Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report

Andrew Ranger Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the findings of the Milburn Review into young people and work: interim report, published on 28 May 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me to bring this debate forward.

Each generation is judged on the question of whether we leave the next one better off. Will they have greater opportunity, more security and the same hope that we had? Around 1 million young people across the United Kingdom are NEETs: not in education, employment or training. That is one in eight. Of those, six in 10 have never had a job—and the interim Milburn review warns that, without action, that number will be one in six within five years. If we do not act with the magnitude, imagination and substance that this moment demands, we risk failing on that generational question.

How did we get here—or, to put it better, how did we allow our young people to end up in this position? The systems set up in the shadow of the second world war to support and enable a good life for everyone in this country regardless of postcode or wealth are at the very core of meeting the challenge, but we must ask whether they are working as they should. Why does our welfare system spend £25 on benefits for young people for every £1 it spends on helping them into work? Why are young people who could work with the right support being signed off and left there with no route back? Why do 67% of NEET young people tell us that the curriculum does not prepare them for work or life?

The stark reality is that the institutional infrastructure that accompanies the system has been hollowed out, without anything to take its place. That is the youth clubs and community spaces where young people learn to work together, build relationships and find their place in the world; or the Saturday jobs, where they develop vital soft skills, learn the value of responsibility and discover what it means to be part of a team.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Supported internships are an incredibly useful way of supporting young people who have an education, health and care plan along the pathway to work. They cost more and require significant investment, but are very cheap in comparison to seeing that young person living a life on benefits. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be doing all we can to provide more supported internships, because that investment will make a long-term difference to getting people out of unemployment and into work?

[Andrew Ranger]

Yes, I totally agree; I will come on to that point later in my speech.

Too often, politics runs on short-term decisions, whatever the party or the Government. On this issue, short-termism will not do. The young people affected will not accept it, and nor should we. Picture a young person in my constituency of Wrexham—let us call him James. He is talented, but school never worked for him. He moves on to further education, but it is the wrong fit and does not work out. Before long, he is signed off and written off.

This all comes back to a moral mission that touches every postcode. The problem cannot be solved by the state alone; it needs businesses, third sector organisations and community groups—every one of us. It takes a village to raise a child. This is going to take a nation.

Six years ago, we asked young people to carry an extraordinary burden to protect older and vulnerable people from a pandemic. They did it without question. They sacrificed experiences, milestones and opportunities that the rest of us took for granted. That sacrifice is not without its aftershocks, many of which we have seen come to prominence in the last few years, particularly in health and educational outcomes.

[Gill German (Clwyd North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for all his work in this area. I visited my local employability service, Working Denbighshire, last week. It runs an amazing programme called Barod, which means “ready” in Welsh. It does pre-employability work—working on confidence, social and communication skills and the things that really start young people on that pathway. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be providing that sort of service to all our young people across the UK?

[Andrew Ranger]

I totally agree; that is another thing that I will come on to in my speech.

It is now our turn to repay the debt that we owe young people. Many players will help us to solve this crisis, and one of them is business, both local and national. I want to recognise the businesses already meeting the challenge. Examples from my own constituency include Moneypenny. At national level, Sainsbury’s and Greene King, among others, are giving 100,000 much-needed opportunities to young people. Those are vital, but I ask all businesses to give young people opportunities. They may not necessarily have the skills on paper—on their CVs—but they are undoubtedly talented and will repay the chance that they are given. Spend the extra time doing an in-person interview with an applicant, who will gain much more than they would have in talking to an AI chatbot. Look past the gaps in their CV and see the potential behind it.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He will be aware that Milburn’s interim review found that 23% of young carers are not in employment, education or training and that 40% of those have spent more than 18 months out of employment, education or training, yet they have amazing resilience and experience to bring to a job. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the review’s final report, we must outline a package of support for young carers and encourage businesses to take a chance on young carers and give them an opportunity?

[Andrew Ranger]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That is a really good ask of the final review. We must look past the gaps in CVs and see the potential behind them; that faith will be repaid many times over.

