Transcription
The UK has just received a major warning about the future of its young people. This is not just another debate about welfare or government spending. It's about whether Britain can still offer the next generation a real path forward.
For decades, the promise was simple. Work hard, get an education, find a job, and you could build a better life than your parents. That was the social contract. But according to Alan Milburn, the author of a major government review into youth inactivity, the contract is now breaking.
Nearly 1 million young people in the UK are not in education, employment, or training. And the most shocking part is how the system's responding. Milburn says the government spends 25 times more keeping young people on benefits than helping them into work.
The BBC reported the government spends 25 times as much on benefits for young people than it does on supporting them into work, the author of a major review into youth inactivity has said. Former Minister Alan Milburn told the BBC that this was shameful, and with nearly a million young people not in work, training, or education, a complete system reset was needed.
In an exclusive interview with Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Milburn said it was absolutely essential Labour reformed the welfare system, even though the government had shelved some planned benefit reforms in the face of opposition from their own MPs. This is a serious warning because it changes the conversation. This is not about blaming young people or saying an entire generation doesn't want to work. It's about asking why so many are falling out of education, training, and employment in the first place.
If young people are struggling with mental health, lacking skills, leaving school without guidance, facing fewer entry-level jobs, and being told they're not workplace ready, then the real question is simple. What is the state doing before they end up on benefits? Once they're outside the labor market, the problem becomes harder, more expensive, and more damaging. Milburn's warning is that Britain is paying for a failure after it happens instead of investing enough to stop it happening in the first place.
Take a look at this clip from the BBC interview where Laura Kuenssberg and Alan Milburn discuss the old social contract being broken and why this has become such a shameful national problem. There's a fear about the next generation. So, when you talk to parents, grandparents, everybody is worried about the future prospects of their children and what is going to happen to them, whether that's social media, AI, the mental health crisis, living through the pandemic, and now the shortage of job opportunities, people leaving university, not being able to get a graduate entry job. And if you like, the old contract [clears throat] in society was that each generation would do better than the last. So, this is the first generation where that contract is being broken. And is it something we should be ashamed of as a country? Completely. This is really shameful. I mean, it's one thing to be ignorant, it's another thing to be neglectful. And we as a society, and we in politics, have been neglectful of what is frankly a scandal. It's a scandal that we can't afford.
That clip matters because it explains why UK politics feels so volatile. Yes, people are concerned about the cost of living, housing, inflation, distrust in institutions, but one of the deeper issues is that many no longer believe the system is working for the next generation. When parents fear their children will have fewer opportunities than they did, politics becomes much more emotional. When young people feel locked out of work, housing, and a stable future, they start looking for alternatives. And that helps explain why the old two-party system is under pressure, with some voters moving toward Reform UK, some toward the Greens, and others simply moving away from the old political order.
Milburn's warning is bigger than welfare. It's about trust. If the promise was that each generation would do better than the last, but young people now feel they're doing worse, that becomes a national and political crisis. People will begin to ask why taxes are high, why services feel stretched, why wages don't go far enough, and why young people are being left behind.
For Labour, this is especially difficult because it's always presented itself as the party of work. So, when a Labour government is told the system spends 25 times more on benefits than helping young people into work, it creates a serious political contradiction. Take a look at this clip where Alan Milburn explains the 25-to-1 spending gap and why he sees that as a major failure of the system.
Yes, and you hear this, it's a soft generation, they're snowflakes, all these terrible sort of derogatory words. Everything that I've seen, everything that I've heard, all the polling that we have done for this review suggests the reverse of that. What is shameful, to use your word, is that, as we've uncovered in the course of this review, for every £25 that we spend keeping young people on benefits, we spend only a pound helping them get into work through employment support. So, the taxpayer's spending 25 times as much money >> 25 quid, 25 times as much, exactly right. >> on benefits for young people >> Correct. than helping them get the skills they need to get into work. >> Correct. So, this is a failure, this is a failure of the welfare system, but it's a failure, I'm sorry, of the school system, the skills system, the health system.
That point is at the heart of the whole story. For every £25 spent keeping young people on benefits, only £1 is being spent helping them get into work through employment support. That is not sustainable. It's not sustainable financially because benefit spending becomes much more expensive when people are outside the labor market for longer. It's not sustainable socially because young people who are disconnected from work can lose confidence, lose structure, purpose, hope. And it's not sustainable politically because taxpayers will keep asking why the state is paying so much to manage the consequences of failure while spending so little on the support that could change the outcome.
