Reported by The Guardian
Paul Nowak also calls on government to avoid arbitrary benefit cuts before much-anticipated Milburn report is published this week
Fixing Britain’s youth jobs crisis will require ministers to drastically increase investment in employment support while avoiding arbitrary cuts to benefits, the head of the trade union movement has said.
Before an important official report expected next week, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress , Paul Nowak, said the government had a “once in a generation chance” to secure young people’s futures.
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In an interview with the Guardian before the highly anticipated Milburn review into young people and work, he said the costs of increasing job support, education and training would be outweighed by economic gains that would help to ease the pressure on the welfare state.
“There is no solution that is cost-free,” he said. “The government is going to have to be prepared to invest in securing the future of those young people, but also to invest to secure what is the future of our economy.
“This is where the government is going to have to be clear. Of course as a country it’s right to invest in our physical infrastructure, but also we have to invest in social infrastructure too.”
Ministers are braced for the report by Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary, to recommend welfare cuts to fund job support for almost a million young people who are not in education, employment or training (Neet).
The report was delayed until after the budget amid fears that the call for welfare cuts would sit uneasily alongside the tax and spending plans of the chancellor, John Healey.
Andy Burnham has said the surge in young people who are Neet is an “economic catastrophe and a moral failure” and that tougher benefits rules and more help for young people will form part of his government’s response to the Milburn report.
The prime minister has been at pains to take a cautious approach to avoid a repeat of the welfare rebellion , which forced Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves into an embarrassing and costly U-turn on planned disability…