PM: Benefits will be ‘backstop’ under ‘generational’ Neets reform

Andy Burnham has promised “generational” reform with benefits as “the backstop, not the starting point” for young people ahead of the publication of a major review into youth unemployment.

The Prime Minister said Government spending will shift away from “paying for failure” and towards “investing in success” with intervention throughout childhood to help those falling behind.

Amid concerns among some Labour MPs about the extent of future support, Mr Burnham argued that any country focused on the future should make young people “the priority for investment – not the target for cuts”.

But he said this would come with “responsibilities”, writing in an op-ed for the Guardian: “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.”

It comes ahead of the release of Alan Milburn’s independent report on 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets), the number of whom topped a million earlier this year, on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister has said the politically sensitive review will be a “watershed” moment but stopped short of promising to accept its recommendations in full.

He has also insisted paying for the reforms would not mean “more money” but “spending differently” in Government when pressed on the large upfront investment they are expected to require.

“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,” he said.

He said the Government would respond to Mr Milburn’s review in “the coming weeks”, adding: “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.”

The so-called Neets crisis could take a decade and billions of pounds to resolve, Mr Milburn has said, arguing that “crude cuts” would merely result in young people showing up elsewhere in the Government ledger.

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show.

“It’s a 10-year programme for a reason, because that’s the amount of time that we think it will take to get to a reasonable level of young people in this country being Neet.”

The former Labour health secretary has said some young people will receive less financial support under his proposals, which include moving them off some health-related benefits and onto a new “youth allowance”.

This would instead be paid at the standard rate of universal credit, while under a separate recommendation the Government would have a “legal” duty to guarantee under-25s a job, employment support or training.

Benefits for young people currently cost the Government 25 times as supporting them into employment, according to Mr Milburn, who is expected to propose shifting this ratio to two to one.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said some young people will receive fewer benefits in future amid questions about the scope of any potential tightening of welfare eligibility following the review.

But he backed Mr Milburn’s proposal of a “legal guarantee” for young people, arguing that employment support needed a “legislative underpinning” with people given “more certainty about what they’re entitled to”.

Ministers will be hoping to head off opposition from backbenchers after Sir Keir Starmer’s government was forced to water down proposed welfare cuts last year in the face of a backbench rebellion.

Speaking on Sunday, Mr McFadden argued the Government must make reforms not “in spite of being Labour people”, but “because we’re Labour people”.

“It’s a different proposition from last year, and I hope that Parliament views it in that light,” he told Sky News’ Sunday Morning show.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said the creation of legal entitlement “might sound a nice thing to do” but “doesn’t make sense”.

But the Tory frontbencher tentatively backed other elements of Mr Milburn’s approach, saying his focus on moving away from “handing out cash for relatively mild conditions” and towards employment support was “the right direction of travel”.

“We think he should do it for all ages, not just under 25. You should not have a different system for a 24-year-old and a 26-year-old,” she told Sky.

Reform UK’s Danny Kruger similarly said he was “encouraged” by “the suggestion that we need to be much stricter about benefits for young people who should be supported into work or should be working”.

But he added that he did not expect Labour to accept this, telling the same programme: “There’ll be indications that they want to, but the fact is, as we saw with Keir Starmer’s rather weak attempt to make a couple of billion pounds of savings from the welfare bill last year, the backbenchers won’t take it.”

The MP added: “I expect Labour will end up taking the extra spending on support for young people, but they won’t do the cuts. What we actually need to do is to take a much more robust approach.”