Early evening summary
-
Keir Starmer has said he thinks that “much” of what Tony Blair said in his 5,700-word essay yesterday criticising the record of the government was wrong. (See 4.04pm.)
-
Nicola Sturgeon has said that she was misled, lied to and betrayed by her estranged husband Peter Murrell, who this week admitted stealing more than £400,000 from the SNP. He spent the money on luxury items, leading people to question why Sturgeon did not know what was happening. Speaking at a literary festival in Ireland, she said:
I know there are questions, I understand that. I would probably be asking as well if I was looking in from the outside on somebody else. ‘How can she not have known?’.
And I think underlying that question there is a big misassumption, which is that I knew anything about it, or that I knew all about it.
I think everybody assumes that all of this stuff that it turns out my former husband was buying I knew about it, I just didn’t question how he paid for it.
As recently as Monday I was reading about things in the newspapers for the first time, things that I had never seen, I didn’t know about.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t question where they came from.
Things that I did recognise, none of it would have made me question how he could afford it.
We were two people on high salaries, no kids, and this is another factor, I was doing a job that had me working round the clock, away from home a lot of the time.
Maybe this doesn’t reflect well on me, I didn’t spend a lot of the time in my kitchen.
But I never questioned that some of these things he was buying I was aware of that he couldn’t have afforded them. He could have afforded it …
Just as other people have been, I have been deceived.
I have been misled, I have been lied to and I have been betrayed, and I won’t be the last woman who has been betrayed by her husband.
McFadden does not rule out creating different benefits system for young people after final Milburn report published
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, has been interviewed on the PM programme. Asked what he would do if Alan Milburn recommends having a different benefit system for young people when he publishes his final recommendations in the autumn (an idea Milburn did not rule out at his press conference – see 12.49pm), McFadden did not rule out the idea either. Instead, he said he wanted to change the ‘exam question’ the benefits system asks.
Instead of asking ‘what benefit are you entitled to?’, the system should be asking ‘how do we help you change your life?’, he said.
TUC urges government not to cut minimum wage rates for young people as response to Milburn report
The TUC is urging the government not to cut the minimum wage for young workers. (See 5.35pm.) In a statement after the publication of Alan Milburn’s report today, Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said:
Young people pay the same bills as everyone else and deserve a fair wage for their work.
Youth rates are not only unfair, but they’re also increasingly obsolete as most businesses hardly use them.
The independent experts at the Low Pay Commission have said employment for young people has done better where minimum wage coverage is highest – and shown that successive governments have closed the gap between the adult rate and youth rate with no negative impact on employment.
Cutting the minimum wage for young workers is not the way to get – or retain – them in the jobs market.
Milburn suggests government should drop pledge to apply national living wage to all over-18s
Labour said in its manifesto that it would pay all people over the age of 18 the national living wage. At the moment the full rate only goes to people who are at least 21, and people who are 18, 19 or 20 get a lower rate.
This is intended to finish an equalisation process that started under the last government. When George Osborne created the national living wage as a beefed up minimum wage in 2016, it was only available to people over the age of 25. When Sajid Javid was chancellor, he announced plans to start reducing that threshold and it came down to 23, and then to 21. Labour wants to reduce it to 18.
But Alan Milburn has suggested that Labour should drop this pledge.
In interviews this morning, and at his press conference, he said that increases in the minimum wage, in employer national insurance and in employment regulation were all factors in making it harder for young people to find work. But he stressed that the problems started long before Labour took office, and he was not specific about what he wanted the government to do in these areas.
However, in an interview for the News Agents podcast, he was specifically asked if the government should give up the minimum wage equalisation pledge. He implied it should, saying:
We’re going to pronounce on that in the autumn, but it’s pretty obvious from what we’ve seen that there is a risk if we keep going down the same track, if you want more young people in employment, you’ve got to make sure the jobs are there for them.
To get the jobs there for them, you’ve got to make sure the employers are willing to take the risk … if you’re in, say, the hospitality sector or the retail sector, margins tend to be very low. These tend to be sectors that were really badly hit by cost of living, hospitality in particular.
It’s discretionary spend to go to a hotel or to a restaurant, and that’s what’s really hit them the hardest over the course of these last five or six years.
