The Milburn Review interim report: our analysis
Action for Children's Senior Policy Advisor, Scott Compton, explores where the interim report of Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work Review is strongest, and where it falls short on welfare.
The interim report of Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work Review is a serious and unflinching assessment of why more than one million young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET).
What are NEETs?
NEET is a shortened term used for young people -typically aged 16 to 24 - who are not in education, employment or training.
While we use the term in this blog to maintain consistency with the report and national data standards, we recognise that it can be limiting and may label young people in a way that doesn't reflect the challenges they face.
The UK is now second only to Romania in its NEET rate, but this isn't a new failure - we have never been a strong performer in this area.
Milburn’s main point is that this goes far beyond recent trends or policy changes, and is instead the result of long-term problems across education, health, welfare and employment support.
As the report says, this often starts in early childhood, shaped by poverty and the tough conditions many children grow up in.
Care-experienced young people face a higher risk of disengagement, with support and stability often falling away at the moment they're most needed. Our own recent research on care leavers’ employment barriers supports this finding.
Crucially, Milburn and the accompanying Inside the Mind of a NEET report challenges some of the most harmful ideas about this issue.
It shows this isn't about individual failure or young people lacking ambition or resilience.
The survey found that 84% of NEET young people want a job, education or training, a figure that helps challenge the unfair view of a snowflake generation with no interest in hard work.
Most significantly, the report looks closely at employers and job opportunities.
It shows there are fewer entry-level jobs, fewer apprenticeships (a decline of over 40% over the last decade), and higher qualification requirements, making it harder for young people to start their careers.
The report highlights the need for strong support for young people, including early help, high-quality employment support, and more opportunities.
This is the right approach, and where organisations like Action for Children have many years’ experience.
Action for Children contributed directly to the review through the call for evidence, and brought together young people and the Review team in focus groups.
We produced new research on care leavers’ employment barriers, and coordinated influencing work across the sector to make the case for protecting the Universal Credit (UC) health element as a vital safeguard for disabled young people.
It's on this last point, the social security system, where some of the report’s analysis falters.
Where the report falls short
Benefits vs employment support
One key finding in the report is that for every £25 spent on benefits for young people, only £1 is spent on helping them find work. It also shows that only about one in five young people who are NEET get meaningful support to find a job.
This point is meant to show an imbalance, but it risks taking the debate in the wrong direction. It suggests that simply shifting existing funding is the answer.
Cutting benefits to pay for employment support won’t fix the root causes, it will only increase hardship and push more young people into poverty.
The role of incentives in the welfare system
The welfare section often talks about “perverse incentives.”
It suggests that the system encourages young people to claim and remain on health-related benefits instead of working or training.
There's some truth in the idea that the system is too simple and leaves many young people cut off from support and opportunities.
But this way of explaining things is too narrow.
It treats disabled young people as if they're only reacting to money, rather than recognising that many have serious and complex needs.
This is important because claiming benefits like the UC health element or PIP is not easy.
The process is long, often wrong, and can feel degrading.
Many people with serious conditions are refused support. For young people, claiming benefits often takes persistence and effort, not a rational preference for a comfortable income and an easy ride.
The report also mixes two different benefits. Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is not just for people out of work. It's meant to help cover the extra costs of living with a disability, whether someone works or not.
Treating it mainly as something that affects work risks misunderstanding its purpose and weakening an important form of support.
The rising 'stickiness' of disability benefits
The report highlights an increase in how long young people stay on disability benefits, finding that they are staying in the system for longer and often have worse outcomes.
Among young people aged 16 to 24 who first claimed a health or disability benefit in 2010, 46% were not in work or education five years later.
For those who first claimed in 2019, this increased to 62%.
Today, around seven in ten young people who claim these benefits are still claiming ten years later.
It's not surprising that disabled young people - with lifelong conditions - rely on social security for long periods, especially given the barriers to work highlighted in the report.
It's also not surprising that those receiving both PIP and the UC health element have the lowest rates of work or education. These are young people with the most complex needs.
Something has clearly changed, and the trend needs serious attention. But the welfare chapter does not fully explore why.
It recognises factors like rising mental ill-health, fewer opportunities, and shrinking labour markets elsewhere in the report, but these are mostly missing from its welfare analysis.
As a result, ideas like “stickiness” and “perverse incentives” feel disconnected from the report’s own wider explanation. This creates a real tension.
In Chapter 2, the report treats young people’s experiences with care, showing the challenges they face and the system failures around them.
But by Chapter 6, those same young people are mainly described as economic actors whose “participation requirements” need to be adjusted.
Outcomes that could be understood as the result of disadvantage and complex needs are instead framed as the result of poor system design.
Both explanations can be true, but the welfare chapter does little to bring them together.
In an interview on the Today programme, Alan Milburn was clear that reducing the benefits bill should be reduced by helping young people into work.
However, the report also suggests increasing the rules for disabled young people. Strikingly, there's almost no discussion of sanctions and the risks of making these rules stricter.
Conditionality is not a neutral policy lever. Bringing in more work requirements without improving the support available risks making existing problems worse, and could cause harm.
Countries like the Netherlands and Denmark often have stronger expectations of engagement for young people.
But these countries also have different systems in place to support them and create opportunities.
This isn't about defending the current system or opposing changes.
Work matters, of course. But there's many ways in which young people with complex barriers can be supported to participate meaningfully - through education, training, volunteering, supported internships, and yes, paid work where it's possible.
Resolution Foundation analysis shows that other European countries outperform the UK on NEET rates - not because of higher youth employment, but because they keep more young people engaged in education.
It's possible to reform the welfare system in a positive way that improves health, creates more opportunities, and reduces cost over time.
But this would need long-term investment and major changes across the whole system.
The greatest risk is a familiar one. While the Review calls for fundamental changes, the Treasury may take the easier path - making rules stricter and shifting existing funding instead of making deeper reforms.
This would be self-defeating.
This government has shown it can commit to long-term system, for example with the recent SEND reforms.
The question is not whether reform is needed, but whether there is the political will do it with the time, care and investment it takes.
