James Watt: Andy Burnham blames everyone but himself for the NEETs crisis
Telling young people they’ve been let down by ‘the system’ is a narrative of despair that removes all agency from young people. If Andy Burnham really wants to help NEETs he should get out of employers’ way, says James Watt
Andy Burnham’s recent comments about the growing number of young people not in education, employment or training badly missed the mark.
The latest figures show 1mi 16-to-24-year-olds are now classified as NEET. That is a national crisis.
Behind every statistic there’s a young life at risk of losing confidence, skills and years of experience and earnings they will never get back.
In response, Burnham has said: “They’ve been let down by an education system that told them there was only one route to success, and then left them without the opportunities to get their foot in the door anywhere else,”
But that’s a very dangerous narrative. Telling a 19-year-old that their circumstances are someone else’s fault does not help them. It strips them of agency. It tells them the problem is out there beyond their control, that someone else caused it and someone else will fix it. That is not empowerment. It is a story that holds people captive.
There will always be people who have been dealt a terrible hand. Some young people face illness, disability, chaotic homes or other barriers most of us can barely imagine. They fully deserve serious, targeted support.
But that’s very different from telling an entire generation that they’re not responsible for where they are.
If young people are taught that the system caused their problems, the unavoidable implication is that they must wait for the system to fix them.
That is not hope. It is helplessness dressed up as compassion.
Personal responsibility is the foundation of progress. Take it away and you remove the one thing that can actually change lives.
Choices matter
That does not mean pretending everyone starts from the same place. It means telling every young person that, whatever their starting point, their choices still matter. They have power over what happens next.
There is also something deeply ironic about a senior Labour politician blaming “the system”, as though the government were an innocent observer of it.
Labour is the government. It controls the system. And it has spent the past two years making it much more difficult and more expensive for businesses to employ people, especially the young.
Among working-age people aged 16-64, 24.9 per cent are not in employment, almost exactly one in four.
Employer National Insurance has increased massively while the threshold at which employers start paying it was slashed from £9,100 to £5,000.
The minimum wage for 18-20-year-olds has risen more than 26 per cent in just two years.
Business-rates bills have also risen sharply for many employers, especially those in the hospitality sector.
And Burnham’s latest statement on youth unemployment means Britain is sliding further into a culture where every failure is always somebody else’s fault.
Individuals blame institutions. Institutions blame the government. Government blames previous governments. Nobody owns the outcome.
Businesses do not have a magic pot of money. If the government makes it much more expensive for businesses to employ people, then businesses will create fewer jobs. Labour is removing the first rung of the career ladder then expressing shock that young people cannot climb it.
The evidence is all around us. UK job vacancies have fallen to their lowest level outside the pandemic since 2014. Young people are entering a labour market in which starter jobs are disappearing while the cost of creating them keeps rising.
But the bottom line is that governments do not create opportunity – people, entrepreneurs and businesses do.
The best social policy ever invented is a well-paid job. And those jobs are created by businesses, not politicians.
Government’s job is to remove barriers, reward work, protect freedom and then get out of the way.
Burnham’s diagnosis that young people are powerless victims is politically convenient because “the system” cannot answer back. It allows politicians to sound compassionate while avoiding responsibility for the consequences of their own policies.
A real leader would tell young people the truth: “Your future is not the government’s responsibility. It is yours.”
That may sound less compassionate than telling people the system failed them.
But it is infinitely more hopeful. Because if your future belongs to the system, you are powerless. If it belongs to you, you can change it.
James Watt is an entrepreneur and founder of Brewdog