A major review into youth unemployment is set to recommend that a guarantee of a job or training for young people should be enshrined in law. The proposal will form a central part of former Labour MP Alan Milburn's long-awaited report into tackling the nearly one million 18-24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEETs), which he began at the request of then-PM Sir Keir Starmer in November 2025.
Mr Milburn will present his findings to Andy Burnham's Cabinet on Tuesday, November 14, with the call for the first ever legal duty on government to offer young people support, according to the Mirror.
Call for permanent 'opportunity guarantee'
In an interview with the BBC to be broadcast on Sunday, Mr Milburn said there should be a permanent "opportunity guarantee" for young people. "It should be a guarantee for a young person. Because at the moment the only guarantee they've got is a very simple thing. To get a benefit. What sort of life is that?" he said.
There is already a guarantee in place for young people for apprenticeships or training places, but only after they have been unemployed for a significant period of 18 months. The former Cabinet minister said all previous support schemes had been temporary, adding: "Unsurprisingly the Neet rate in our country has barely been below 10% in 25 years."
"One of the reasons is we've never had the permanence and the entitlements to say to a young person if you put in effort we will guarantee you and opportunity, an apprenticeship, a pre-apprenticeship, a college place, a job, and we'll give you the support you need to get there. So mental health support, some job coaching," he explained.
Welfare shake-up proposals
Mr Milburn also warned his call for a legal duty on the government would be a "straight-forward deal" for young people in Britain. "If there's more opportunities for young people there's got to be more obligations on their part to take up that opportunity," he said. "What we can't have is a generation living on benefits. It's a disaster for them and its a disaster for taxpayers."
Earlier this week, Mr Milburn floated a contentious shake-up of the welfare state, with some young people receiving less financial support under his proposals. Under his plans, under-25s would no longer be able to claim the health element of Universal Credit or Personal Independence Payments (Pip). They would instead move on to a new system, paid at the same level as the standard rate of universal credit, but with fewer people entitled.
The Mirror reported earlier this week that the review will also call for a new "work allowance" for young people to stop their benefits being reduced from the first pound they earn when they take up work. Under existing rules, only those with children or claimants assessed as having limited capability for work, including health conditions, get a "work allowance". But everyone else loses 55p of benefit for every £1 they earn, starting from the first £1 of earned income. Under Mr Milburn's proposal, every young person currently in receipt of benefits would get a work allowance, set at a value of 16 hours a week at the minimum wage.
Government response expected
Earlier this week, Mr Burnham told the Mirror in Dublin that the report into the 'Neets' crisis would be a "watershed" moment for the country. But asked whether he would accept the recommendations in full, the Prime Minister said: "I can't give you that blanket assurance." "Let's wait for the details and you will hear from me and of course from the Work and Pensions Secretary next week in response," he added.
Speaking on Saturday, Lord David Blunkett suggested the overall shake-up proposed by Mr Milburn could take longer than the 11 months it took Tony Blair's government to put in place its 1997 new deal for the unemployed. But he told the BBC's Today programme: "It can be done and it's got to be done because nearly a million young people - half of them on benefits, half of them god knows what they are living on, actually out there not experiencing the world of meeting people and having a job and self-reliance. That's just totally unacceptable."
Lord Blunkett added: "I think there is a total will from the Prime Minister and from Pat McFadden, who is the Work and Pensions Secretary. This needs a complete reset - it's a transformation." "When Alan presents to Cabinet on Tuesday morning, I think Andy Burnham will be asking every single one of them [ministers] to sign up to getting their departments to do their bit - and that isn't going to be easy," he said.
He went on: "It's about transferring resource that currently go into paying for failure - keeping youngsters at home, isolated, lonely, into actually putting the money in and the resource and the commitment into making those jobs available."