So, we have just got to make sure that we understand what’s going on in the economy, and then apply the right solutions, because otherwise you start to get perverse outcomes.
Sturgeon says learning details of her estranged husband's theft of SNP funds has made this 'worst week of my life'
Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, has said that it has been “really painful” to learn details of her estranged husband’s embezzlement of SNP funds and that she is only at the “early stages” of trying to make sense of it.
As Sky News reports, she was speaking at an Irish literary festival where she said that this has been the worst week of her life.
On Monday Peter Murrell, her husband from whom she is seperated, admitted stealing more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party, where he was the party’s chief executive.
Sturgeon was never charged in relation to this, and she says she knew nothing about his offending.
She said today:
This has been probably the worst week of my life. The last few years have had some tough weeks for me, but this one I think surpasses all of them.
Coming to terms with the fact that you spent many years – I spent many years – married to somebody that, as it turns out, I obviously didn’t know at all is a really painful truth to process, and I think I’m only in the very early stages of processing it.
And then to be in a position of such public turmoil myself makes it even harder. This is not a private thing – it would be hard enough if it was a private thing – but it’s very public.
Implementation of Brexit 'little short of disaster', says former cabinet secretary Simon Case
Simon Case, the former cabinet secretary, has described the implementation of Brexit as “little short of a disaster”.
That may sound like a statement of the obvious. But given that Case was cabinet secretary while that process was happening, and that ex-civil servants are normally quite reticent about expressing strong political views, it is interesting that he has chosen to speak out this bluntly.
Case delivers the assessment in an essay he has written for The Brexit Effect 2016-2026, a new book being published to mark the 10th anniversary next month of the vote to leave the EU. Edited by the political historian Anthony Seldon, it is a collection of 36 essays written by politicians, officials and academics, from all sides of the Brexit debate.
Case became cabinet secretary in September 2020, when the UK was still negotiating its post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, and stayed until December 2024. He starts his essay with a quote from Lenin saying a revolution “teaches an entire people very rich and valuable lessons”, and he concludes it saying:
Lenin was certainly right in that the UK learnt some rich and valuable lessons from its Brexit revolution. In its implementation, it has been little short of a disaster. The opportunities, as leave supporters would argue, have been left largely unexplored, and the last decade has been a repeated series of efforts focused on the mitigation of the perceived negative consequences. Elsewhere, when revolutionaries fail to take control of the seat of power, the radio station and the airfield, their revolutions are usually very short-lived. Those leading the Brexit revolution have never taken control of all of the key institutions of power in the UK – it took three years to deliver a leave prime minister, and parliament has yet to see a leave majority. Whitehall has never been given clear and consistent instructions that an alternative vision of the country’s future is to be pursued. Whilst the constitutional change has been completed, the vision has never been defined and implemented. The revolution has failed.
This is not a book that tries to come to an overall, considered verdict on Brexit, but it is full of wise and sensible contributions. It is not a light read, though, and if you want more Brexit, and are looking for something a bit more entertaining, do try No Second Chances, a recent book by Morgan Jones about the people who campaigned for a second Brexit referendum. In the Seldon book, the arch-Brexiteer Douglas Carswell says: “Sometimes those most committed to a cause are not its best advocates.” He is making a point about Eurosceptics, but Jones’s book, which is short and fun, is largely about how this was also true of the blue beret brigade obsessives and idealists who tried to get Brexit overturned. Politics books are normally about MPs or advisers. But activists matter too and this is a respectful and illuminating book about a group of players in the political ecosystem who deserve a bit more attention than they’ve had. After all, when Britons remember 2016, Steve Bray, ‘Mr Stop Brexit’ (who merits a whole chapter in the Jones book), will live in the memory long after we’ve forgotten the details of the Grieve amendment.
Burnham steps back from past calls to end immigration benefits restriction
Andy Burnham has rolled back from his previous calls for ministers to scrap a restriction on immigrants claiming benefits as the Makerfield byelection places greater scrutiny on his policy positions, Peter Walker reports.
John Crace has filed his political sketch. He has had a go at writing the campaign diary of Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate in Makerfield.
