Benefits will be cut for some, minister confirms ahead of Milburn review on Neets crisis

A government minister has confirmed some people will see their benefit payments cut ahead of Alan Milburn’s highly-anticipated review into the youth unemployment crisis.

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden confirmed on Sunday that “there will be people in the future who will not get what they would get today”, as he urged Labour MPs to support the changes.

It comes ahead of the release of Mr Milburn’s review of the so-called Neets – under-25s not in employment, education or training – on Tuesday, which is expected to recommend radical changes to reduce welfare dependency.

Mr Milburn has said some young people will receive less financial support under his proposals, which include moving them off health-related benefits and onto a new “youth allowance” paid at the standard rate of universal credit.

He also claimed the government spends 25 times more on benefits for young people than it spends on supporting them into work, and recommended cutting the ratio to two to one.

Asked whether he agreed that some people should lose the welfare they currently receive, Mr McFadden told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show: “There will be people in the future who will not get what they would get today.

“When people come up for reassessment, they go on to a new system but, as I say, people are reassessed today under the current system.”

Amid questions about whether Government will be able to win the backing of its MPs over any changes it adopts, Mr McFadden argued ministers must make reforms not “in spite of being Labour people”, but “because we’re Labour people”.

“If you’re 20 right now and you sign on to long-term sickness benefits, you’ve got more chance of marking your 30th birthday and still being on them than having a steady job in between,” he said.

“And the reason we have to change that isn’t in spite of being Labour people, it’s because we are Labour people.”

He told Sky News’ Sunday Morning show: “It’s a different proposition from last year, and I hope that Parliament views it in that light.”

“We need a complete reset of the system in terms of what it offers young people to get these numbers,” he said.

Mr Milburn also said young people deserve a “legal guarantee” of work, training or employment support.

Asked this would result in young people having the right to sue if there were no opportunities available to them, he told the BBC: “We’re going to avoid that elephant trap, believe me.

“But we are going to have a duty on Government to provide opportunities.

“We’re calling it the opportunity guarantee, so there should be a guarantee for a young person because at the moment the only guarantee they’ve got is to a very simple thing, to get a benefit.”

The former Labour health secretary, who was commissioned by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to carry out the review after it was forced to water down its own welfare plans in the face of a backbench revolt, said it would take 10 years to get to a “reasonable level” of Neets, arguing that moving faster or tougher would merely result in “crude cuts” that see young people showing up elsewhere in the Government ledger.

He said investment would likely run into the “billions” over this period, adding: “But what you get back is you get welfare savings back, and then you get the so-called fiscal benefits of young people not being reliant on a benefit but being paid a wage.”