Let me turn to the education sector. Milburn reported that two in three NEETs say that the curriculum did not prepare them for work. Careers education often arrives too late, at a time when decisions about the future are already being made. Research by Education and Employers shows that children’s ideas about what they can achieve are being formed by the age of seven and are already being narrowed by gender, background and whom they see around them. Careers education must start earlier than it does currently. By seven, every child should be meeting people from the world of work and seeing where their learning could take them—not to choose a career at that stage, but to open those doors before they are closed.

In the Netherlands, fewer than one in 20 young people is NEET. Work-based learning is built into vocational education. Employers and colleges plan placements together, through a national body that brings them to the same table. Work experience is not an add-on; it is part of the course.

To the third sector organisations doing remarkable work across the country, representatives of some of which join us in the Public Gallery today, I say thank you for all the work that you are doing. Keep going and be loud about it. You are our partners in this mission, and we have a great deal to learn from what you are achieving. In Wrexham, WeMindTheGap’s six-month programme is doing exactly this—getting young people back into work and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd North (Gill German) said, helping them to build soft skills: confidence and resilience.

I say to the Government that we must share the risk with employers. Support must not stop the day a young person starts work, because a job landed is not a job done. The mentoring and coaching that got them through the door must carry on through the first months, when too many placements fall apart. Let us work with those third sector organisations; let us support them, too, to deliver this. We need to strip away the paperwork. Too many employers who want to help are put off before they even begin. Every form that stands between a willing business and a young person is an opportunity lost.

Also, we need to open up the data. Information exists, but it is not joined up and no one is accountable for the whole of it. That is resulting in a hidden cohort of about 314,000 young people who are NEET, claiming no benefits and invisible to the very systems meant to help them. If we cannot see them, we cannot help them.

However, the answer cannot be designed entirely in Whitehall. Every place knows its own picture best. It knows which employers are hiring, which schools are struggling and which young people have dropped off the radar and why. In my constituency and many others, it will be the local authorities, the schools, the further education providers, the employers and organisations like WeMindTheGap that know the young people behind the numbers.

We need a whole-society approach to tackling this crisis. It takes more than all the individual elements acting alone. It requires families, communities, businesses, educators and public services working together, united by a shared responsibility to give every young person the opportunity to thrive—a system to mind the gaps. If we achieve the above, back in Wrexham James will be getting the support he deserves, on a work placement with a local business, backed by a mentor and a coach every step of the way, slowly but surely getting back on his feet.

Where do we want this generation to be in the next 10 or 20 years? Do we want NEET rates still to be rising because the big decisions, some not easy, were pushed down the track and never delivered, or do we want the phrase NEET to be a historical term—something that was, not something that is? Alan Milburn’s final report will be the moment of truth—not just for us in Parliament, but for businesses, third sector organisations, schools and colleges. It will ask whether we are willing to be partners in the great challenge of our time—one national moral mission; one team.

I thank all the wonderful organisations and individuals who have made this debate possible, and for everything they do to support young people across the country. I also thank Alan Milburn and his team, including Peter Hyman and Shuab Gamote, for their visit to Wrexham to meet our incredible young people as part of the wider work on this report. They have had a massive impact already, and the impact on the future of our country will be substantial. In Wrexham, 10 years from now, where is James? He is in secure, long-term work and is happy, having built a life that he is proud of and fulfilled by. That is all we should want for every young person.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Ranger]

I thank all hon. Members for coming today, for their valuable contributions and for sharing their experiences and the work going on in their areas. Doing that is vital, because we can all learn from one another and take this mission forward. I also thank my hon. Friend the Minister and the spokespeople from the other parties, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) and the hon. Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), for their responses.

The number of people contributing today shows how important this issue is across the UK. We are at an important moment, because the publication of the final Milburn report is coming up. How we respond here is vital; it will define our country and our legacy here for many years into the future. It will need all of us to fix this issue, and I hope that we can work across the House and beyond to do that. It is clear, from everyone’s contributions here today, that we need a whole-system approach, covering transport, the economic approach, early intervention, local design and delivery, and so many other things that hon. Members have mentioned. Once again, I thank them all for contributing to today’s debate, and thank you, Ms McVey.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the findings of the Milburn Review into Young people and work: interim report, published on 28 May 2026.