The government needs to give young people a ‘hand up, not a hand out’, according to former work and pensions secretary Lord Blunkett.

Speaking at the Social Mobility Commission’s annual symposium yesterday (23 June), the former Labour cabinet minister called for the new prime minister to cut through the “inertia” in systems that are preventing young people from succeeding.

“If there is one thing a new prime minister can do, it’s bring about hope. It’s to bring about a sense of direction, of momentum in its best sense to re-energise all of us,” he said.

Youth unemployment has become a hot political issue since the publication of Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work Review last month. Estimates suggest that there could be as many as 1.25 million people aged 16 to 24 not in employment, education or training (Neet) by 2030.

Lord Blunkett called for “complete transformation” of the welfare state. “I don’t believe it’s right to give people money to stay at home,” he added.

“I don’t think it helps those with mental health problems, to say, instead of we’re going to actually work with you to connect you to a voluntary placement or a training place or the beginnings of a job, even if it’s only part time, and we’re going to put the money behind you to do it, instead we’re going to pay you to stay at home.

“Now I’m not saying because I could do it, other people can do it in the same way. I keep nipping myself and remembering what it was like, and what a struggle it was and how, after my dad was killed in a workplace accident when I was 12, my mum had the most incredible struggle and needed support that she didn’t get.

“So where it’s needed we have to give it…I do sincerely believe we need a hand up, not a hand out.”

Lord Blunkett was joined at the summit by former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, who also reflected on how intervention had made the difference to her life chances when she was a single parent in 1999.

“We didn’t ask to be born into the circumstances of our family unit. But what I will say is all three of us, me and my siblings, are now contributing.

“And that was only possible because the state, our community, our area, and my parents brought us up. We all worked hard. But there was no way we could have done it alone. And now we are contributing more than we take. And that is the value of an economy that cares.

“It was every single taxpayer in the 80s and 90s who contributed to my life chances, it’s a community that raises children. It’s a common endeavor. And it was the idea, as a country, we are bigger than the sum of our parts, that gave me and my siblings a hand up.”

‘Young people are paying the price’

Helen Whately, MP for Faversham and Mid Kent and shadow minister for work and pensions, pointed out that many businesses are using AI to cut costs, leading to “a generation of young people who are paying the price”.

She called on the government to make it cheaper and easier for businesses to hire.

“We need more jobs. Jobs that young people can actually get. We must cut the tax burden and roll back employment red tape,” she said.

“What good is gold-plated rights for workers if you can’t even get work? Governments cannot create jobs but governments can get out of the way of businesses that do. We need to back businesses to invest and expand.”

The Social Mobility Commission’s chair, Alun Francis, argued that social mobility debates were too focused on “long upward mobility” – getting young people with high educational attainment into elite career pathways.

“At the Commission we are not convinced that this is our biggest social mobility challenge,” he said.

“I think we are going to have a debate in this country, if we aren’t already starting to have it, about the economic model which this version of social mobility feeds, because it’s one in which London, and its concentration of financial and professional services, has increasingly become the main breadwinner for the country

“But the rest of the country has not done equally well – in fact much of it has done quite badly. And in many places, it just feels like it is getting worse.”

The Commission called for place-based approaches to support young people into work, and discussed a range of pathways into sustained employment or education.

 

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