Starmer indicates he would fight any leadership challenge this summer, saying he won't 'walk away'
In his pooled interview for broadcasters, Keir Starmer was also asked if he would be a candidate in the event of a leadership contest this summer.
Using the line he has used before, he indicated that he would, saying he “would not walk away”.
He replied:
I‘ve said many times that, I was elected, we were elected, on a mandate of change in 2024. I’m not going to walk away from that because of the great change that we’ve brought about already …
So there’s a lot more to do. And as I’ve said a number of times, I’m not walking away from the responsibility that was invested in me. People invested in me the responsibility to get on and govern. And I think the vast majority of people want us politicians to get on with the job they elected us to do, which is get on, run the country and improve their lives. And that’s what I’ll do.
Given that polling of Labour party members suggests Andy Burnham would beat Starmer quite easily in a leadership election, many MPs believe that, notwithstanding what Starmer is saying now, if Burnham does return to parliament, Starmer would not want to fight what would be a bitter contest. There is an assumption that instead he would agree a timetable to stand down in the autumn, or even early next year.
But no one actually knows and, if there is a plan, it’s a secret. It is more probable that Starmer is putting off a decision until after the byelection. A lot will depend on Burnham’s standing with Labour MPs at that point.
Starmer says he thinks 'much' of what Blair had to say about the government's record yesterday was wrong
Keir Starmer has said that “much” of what Tony Blair said in his 5,700-word essay yesterday criticising the record of the government was wrong.
During a visit to a train depot in west London, Starmer was asked by a reporter how he felt about being criticised by Labour’s most successful prime minister.
Starmer started with a compliment for his predecessor.
Let me start with where I agree with Tony Blair.
I agree with him, that we should be having a discussion about policy and ideas, and that’s what generates politics. That’s where the focus should be. So Tony is right about that.
But then Starmer, who seemed to be enjoying the chance to hit back, then went on to say he thought Blair was mostly wrong. He said:
You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much what Tony says about what the government is doing.
We can all argue about individual policies, but the real question is, what’s the change, what’s the difference that is happening in a country we inherited two years ago in a very poor place?
We put the policy in place to stabilise the economy and make sure that it grew so wealth was created in every part of the country.
Because of our policy choices, that is happening.
Starmer then launched into a long defence of his record.
We took policy choices that we needed better public services. They were on their knees when we inherited them.
We took policy choices that we would invest in those public services, that we would introduce new technologies, particularly in the NHS. As a result, waiting lists are coming down with the biggest drop for 17 years actually recorded just two weeks ago. So [we took] the right policy choices there.
We also had to address the question of how do we get migration down without affecting economic growth, which is a difficult balance. Again, we took our policy choices and you see the growth figures are up and the migration figures are down, which tells you the change that we brought about in two short years.
And then on the international stage, which is obviously hugely important at such a volatile time, we have in two short years rebuilt our relationship with many countries, particularly in the EU – we’re now a trusted colleague, an ally of our EU partners – but at the same time as maintaining our relationship with the US. And so many people said that wouldn’t be possible.
So actually, my response to Tony is, yes, it’s right to talk about policy, it’s right to talk about ideas, that’s where the debate should be.
But actually, I don’t agree that the policy choices of this government weren’t the right policy choice given what we inherited – very different situation in 2024 to 1997.
And, dealing with what we had to turn around, the policy choices, we’re vindicated by them because those changes have happened.
UPDATE: Starmer later published a fuller and longer response to Blair in a post on his Substack blog.
Updated
Swinney accused of trying to 'shut down scrutiny' as he rejects call for inquiry into Peter Murrell's embezzlement of SNP funds
John Swinney has been accused of “trying to shut down scrutiny” as he again rejected calls for a Holyrood inquiry to be established into Peter Murrell’s crimes, the Press Association reports. PA says:
The former SNP chief executive – and estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon – this week pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
The issue was raised at first minister’s questions, with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar alleging Swinney – who appointed Murrell in his first stint as SNP leader – had “helped build” a culture in the party that enabled the crime.
Swinney dismissed that as “victim blaming”, adding that Sarwar should be “ashamed of himself”.
But the Scottish Labour leader insisted a parliamentary inquiry was now needed because “secrecy and cover-up go far beyond one individual or one case”.
