Fixing NEETs support should be part of wider health and disability benefits reform

Alan Milburn has successfully built a political consensus around the need to address the rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). His interim report laid the foundations for change, and now Andy Burnham has set out a narrative about the kind of support he wants young people to receive. This proactive approach is welcome. As our recent work has found, leading public opinion through a clear political vision is a pre-requisite for reform of the health and disability benefits system. 

Recent reports suggest Milburn’s review may propose creating a separate benefits system for young people.  ⁴ https://www.ft.com/content/c6e911dd-440b-4852-925c-448faeb52d98?syn-25a6b1a6=1  There is a strong case for some targeted interventions for this group, including those whose health affects their ability to work, but building a separate benefits system for young people – who only make up around one in ten health and disability benefit claimants – would be a time-consuming distraction that creates further complexity. Instead, the government should focus on delivering a system that works for all working age adults. 

Milburn has identified the right problems with support for young people 

Tackling the NEET problem is important. Not earning or learning as a young person has life-long scarring effects – which have huge long-term consequences for the economy, public finances and people’s health, income and wellbeing. 

The interim report of Alan Milburn’s review identified several system failures driving the rising NEET rate. These include a social security system that incentivises people to claim health and disability benefits while providing too little employment support, mental health services which are unable to meet rising demand and an education system that is not giving young people the skills and opportunities to transition into work. Crucially, Milburn highlighted poor coordination between services and fragmented accountability at a local level as key barriers to improvement. This clear diagnosis of the problems should pave the way for the review’s final report to put forward bold solutions. 

Improving the health and disability system for NEETs alone would be a missed opportunity

Many of the problems Milburn identifies as driving higher NEET rates also affect other working age adults. This includes the physical and mental health conditions affecting young people claiming personal independence payment (PIP) being similar (aside from ADHD and autism, which are much more prevalent among young people but still account for a minority of claimants).   

There are some important problems are specific to NEETs. These include a lack of work experience and inadequate adult technical training provision, with the lower proportion of young people in education or training one of the key reasons for higher NEET rates in the UK than other European nations. 

Schools, FE colleges and employers have an important role to play in addressing these issues, but the government should be making the whole health and disability benefits system, including wider support for those receiving benefits, more personalised. This should enable more tailored support that accounts for the specific needs of young people – such as more intensive support to help young people enter and stay engaged in work, as is being done through the Youth Guarantee already – while also better targeting support for all adults.

DWP should avoid a new system that complicates join up of support 

Pouring time and resource into setting up a new benefits system for young people risks being a distraction. Universal Credit’s slow and painful, though ultimately successful, roll out shows the extreme end of potential risks and time involved – but even more minor changes often face significant challenges.

Getting the rules, requirements and administration of a new system right would not be straightforward. And it would add a whole extra layer of complexity to other changes to the health and disability benefits system, such as merging the Work Capability Assessment into the PIP assessment and any reforms to PIP following the Timms review.

A new, separate system for 16–24 year-olds would also create an arbitrary transition point at age 25. A common critique of the existing system is that the transition from the child benefit and education system to adult social security and training is mismanaged. Creating another transition to separate benefits system would add complexity and potentially introduce unhelpful incentives. It would also risk creating discontinuity in the support people receive.

Another risk is that a separate system for young people makes local join-up harder, with a lack of integration has been one of the weaknesses of past governments’ approach to employment support. The Starmer government made welcome attempts to rectify this, with the economic inactivity trailblazers and devolution of the Connect to Work programme, and Burnham has said he wants to go further. Imposing a new top-down national support programme for NEETs – with inflexible, ringfenced funding distinct other employment support – would make it harder for areas to deliver the joined-up local support NEETs desperately need. 

Instead, central government should set the system outcomes, and local areas (mayoral strategic authorities where they exist) should be empowered to design and deliver support. This would not only help bring together the many organisations that can help best support NEETs, but also help join-up support for all working-age adults.

Burnham should not shy away from ambitious reforms to support for NEETs. But this should be just the first step of building a better system of support for all working age adults whose health limits their ability to work.