Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report

Alex McIntyre Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) for securing this important debate.

Alan Milburn’s interim report is stark. Nearly 1 million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in employment, education or training. In Gloucester, around 2,500 young people are in that position. When I speak with them, I hear the same thing time and again: they have worked hard, but the opportunities that were meant to be there for them have turned out to be closed doors. They are not lazy: 84% of young people who are out of work or training say that they want a job or to be in education.

The interim report is clear that we need a whole-of-society effort. I welcome the Prime Minister’s leadership on the issue, but it must be matched by local leadership across the country. That is why I have made it my mission to ensure that no young person in Gloucester is left behind. At the end of this month, I am hosting the Gloucestershire Futures summit at Kingsholm stadium with Gloucestershire county council, bringing schools and colleges, employers, health services, local Government and the voluntary sector into one room. Gloucester’s young people have talent in abundance, supported by fantastic schools, local colleges and training providers. What they need are open doors and clear pathways. I am hopeful that our upcoming summit will help build the consensus needed to deliver them. I am delighted that the Skills Minister will join us for the summit.

One of the big things that I hear from young people is how demoralising it is to apply for hundreds of jobs, only to be ghosted and not receive a reply from employers. However, small businesses in Gloucester tell me that they receive hundreds of applications for a single role. They want to do their bit, give feedback and support young people, but they need help to do it. I am pleased that this Government are acting. The £3,000 youth jobs grant supports any employer that takes on a young person who has been out of work for six months, and the new partnership with hospitality businesses aims to create 100,000 jobs for young people. What more can the Government do to help smaller businesses with practical recruitment support as well as grants to play their part in tackling this crisis?

Gloucestershire’s young people have talent in abundance. I believe that it is our moral mission in Gloucestershire to support them. What they need are open doors. I look forward to Alan Milburn’s final report helping us to open them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Snowden]

Tailored support is something that I will come on to shortly.

Worse still, the Government’s own choices have made the problem harder. The rise in employer national insurance and the new burdens of the Employment Rights Act 2025 have made it more expensive and risky to take a chance on a young person. The Government cannot tax the first rung of the ladder and then express surprise that fewer young people are climbing it.

At the same time, spending on personal independence payments for 16 to 24-year-olds has risen from £1.3 billion to £3.2 billion in five years. Some 45% of young people who are NEET now report a disability, and of those who fall out of work or study through ill health, eight in 10 are still NEET two years later. New analysis from the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows just how deep that runs. In April this year, more than two thirds of universal credit claimants in their twenties—some 870,000 young people—were not in work. In just two years PIP claims rose by almost a quarter among 20 to 29-year-olds and by nearly as much among 16 to 19-year-olds. These are not numbers to be managed; they are young lives being put on hold.

The Minister for Social Security and Disability at the DWP has told us that PIP is “not fit for purpose” yet he also said that the current level of spending is not “of great concern.” The House is entitled to know which of those statements accurately reflects the Government’s position. Nor is it reassuring that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is reported to have written to Peter Mandelson:

“Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’”.

All of this raises some simple but urgent questions for this Government that I would like to put to the Minister. First, will she confirm exactly when Milburn’s final report will be published and when the Government will respond to it in full? Will the Minister also explain why neither the Milburn review nor the Timms review was allowed to report before the Budget? Secondly, will she set out precisely how those two reviews will be brought together? Will there be a single package of welfare reform and when will it come before the House? Thirdly, does the Minister accept that the rise in employer national insurance has reduced entry-level hiring?

[Alex McIntyre]

I wonder if the hon. Gentleman might remind the House how much employer national insurance contributions are for an under 21-year-old earning less than £50,000 a year.

[Mr Snowden]

That is precisely why the Conservative party has pledged to reduce them by 50% to take them down even further.

[Alex McIntyre]

Fifty per cent of nothing is still nothing.

[Mr Snowden]

We are talking about 21 to 24-year-olds.

Fourthly, on the youth guarantee and youth jobs grant, how many young people have actually started a job so far? What is the cost per place and how many remain in unsubsidised work once the subsidy ends? Fifthly, how many apprenticeship starts have there been for those aged 25 since the growth skills levy replaced the apprenticeship levy and how does that compare with the year before?

Finally, will the Government at last accept the offer made by the Leader of the Opposition, repeated at Prime Minister’s questions in June, to work with us on serious welfare reform? That offer stands because we have a plan. Our get to work scheme rests on a simple principle: no young person who can work should leave education and drift straight on to benefits. Every young person would have a dedicated get to work manager and work requirements from day one. It would cost a net £303 million, paid for by streamlining existing employment schemes and as part of the broader £36 billion of welfare savings set out by the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately).

We all share the objective of giving every young person the dignity and opportunity of work, but good intentions are not good enough and another review is not a plan. A working age welfare bill of £911 billion in a single Parliament is not the mark of a system that works; it is the mark of one that is failing both the young people trapped in it and the working families who pay for it. I press the Government for straight answers today: when will they act, how will they pay for it and how will they measure success?