenticeship routes into genuinely new, well-paid trades like data infrastructure and automation servicing, sectors crying out for people with hands-on experience rather than degrees.
AI can also do the important work of matching claimants to local vacancies and training providers with a precision no caseworker managing a desk full of files could do. The tech could also act as an early warning system, flagging when a young person is drifting off the register altogether.
Burnham’s government has signalled a willingness to help get young people working again and it can also show the willing to properly develop the incentives and training capacity needed to stop the country from spending extortionately on a ballooning benefits bill, with no real end in sight.
Brandon Lewis is a former minister and Conservative party chairman