Prime Minister Andy Burnham is considering whether to expand a planned welfare overhaul for under-25s to older age groups as Downing Street prepares for a sweeping review into youth unemployment published next week.
Adviser Alan Milburn will propose that young people receive training and support instead of the universal credit health element, while losing the personal independence payment in favor of a local fund for short-term expenses. Some estimates have placed the cost of Milburn’s proposals at £6bn, though the report is not expected to commit to that level of upfront spending.
Milburn told the Guardian that the planned support would create 440,000 employment and education opportunities by 2036 and raise net incomes for young people by more than £2bn. Welfare spending has reached £333bn this year, with pensioners receiving roughly 55% of the total budget and young people accounting for about 2.5%.
“It can’t be right that we’ve stripped away support from young people as a society, as life is getting harder for them and growing up is getting more difficult,” Burnham said at the Welsh Labour conference, describing the report as a “watershed moment,” according to the BBC.
The prime minister added that the administration is examining a fresh vision for schooling that avoids treating university as the only path, proposing technical education alongside traditional academic study.
Lord Blunkett, a former Labour home secretary, told the BBC that benefit savings should be reassigned to employment support “at least in the immediate future,” advocating for a system focused on “transferring resource that currently goes into paying for failure, keeping youngsters at home, isolated, lonely, into actually putting the money in and the resource and the commitment in to making those jobs available.”
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said that the government should avoid spending substantial time on employment schemes she believes are destined to fail, while Reform UK and her party have advocated for deep welfare cuts to help fund increased defense spending.
Reform economy spokesman Robert Jenrick criticized the timeline, stating that “It cannot be right that this continues for another 10 years before the youth benefits bill comes down.” Meanwhile, Green Party leader Zack Polanski called the review disappointing for relying on benefit sanctions that deepen poverty, and the TUC welcomed the legal guarantee while warning against cutting public service budgets.
The TUC emphasized that further education funding must be directed toward the workforce and provision to address recruitment and retention crises alongside severe pay disparities, noting that “a zero sum approach would be wrong and counter-productive.” Charities have also raised alarms about the safety net for vulnerable claimants.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that the proposals could leave individuals on universal credit living on a basic rate of support of about £80 a week.
The Liberal Democrats want officials to establish a 100-hour work experience guarantee alongside a dedicated careers coach for every young person. The phrase Neet itself was first coined by Tony Blair’s Downing Street in 1999 when tracking roughly 170,000 teenagers.
“All the way through, the prime minister, the chancellor, all the ministers, they know what’s going on.” It won’t be a surprise to them when this is launched and that gives it a fighting chance of actually being implemented, Milburn told Yahoo News.
Earlier coverage: Milburn Review to Say Some Under-25s Should Get Less Benefits