A generation of young people did not wake up one morning and decide they did not want to work. The fact that a million 16- to 24-year-olds are now not in education, employment or training (Neet) is not their fault. It is ours, as politicians.
We have failed to give them the support they need as they have grown up in a tougher world. This has become an economic catastrophe for the country – and a moral one too.
Sixteen years ago, the Conservative government took a deliberate decision to make young people bear the brunt of the cuts they chose to make. Those becoming adults today are the children of austerity. At four years old, with Sure Start centres closed, too many were already beginning school behind, without the support they needed to catch up. By 12, too many had seen youth clubs shut down and had fewer places to go in their communities with the closure of libraries and leisure centres. Teenagers in need of mental health support were told to wait months or even years. And, by 18, millions had passed through an education system that told them their technical talents were not worth as much as the abilities of their academic peers.
A country focused on the future would make young people its priority for investment – not the target for cuts. It would give all young people a path in life, giving them confidence and hope for the future. Britain has done neither. It is time to acknowledge that this failure has left too many young people ill-prepared for the challenging world they now face. And, of course, that has costs. Under the Conservatives, the welfare bill shot up by £114bn.
What is the Tory solution now? To punish those young people once again. The crude cuts they are proposing to the welfare bill would simply compound the mistakes they made in government. They would drive children into poverty and increase levels of family homelessness even further, piling further pressure on councils, the NHS and other public services. This is not “reform”. It is a path to higher public spending and broken services.
The way I see it is that we have two choices: we can either invest in our young people and give them a proper chance to get on; or we can continue to pay the price for failure.
I choose the first. The time has come for a root-and-branch rethink of how we support childhood in the modern world. To bring down the welfare bill for good, we have to act at the different stages where young people can fall behind. We must intervene long before they find themselves out of work and reliant on the state.
Next week, Alan Milburn’s review into young people and work will be published. I want it to be a watershed moment. We have an opportunity to change the way we think about welfare and the way we think about childhood. Because the two cannot be separated.
For too long, we have waited until young people reach adulthood and then tried to deal with the problems that have built up over the years. Under this government, we will start much earlier, making sure children have the support they need at the moments that matter most.
It is what I call a whole-childhood approach. It means, in the early years, giving every child a proper start. Those who start school behind too often never catch up. To stop these children from falling through the cracks, we must build an education system which offers support with wider needs, such as mental health, and values all talents.
This brings me to a change I am determined to make as prime minister. I will build an education system in England based on the principle of parity between academic and technical routes, that gives all young people a path in life, a confidence in their abilities and tells them they are equally valued.
For too long, Britain has praised the graduation cap and looked down on the hard hat. New technical pathways in school will start to put that right. We will open up opportunities for young people to learn new skills and get good jobs where they live. When they approach adulthood, we will make sure they do not face a cliff edge. We will guarantee good work experience and employment opportunities.
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The government will consider Milburn’s recommendations carefully and respond in full in the coming weeks. But I can say now that our response will not be in the manner of traditional Department for Work and Pensions reform. It will be societal and generational. We will rethink supporting childhood – shifting government spending from paying for failure to investing in success.
Of course, that support will have to come with responsibilities. If we give young people genuine opportunities to learn, train and work, we should expect them to take them where they can.
Benefits must become the backstop, not the starting point. The system will no longer begin by establishing which benefits a young person is entitled to receive. It will understand their ambitions and identify the help they need to achieve them.
This is the sustainable way to get the welfare bill down for good. It is how we build a more preventive and productive state and a country which allows every young person to grow up with hope.
