RUTH SUNDERLAND: Alan Milburn's right about the youth jobs crisis - but I've seen for myself there IS a remedy and it won't cost Britain billions

Published: 01:00, 28 May 2026 | Updated: 02:30, 28 May 2026 Of the myriad problems facing the UK economy, the worst of all is the number of youngsters who have been consigned to the scrapheap before their working lives have even begun. Almost a million of our young people are NEETs – Not in Education, Employment or Training – a deceptively cosy label for a phenomenon blighting an entire generation. This shameful state of affairs will come under the spotlight today when former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn publishes the interim findings of his independent review into how our young people have come to be so badly let down. Milburn – a sensible, old-school politician of the sort the current Labour administration lacks – is absolutely right when he describes it as an ‘economic catastrophe’. But the good news is that there is a way to remedy this tragic situation – and it needn’t cost us billions. I know this because I have seen how things can be changed at first hand in Alfreton, Derbyshire, a deprived former coal mining town. At the David Nieper Academy in Alfreton, no one has joined the ranks of the NEETs after leaving school at the age of 18 for the past two years. This represents a remarkable turnround of an institution that, before it was taken over a decade ago by local family business owner Christopher Nieper, was failing badly. The transformation he has wrought is all the more laudable given that Alfreton scores poorly on a number of measures. Household income is nearly a fifth less than the national average, residents have a significantly lower life expectancy and more than a third of the population has no qualifications. But since Christopher took over the academy named in honour of his father David, founder of the fashion brand that bears his name, it has been changed out of all recognition. Alan Milburn – a sensible, old-school politician – will soon publish the interim findings of his independent review into how our young people have come to be so badly let down by Labour Christopher Nieper leads the David Nieper Academy in Alfreton, Derbyshire, where not one of their school leavers has joined the ranks of the 'NEETs' at the age of 18  – for two years running Under an inspirational team of hard-working staff, it has gone from being in the bottom 2 per cent of schools in England to the third most oversubscribed in Derbyshire. I was so impressed by what Christopher and his associates achieved that, when he recently offered me the role of director of the Christopher Nieper Foundation, which aims to help NEETs, I jumped at the chance to play my part in spreading its doctrine of energy, leadership, and dare I say it, enlightened capitalism. There are 200 towns around the UK similar to Alfreton, where young people are at a high risk of becoming NEETs. We believe that the Alfreton model could serve as a blueprint for the regeneration of schools. If we can get to ‘NEET Zero’ there, we can do it in other places too. Milburn highlights the madness of a benefits system where taxpayers spend 25 times more on welfare than on getting the young into jobs. The long-term costs to the public purse will be enormous. Mental health problems, which have ballooned among the young, are a particular bone of contention. Milburn has spoken about the perils assailing a ‘bedroom generation’ transfixed by social media, and correctly points out that mental health challenges do not mean people can do no work at all. Writing off young people as pampered snowflakes – though it may be true in some cases – is far too simplistic. There are plenty of sparky, industrious youngsters who are desperate to work – they just need to be given a chance. The generation trying to enter the workplace today is the first to have had its education disrupted by the pandemic and is the first to embark on a career when so many roles are being lost to Artificial Intelligence. Not only are employers replacing entry-level jobs with AI, they are also using ‘bots’ to screen applications. Eager candidates may be rejected dozens, or even hundreds of times, without their applications being seen by a human. You don’t need to be a snowflake for that to prove disheartening. The Christopher Nieper Foundation is pushing a skills tax incentive scheme, giving employers a rebate equivalent to two days’ pay a week for apprentices (Picture posed by models) According to a recent report by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield, a 22-year-old who drops out of work could miss out on more than £1million of earnings and cost the Treasury the same amount in benefits, lost tax revenues and the burden they place on the NHS. That’s a total of £2million to waste a young person’s potential and ruin their prospects. The NEET situation is worse in the UK than in most other comparable countries, with the UK ranked 27th out of 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in PwC’s Youth Employment Index. Our poor rating makes it imperative we act now. Labour’s effort so far is the Youth Guarantee, an umbrella term for a number of initiatives, the most high profile of which is government-funded six-month job placements. But these are only offered to those who have been out of work for a prolonged period, by which point a good deal of damage may already have been done. The focus should be on prevention, not cure – stopping youngsters becoming NEETs in the first place. This requires a two-pronged approach: preparing young people for the world of work before they leave education, and making it less expensive to hire them. None of it is rocket science. The David Nieper Academy achieved NEET Zero at 18 by embedding a particular ethos. The aim is to instil students with attributes needed to be good employees: punctuality, politeness, self-presentation, confidence and the ability to work in a team. Teachers explain the relevance to future careers, and students are given experience of the workplace. Every year there is an ‘Enterprise Week’ where they take on challenges such as designing packaging. The other side of the equation is that employers have to be in a position to provide the jobs. The current Labour Government has made it significantly more expensive to take on young recruits. It costs a business £19,747 to hire an 18 to 20-year-old full time on the minimum wage, around 25 per cent more than two years ago. For apprentices, there has been a similar increase over the same period to £14,560, according to the Centre for Policy Studies. Counter-productive, to say the least. At the same time, a billion pounds of funding meant to help provide apprenticeships and workplace training is languishing in Treasury coffers, because the levy scheme under which it was raised is rigid and does not meet the needs of many employers. The Christopher Nieper Foundation is advocating a skills tax incentive scheme, giving employers a rebate equivalent to two days’ pay a week for apprentices, which would soon pay for itself. We have an inbuilt impulse to strive to make our children and grandchildren better off. For a million of them to be cast adrift as NEETs is a moral affront, as well as an economic failure. We must not become a society that asks its young to pay the price for their elders’ blindness, mismanagement and apathy. Enlightened Victorian capitalists did a great deal to improve the social and moral injustices of their era. Men and women in their mould exist today and are refusing to abandon NEETs. The Government needs to listen to them. 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