The figures are stark. According to Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary now chairing the Social Mobility Commission, the UK now spends more on out-of-work benefits for young people than on skills training for the entire population. He calls this ‘shameful’. I call it a portrait of a country that has lost faith in its future.
Street level, this isn’t an abstract policy debate. In Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, I met Kieran, 22. He has been on universal credit for eighteen months. He wants to train as a welder, but the courses are oversubscribed or cancelled. ‘They pay me to stay home,’ he said, not bitter but weary. ‘I’d rather earn my keep.’ His story is repeated in towns from Sunderland to Stoke. The system incentivises stasis. The ‘skills revolution’ Milburn calls for demands an upfront investment: in apprenticeships, technical colleges, retraining. But it doesn’t sit neatly in a welfare budget line item, so it gets squeezed.
Milburn’s intervention comes as the government announces a review of the back-to-work system. Yet the cultural shift needed is deeper than any Whitehall report. We have fetishised university degrees and neglected the dignity of vocational skill. Meanwhile, the cost of sick note culture and economic inactivity balloons. The human cost is embittered young people who never get the chance to contribute.
‘Shameful’ is a strong word. But when a nation chooses to pay people not to work rather than invest in their potential, it reveals a crisis of values. The skills revolution isn’t just about economics. It’s about restoring the social contract that says every young person deserves a route to a good job. And that is a cultural battle we are currently losing.