Sarwar said: “At its heart is an SNP culture where secrecy became normal, dissent dangerous and people learned that speaking out carried a heavy price. All while those at the top of the SNP machine operated without scrutiny.”
He added that a parliamentary inquiry would not consider criminal behaviour, but would instead “look at the culture, the process of decision-making and lessons for the future”.
The Scottish Labour leader insisted it would “answer the many questions that the public have.
But Swinney told him he did not support a parliamentary inquiry, telling MSPs: “We have just had a police investigation which has gone on for five years and that police investigation has identified criminality as the source of this particular issue, and that is now being remedied.
“So, I don’t think there is anything a parliamentary inquiry can add to a five-year forensic police investigation that has resulted in the successful prosecution of an individual and his guilty plea.”
The SNP leader added: “What I would rather do is concentrate on the priorities of the people of Scotland, as I always do.”
Speaking to reporters after FMQs, Swinney said he did not believe Murrell had embezzled public funds.
He said: “I’m satisfied that we’ve gone through all of the accounting processes that are required to secure that money, which is validated by external bodies.”
Asked if Murrell could have falsified receipts and invoices to steal public funds, Mr Swinney added: “I’m satisfied that that has not been the case.”
The first minister was also asked which checks Ms Sturgeon had made when she previously gave assurances that there were no issues with the party’s finances.
He said: “I don’t know all of the conversations that took place but at the heart of this case is a very simple point: there was a betrayal of trust.”
Brexit rules on food exports to be scrapped, government confirms
Brexit rules affecting UK food exports to the EU, including fresh sausages and burgers, will be scrapped from mid-2027 in the first confirmed result of Keir Starmer’s “reset” negotiations with Brussels, Lisa O’Carroll reports.
Asked about the Guardian’s story, the EU spokesperson on EU-UK relations, Balazs Ujvari, claimed that the negotiations had yet to be finalised. “On the SPS, of course there have been negotiations going on for quite a while, and to my knowledge these negotiations are still ongoing, and of course will not be commenting on them as long as they are not fully completed,” he said.
4 charts from Milburn's report on Neets showing why he says crisis getting worse
Here are four charts from Alan Milburn’s report on Neets that illustrate why he says the crisis is getting worse.
1) How UK’s youth Neet rate is getting worse compared to other European countries
The report says:
The UK now sits above the average youth Neet rate for high-income countries, the EU and the OECD. In 2025 the EU average for 15 to 24-year-olds was 9%, compared with 12.8% for 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK at the end of 2025. The gap is no longer just with the strongest performers. In 2014, the UK was around the European average. By 2025, only Romania recorded a higher rate.
2) How Neet rates are going up by gender
In the past young women were more likely to be Neet than young men, but that has changed. The report says:
In 2012, the UK female Neet rate exceeded the male rate by 1.8 percentage points. By 2024 males were 2.9 points higher, at 14.3% compared with 11.4%. The improvement for women reflects, in significant part, the decline in teenage pregnancy, with the under-18 conception rate in England and Wales falling 66% between 2007 and 2022.
3) How disability rates are rising for Neets, and for all young people
The report says:
In 2024/25, nearly half of young people who are Neet in the UK, 45%, report having a disability – more than doubling from 21.1% in 2013/14. Disability prevalence among all 16- to 24-year-olds has also doubled, from 10% to 19.7% over the last ten years. Young people considered to have special educational needs or disabilities (Send) are around 80% more likely to be Neet than average.
4) Proportion of Neets with particular health conditions
A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Milburn’s Neets report?
Here is Peter Walker’s guide to what is in Alan Milburn’s report on Neets out today.
Scottish Greens urge Swinney to tax wealth instead of axing jobs at first FMQs since election
John Swinney should tax the wealthy in Scotland instead of axing public sector jobs, the Scottish Greens have said. Co-leader Gillian Mackay warned the government’s focus on “public sector reform” would likely mean slashing budgets and cutting jobs, the Press Association reports. PA says:
Speaking during the inaugural first minister’s questions since the election, Mackay urged the first minister to agree to a bigger rollout of a four-day work week for public workers.
She also called on the SNP leader to work with her party to reform council tax – something long promised but not delivered by the SNP.