This is where the debate becomes difficult because benefits exist for a reason. They protect people who are vulnerable. They help people who are struggling. They stop people falling into destitution. But if the system becomes better at moving young people onto benefits than moving them into work, then something has fundamentally gone wrong.
The point is now being echoed beyond Milburn's review. Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrote for The Times, "As Labour prepares for this leadership debate, it should heed figures out this week. Unemployment is now 5% and only half of under 25s are in paid employment." That figure is alarming because if only half of under 25s are in paid employment, then Britain is facing a long-term problem. A country cannot afford to have so many young people outside of stable work because that means fewer people building skills, fewer people earning wages, fewer people paying tax, and more pressure on the welfare system. Over time, that becomes unsustainable, and that's why the next part of the debate becomes so difficult.
The difficult part is that welfare reform is always politically dangerous. Any government that tries to change benefits will face criticism. Some people will say the government is being cruel. Some will say vulnerable people are being targeted. Some will say ministers are trying to save money at the expense of those who need help the most. And those concerns matter because badly designed welfare reform can hurt people who are already struggling.
But Milburn's argument is different. He's not simply saying cut benefits and leave people alone. He's saying the whole system needs to change so that young people are not transported into a life on benefits when they could be supported into work, training, skills, or education. That's the balance the government has to get right. Reform cannot just mean taking more money away. It has to mean building a better route into work.
Take a look at this clip where Alan Milburn says welfare reform is absolutely essential but explains that it has to be part of a wider reset of the system. But your party, Labour, has shown itself to be not up for dramatic changes to the welfare state. You can't take money away from vulnerable people. It would be wrong. It might even be immoral. What do you say to people in your own party who are frightened and reluctant to make any big changes to the welfare system? So, two things. One, Labour is what it says on the tin. It's the party of work. Work gives purpose. Work gives income. Work gives meaning. The second thing is welfare reform is absolutely essential and needs to be done. But as I said, it's got to be within the context of a wider set of reforms to state institutions. What is the answer to all of this? It's a system reset that is needed.
That clip shows why the issue is so politically sensitive for Labour. Critics are increasingly describing Labour as the party of welfare rather than the party of working people. And that's a serious problem when the literal name of the party is Labour. The whole identity of the party is supposed to be built around work, wages, opportunity, the dignity of earning a living. But when the government's spending 25 times more on benefits for young people than it's spending on helping them into work, it creates a very difficult political question. Is the system helping people back into work or is it simply managing long-term inactivity? And that's the political trap Labour now faces.
Many Labour MPs are nervous about welfare reform because they don't want to be seen as punishing vulnerable people. But if they avoid reform altogether, critics will keep arguing that Labour has moved away from working people and become more comfortable defending the welfare system than fixing the route back into work. This is now becoming an attack line that opposition parties are using against Labour. Take Kim Leadbeater knock at Prime Minister's Questions. She accused the government of planning another giveaway to people on welfare and claimed Labour was taking money from those who do work to give it to those who don't. She went further, calling it a bailout for benefit street and questioned whether Labour is still focused on working people. He could abolish the green taxes on their bills. He could stop the fuel duty rise. We could drill our own gas in the North Sea. What's he doing? He is planning another giveaway to people on welfare. Yet again, he's taking money from those who do work to give to those who don't. First, we had the budget for benefit street. Now, it's the bailout for benefit street. Doesn't this just prove that they've given up being the Labour Party and they're now just the welfare party.
If Labour does nothing, it can be accused of letting the welfare system drift while young people are left behind. But if it moves too aggressively, it can be accused of attacking people who need support. That is why Miliband's framing matters. He's trying to bring the debate back to work, purpose, opportunity, and prevention. Work gives income, but it also gives routine, confidence, dignity, connection. And this matters because young people are not just another group in the economy. They're the future of the economy. They're the future of the workforce, the future taxpayers, and the people who will have to fund public services in the years ahead.
The warning is clear. Britain cannot afford to let nearly 1 million young people drift outside education, employment, and training. The cost isn't just benefit spending, it's lost potential, it's fewer young people building skills, earning wages, paying taxes, and believing they have a future. It's parents worrying their children will not have the chances they had. It's communities losing hope. And it's politics becoming more angry when people feel the system no longer works.
The UK has received a major warning. The country is spending far more money supporting young people after they fall out of work than helping them get into work in the first place. And that's the wrong way round. The question now is whether the government can fix it before the crisis becomes even deeper.