Burnham and Milburn push welfare-to-work shift for young people

Andy Burnham and Alan Milburn have called for a shift in youth welfare towards work support ahead of the Budget, with both arguing that the benefits system should do more to help young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).

Burnham set out his position in The Times under the headline 'How I will end the moral failure of the NEETs crisis'. He called for a clear guarantee of support for young people to get into work or apprenticeships. He also said there would have to be big changes to the welfare system, with benefits becoming 'the backstop and not the starting point'.

Milburn, a former Labour health secretary who has been commissioned by the government to review the issue, went further in an interview with The Guardian. He said benefits should be cut to fund work support for young people, arguing that money needs to be redistributed from the welfare system into employment support to end the NEET crisis.

The proposals were debated on a political panel programme. The discussion focused on whether the changes are about saving money or building a better support system. Shami Chakrabarti agreed that benefits had become the starting point for too many young people, but said this was not the fault of young people. She argued that young people have been under-supported and called for a more integrated approach to benefits, employment support and study support, including paying people to take up training or work experience.

Rachel Cunliffe said Labour MPs had previously revolted against welfare reform because it was 'so obviously about saving money' rather than getting people into work. She said framing the policy as a better system that redistributes money from benefits into employment support, mental health support and related areas could win support. But she warned that such a shift would not raise large sums for the Budget in the short term and would take years, possibly a decade, to show economic benefits.

Dan Hannan argued that savings could be found sooner. He said 1,000 people a day are signing on as too sick to work, that spending on social security is five times more than spending on defence, and that working-age benefits cost more than all income tax receipts. He pointed to an Institute of Economic Affairs alternative Budget that would freeze welfare spending for a year and then reduce it by less than 1 per cent a year for the next three years, yielding what he called immense savings. He blamed high taxes, employment law changes and the minimum wage increase for making employers less willing to hire.

Chakrabarti rejected the cost-cutting emphasis, saying support for young people should be about helping them into education, training or work rather than saving money at their expense. She also said much of the benefits bill goes to people who are in work but are not paid a living wage. The exchange highlighted the political dividing line between a smaller state and a more supportive state, as well as the pressure on the government to fund defence and other priorities in the Budget.