I loathe and detest the term NEETs. It reeks of judgement on young people who have been failed by the system, who haven’t had the support they need in school and sometimes at home, who haven’t had the health care that they need. If there’s judgement to be meted out, it should be on the public services and the governments who have let this happen.

It is not ok for young people to not have a future. It’s not ok to make them wait potentially their entire secondary education for Autism or ADHD assessments. It’s not ok for them to languish on Child and Adolescent Mental Health services for years. It’s not ok to miniminse the impact of lockdown on their education.

Those million young people need to feel like they are valued. They need to have careers, they need to feel like they belong. It is an utter scandal that so many young people’s life chances have been actively harmed by successive Governments and devolved administrations.

Even if you have no soul and see things only in monetary terms, getting these million people into good quality jobs means our tax take is better and makes our public services better.

That is going to take much more than anyone is offering.

You know if you have an accident and look in the first aid box and see an assorted selection of sticking plasters rather than the dressings you need? That’s what the Milburn Review seems to be to me. And it comes with a healthy dose of punishment of young people who have serious health conditions by depriving them of disability benefits that often are their lifeline to get and stay in work.

For generations now, we’ve dealt with this by doing some sort of short term work placement without any guarantee of anything permanent at the end of it. Where is the incentive for employers to keep people on after that?

So what are the Lib Dems offering?

A 100-hour work experience and enrichment guarantee: every young person guaranteed at least 100 hours of work placements, career-focused enrichment or volunteering – the most ambitious work experience offer of any party.

Personalised careers coaching: a real person, multiple times a year, helping each young person build a five-year plan for life after education, drawing on best practice from the Netherlands and Germany and delivered in partnership with the third sector. Milburn’s interim report found careers guidance in schools to be underpowered, with NEET young people far less likely to feel ready for work when they leave education.

Broader qualifications at 18: an evolution of A-Levels into a baccalaureate-style system, alongside T-Levels and V-Levels, so that no young person is forced down a narrow pathway at 14 or 16 that doesn’t suit them.

It sounds good. But 100 hours is less than 3 working weeks. It’s going to take a lot more than that to give some young people the help that they need, to restore their belief and self respect. There’s no mention of clearing the Autism and ADHD assessment queue. There’s no mention of giving young people who have not been able to go to school because of mental health issues the help and support that they need. Because it is possible to turn these things around, but it takes more than the Government is offering.

Ed Davey said:

Every teacher knows a child that started secondary school bright and eager, but over the years drifted to the back of the class. Too often, nobody notices, and they slip through the cracks to become one of the almost one million young people not in education or training.

As a young carer for my mum, and now as a dad myself, I know how much it matters when someone truly notices what a young person is going through and gives them the support they need.

Unless we act now, hundreds of thousands more young people will slip through the cracks, stuck without the education, training or guidance to succeed. Ministers must seize this moment to change the system and give every young people the opportunities they deserve.

Warm words, but not enough anger.

Education spokesperson Munira Wilson has the necessary rage:

It is nothing short of a national moral failure that we now have nearly a million young people out of work or training. We all have a responsibility to provide the next generation the same opportunities we were afforded – but we have not held up our end of the deal. Enough is enough.

Alan Milburn is saying what young people have been telling us for years. They’ve been let down by a system that simply isn’t working for them – all while having to listen to harmful narratives that they simply aren’t trying hard enough. How much longer will young people have to put up with this rubbish?

The warning signs are there long before someone leaves school. But too often, the problem is not addressed, or even talked about until a young person has been left in limbo, not learning or earning for years.

But maybe not the necessary solution:

Our plan is ready to go. 100 hours of real work experience and a proper careers coach for every young person – we urge the Prime Minister to use this plan so this is the last generation that ever has to experience a NEETs crisis.

We can look to other areas of our policy to see what mental health support goes alongside this. Here’s the mental health policy for England passed earlier this year. We want to see

Opening a walk-in Young People’s Mental Health Hub in every community, with specific support for children that have fallen between school and CAMHS support.
Removing the arbitrary cliff edge at 18 for young people’s mental health services.
Enshrining the ‘no wrong door’ principle into law across mental health and related services, to ensure that no one will be turned away or told to start again elsewhere.

But is that even enough? If someone has been without support for years, it is going to take some fairly intensive help for them to receive treatment, recover and catch up on what they have missed at school. It’s not like they can have an hour with a psychologist and suddenly be better.

DWP spokesperson Steve Darling said that the 6 month work placement was not enough.

There are currently more people out of work than vacancies, a six-month placement is ultimately worth very little if there’s no job waiting at the end of it. If ministers want to get young people into work, they need to scrap their jobs tax and fix our broken trading relationship with Europe – both of which have killed off opportunities for young people.

Most young people who are out of work or training are desperate to be earning or learning. Shifting the focus towards real work opportunities is the right instinct, but why should a young person have to wait a full year on benefits to receive the employment support?

The warning signs are there long before a young person leaves school, and that’s when we need to act. Our plan would shut off the NEETs pipeline at the source, with 100 hours of work experience before 18 and a five-year plan for every school leaver.

I would have liked to see us saying that no young person will lose their benefits, any benefits, until they have had the support that they need to live their best lives.

I don’t like the idea of depriving anyone of disability benefits – which are often lifelines that help them get to work – while workplaces don’t provide what disabled people need at work.

A survey last year found that 39% of disabled people at work was on the receiving end of bullying, harassment of discrimination.

That is a problem that has to be solved in tandem with any other measures.

I want us, I want Government, to speak directly to young people, with kindness and compassion and listen to them and offer them what they need to get on in life. That’s going to be different for everyone. And it needs to be high quality. And done at the same time as making sure that young people in school today don’t became the failed generation of tomorrow.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social