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The role of mental health issues and disability in youth unemployment will be examined by the former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn as part of a review looking into rising inactivity among Britain’s young people.
Nearly a million people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training, often described with the acronym Neets. Milburn will look at ways to avoid people becoming trapped as Neets and the findings will be published in the summer.
The government announced the review four days after publishing the findings of another review, by the former John Lewis boss Charlie Mayfield, which said “young adults” aged 16 to 34 were one of the key cohorts affected by an “economic inactivity crisis”.
The number of 16- to 34-year-olds with a mental health condition who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness rose by three-quarters, or 190,000, between 2019 and 2024, Mayfield’s review found.
While a series of reviews, reports and white papers have diagnosed the problems, successive Conservative and Labour governments have struggled to arrest the decline in Neets.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is expected to announce funding in this month’s budget for a “youth guarantee” to offer guaranteed paid work to every eligible young person who has been on universal credit for 18 months without earning or learning.
Pat McFadden, the secretary of state for work and pensions, said: “The rising number of young people who are not in education, employment or training is a crisis of opportunity that demands more action to give them the chance to learn or earn. We cannot afford to lose a generation of young people to a life on benefits, with no work prospects and not enough hope.”
The Department for Work and Pensions said Milburn’s review would “make practical recommendations to help young people with health conditions access work, training or education – ensuring they are supported to thrive, not sidelined”.
It said the findings would complement yet another review, the Timms review, which is looking at the personal independence payment, which covers the extra costs of physical and mental disabilities.
Milburn was health secretary from 1999 to 2003 under Tony Blair, and was appointed last year as the lead non-executive director of the Department of Health and Social Care.
He said he would be “uncompromising in exposing failures in employment support, education, skills, health and welfare and will produce far-reaching recommendations for change to enhance opportunities for young people to learn and earn”.
