Milburn Review to Urge State-Backed Jobs for Disabled Youth
The Milburn review of youth employment will recommend that the state create and subsidise paid jobs for thousands of disabled young people. It is due to report this month.
The scale of the problem
About a million young people are classified as Neet: not in education, employment or training. Nearly half of them, 45%, are disabled or in ill health. Disabled young people are three times more likely than their non-disabled peers to be Neet.
Nearly half of 24-year-old Neets have never worked. Among disabled Neets, the most common conditions are depression, bad nerves or anxiety (23.8%), autism (22.7%) and other health problems or disabilities (18.5%), per the latest official data.
The review's author, the former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn, calls rising Neet numbers a moral and economic crisis and warns of a "lost generation". He rejects the idea that young people are "snowflakes".
What the review will propose
One recommendation is a Danish-style "flexi-job" scheme. It guarantees disabled participants work while letting them set hours that suit them, in some cases as few as four a week, with wages topped up by the government.
It will also urge "job carving": splitting an entry-level role into its parts and matching young people to each. In a shop, stock-filling, till work and locking up would each become a separate job.
Other proposals are supported internships, placements, specialist job matching, coaching, and help for employers to make workplace adjustments. Large employers would be urged to adopt voluntary employment targets for disabled 16- to 24-year-olds. The review is expected to stop short of statutory quotas.
Paying for it
The government has said it will not back "crude cuts" to benefits. Milburn has suggested switching some of the £4bn a year spent on disability benefits for young people into employment and training support.
He will probably face pushback from campaigners and possibly backbench Labour MPs. They argue that job support should not be paid for by cuts that would push many young people into poverty and further from work.
The plans echo Remploy, the postwar scheme that created state-funded workplaces offering "sheltered" employment for disabled former service personnel. Remploy once ran 90 factories nationwide. The last closed in 2013.
Our view
The flexi-job idea answers a specific gap: young people with fluctuating conditions who cannot commit to full-time hours. Funding is the sticking point. The government has said it will not endorse crude cuts, and it is not stated whether it would redirect part of the £4bn. The reaction of Labour backbenchers once the report is published will show how far that can go.
Source: The Guardian