Downing Street has drafted in a former Marks & Spencer chief to tackle a problem that has long been the nation’s quiet shame: the mass of young people neither in work nor education. It is a move that feels both pragmatic and peculiar, like asking a retired head chef to fix a school dinner service.
The numbers are stark. More than 800,000 16-to-24-year-olds are now classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Behind the acronym lies a generation lost in a fog of gig work, low-paid internships and outright despondency. The pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and a labour market that increasingly demands experience they do not have have conspired to create a perfect storm.
Enter Stephen Lillie, former boss of M&S, a man synonymous with middle-class staples. His brief is to forge a new ‘youth guarantee’ that ensures every young person is offered a job, training or apprenticeship within months of becoming unemployed. On paper, it sounds noble. In practice, it raises a raft of questions.
What can a retail veteran offer the kids who have grown up in the shadow of zero-hour contracts and the gig economy? The worry is that the answer will be ‘retail solutions’. A fast track to stacking shelves at Tesco or folding sweatshirts at Next. These are not bad jobs, but they seldom lead anywhere. The problem is not a lack of entry-level work; it is the lack of progression.
Moreover, the crisis has a distinctly class dimension. Young people from poorer backgrounds are far more likely to fall into the NEET trap. They are also the ones least likely to have the connections or confidence to climb the greasy pole. Lillie’s task is not merely administrative; it is cultural. It requires changing how employers view young applicants, and how young people view their own potential.
Already, the business lobby is grumbling about the cost of such a scheme. But the cost of doing nothing is higher. Each NEET young person costs the state an average of £56,000 a year in lost earnings and social support. Multiply that across the cohort, and the bill is astronomical.
Still, there is something jarring about a Government that spent years dismantling the youth employment infrastructure now pretending to rebuild it. The old Connexions service was axed. The Future Jobs Fund was scrapped. Now we are supposed to believe that a man from M&S can wave a magic wand and make it all better.
One must hope he proves the cynics wrong. Because if he fails, it will not be his reputation that suffers. It will be a generation of young Britons who will have learned that even when the State finally notices them, it still does not quite know what to do with them.
