Andy Burnham’s youth unemployment tsar Alan Milburn believes Britain’s younger generations could be facing a bleak future.
“The truth,” he says, while visiting hospitality students at ROC Mondriaan, a vocational hospitality college in The Hague, “is that as a nation we’re underinvesting in young people and, by underinvesting in young people, we’re underinvesting in our future.”
Milburn, a former Health Secretary, is charged with finding a solution to the problem of Britain’s NEETs – that’s 16- to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training.
There are now around 1 million young people – or one in eight – who fall into this category across the UK, with the number forecast to rise to 1.25 million – or one in six – over the next five years without action.
Milburn is in the Netherlands on a “fact-finding mission” because the UK’s NEET rate is currently 13.6 per cent; while the Dutch figure is less than half that at 4.8 per cent. The country is being seen as a blueprint for where Britain heads next.
“This is something to aspire to,” Milburn said before noting that his conversations with Dutch officials had led him to conclude that they had not achieved high youth employment “by accident,” but, rather, “by design”.
For the Dutch, “it’s all about work”, he added.
‘Work over welfare’
Milburn will soon publish a landmark report into young people and work. It is expected to come with some potentially costly recommendations for Burnham, his Chancellor, John Healey, and Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden.
In a wide-ranging discussion during his visit, Milburn made it clear that he thinks young people in Britain need more investment and wraparound employment support as opposed to unemployment benefits.
“It’s work over welfare for me every time,” he said before acknowledging that more cash will “absolutely” have to be spent on younger generations.
Alan Milburn and Sir Gareth Southgate visit a technical college focussed on hospitality in The Hague (Photo: Vicky Spratt/The i Paper)Milburn said the conversation needed to be reframed so it was not “about old versus young” but, instead, an acknowledgement that older people, a bracket in which he, at 68, included himself, need “to have the maximum number of young people in work” because the needs of Britain’s aging population are getting “greater, not smaller”.
The Oxford professor Ben Ansell has warned that by 2075, more than 80 per cent of Britain’s rising costs will come from an ageing population, dwarfing the pressures of defence spending, net zero and lower migration.
The proportion of Britain’s population aged over 65 is expected to rise from 18 per cent in 2024 to 27 per cent by 2075. According to the IPPR, the cost of the state pension and higher health and social care costs could result in ageing adding almost 10 per cent of GDP to fiscal pressures by 2075.
Milburn said the loss of “tax take” as a result of having one million young people (or more) out of work “runs into billions”.
“The only way of reducing the benefits bill to make it sustainable is to get more young people into work and paying taxes,” Milburn said.
The Dutch model
The Netherlands may have higher youth employment rates, but it also spends more on education and employment support for young people than Britain does.
The Dutch have devolved support for young people since 2015, and local government subsidises wages and funds wraparound employment support via youth hubs at a cost of around €13.4bn (£11.5bn).
However, in Britain, as Milburn lamented in his interim review, for every £1 spent on employment support for young people, the Government spends around £25 on welfare.
It is becoming clear that what Milburn is looking at may look less like a clean sweep of benefits cuts for young people and more like a reorientation of funding towards employment support – a move, as Milburn hinted, away from the “welfare state” towards “the working state”.
This will, of course, potentially cost money at a time when Burnham’s government are under pressure to fund defence.
More cash for young people?
The high levels of economic and educational participation amongst young Dutch people are put down to a number of factors, including early vocational courses at school, more work experience and apprenticeship support and the fact that any state support is conditional on a young person actively engaging with education, work and training.
Finally, a stark difference with the UK is an approach by support teams at local youth hubs which can see them quite literally going to find young people who do not turn up.
In a training kitchen at ROC Mondriaan, Milburn and former England manager Sir Gareth Southgate, who has developed an interest in the plight of NEETs since making a documentary about the struggles of young men, heard from four young chefs about their experiences.
All of them were working in restaurants and “earning while learning”. One young woman acknowledged that she had initially felt a little anxious in professional kitchens, but said that she had now developed a new “confidence”.
Rates of anxiety among young people are not much lower in the Netherlands than they are in the UK. The key difference is that it is much harder to be signed off in the Dutch system.
Tough love
To claim unemployment benefits in the Netherlands, you must have worked 26 of the last 36 weeks, be involuntarily unemployed or have had your hours cut by at least five hours a week.
Young people who’ve never worked are excluded from this system. They go through their local youth hub, face a 28-day waiting period before accessing benefits, must log job search or education efforts with a youth coach and are means-tested before accessing benefits.
The only exception is for people with a permanent, severe illness or disability. This group can get a benefit called Wajong, but they must be approved after a medical and/or psychological evaluation by a doctor.
Milburn also visited a construction site where a major Dutch firm, BAM, runs apprenticeship training schemes and a youth hub (Jongerenpunt) where teams work to support young people who are struggling.
In all three places, he heard how staff will “harry” young people who do not participate and find out what they need to get to where they need to be, whether that’s literal in terms of showing up on time or more emotional, in terms of pastoral support.
Generation anxiety?
One of the many icebergs ahead for Britain’s economy is the number of young people who are experiencing mental health problems such as anxiety, or neurodevelopmental issues such as ADHD and autism and being signed off work as a result.
The number of young people claiming Personal Independence Payments (PIP) who cite anxiety or ADHD as their primary condition has risen to around 440,000. And, while not all of those will be NEETs, some are. This is expected to cost the state £6.5 bn by 2031.
More than that, Milburn is particularly concerned by how many young people have a fit note – which can be obtained from a GP and used to be signed off from work – which has allowed them to get benefits for people who have a limited capability to work via Universal Credit.
Milburn’s interim report noted that, in 2025, 100,000 young people declared a fit note and went on to provide 300,000 fit note declarations in total that year.
“To be honest,” Milburn said of this situation, “it’s bloody insane.”
“You get a fit note. You enter the welfare system… You get a health and disability benefit. The stickiness kicks in,” Milburn said. “You then have a 50 per cent chance of [still] being on health and disability benefit in 15 years.”
Milburn wants to “reframe the debate” about youth unemployment and instil a “moral” duty in Britain to support its young. This debate may be constructive but, while a parallel conversation rages about whether Britain can continue to fund the triple lock on the state pension, it will also be contentious.
Milburn acknowledged this, saying that politicians needed to be “careful” with the issue because the “mood in the country was not for a generational war”.
At the same time, he said, Britain needed to “decide” because “politics is about making choices”.
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