Mackay said: “We know public sector reform is badly needed, but trade unions in particular are rightly concerned that reform is usually a euphemism for slashing budgets and cutting jobs.”
Mackay said more money had to be raised from the “super rich” in Scotland and urged the first minister to “explore all options for taxing wealth before cutting public sector jobs”.
She asked the FM to back calls from Tax Justice Scotland to replace council tax by 2031 “at the latest”.
The group, which brings together more than 50 organisations campaigning for tax reforms, also wants the Scottish government to make faster progress on introducing a new levy on private jets.
It made the demands in an open letter to the first minister, with campaigners arguing “bold steps towards tax justice” could help provide funds to reduce inequality, invest in public services and tackle climate change.
Swinney said he was open to reforming or even abolishing council tax in Scotland but the government had to have “reliable means” in place to fund public services.
On reform, the first minister said while he understood concerns from trade unions, Scotland had “to be open to new ways of delivering public services”, saying Holyrood had to be a “bold” parliament.
He said Ivan McKee, public service reform secretary, would look to improve public services while making the government’s finances more sustainable, suggesting services could be delivered better while costing less.
He added: “Of course, without a majority in this parliament, the government is going to have to work with others to come to common positions, and I look forward to taking those discussions forward with many colleagues across the political spectrum.”
Updated
Badenoch criticises British Museum for delaying Jewish event over protest fears
Kemi Badenoch has criticised the British Museum for postponing a talk on Jewish culture because of potential protests, the Press Associaton reports.
The museum said it had postponed the event after being told a “significant proportion” of attendees were planning to disrupt it, PA says. The lecture on ancient Israel and Judah was due to take place this afternoon as part of Jewish Culture Month.
In a statement, the British Museum said:
In recent days, we were informed that a significant proportion of registered attendees were individuals intending to deliberately disrupt the event, preventing others from participating in good faith and undermining the purpose of the programme.
The British Museum fully recognises the importance of lawful protest and freedom of expression in a democratic society. Equally, we have a responsibility to ensure that events hosted within the Museum can proceed safely, securely and without intimidation for speakers, staff and visitors alike.
Following discussions with organisers and security partners, a joint decision was taken to postpone the event to a later date when it can take place in an environment that properly safeguards both the audience experience and the integrity of the programme itself.
In a post on social media, George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor who is now chair of the British Museum, urged people to read the statement before taking a view on the story.
But this morning Badenoch suggested that postponing the event was unacceptable. In a statment she said:
Jewish Culture Month is meant to promote awareness of and celebrate Jewish culture in the UK. This decision achieves precisely the opposite.
Jewish acts and actors are now being routinely cancelled from events across the UK. As with the marches and protests going past Synagogues and knocking on doors intimidating Jews, the end result is an erasure of Jews and Jewish culture from Britain’s public space.
The government says it wants to combat antisemitism, it needs to tell publicly funded institutions like the British Museum to do what’s necessary to put this event on. The Conservatives will always make sure that Britain feels a safe place for Jews.
UPDATE: Nadia Khomami has more on the museum’s decision here.
Updated
UK risks £125bn hit a year from youth unemployment, landmark report says
Here is Richard Partington’s story about the Milburn report.
Milburn says employers need 'new deal' to help encourage them to hire more young Britons as immigration falls
Q: According to a thinktank report, 27 young non-EU migrants have been hired for every one Briton since 2020. Do you think employers should have to offer jobs to British young people first?
Milburn said he thought that would happen anyway because immigration levels are falling. (See 12.20pm.)
But he said employers would need more support from government to allow this to happen. He explained:
You bring in a migrant worker. They’re often experienced. They’re often a bit older. There’s a high work appetite.
A young person might well have a big work appetite, but they’ve had no work experience, never been exposed to the world of work, never had an opportunity to have that Saturday job, a bit of work experience.
And so this is going to mean that employers are going to have to work a bit harder in order to get the very best out of those young British workers. But that’s what they should be doing.
And the deal that we need to construct as a society is if employers are going to do that, how can the government help them and enable them to do that as well?
That’s the new deal. And it’s an important one in a world where levels of migration are seemingly on … a pretty clear downward trajectory.
Q: Do you think there should be a separate welfare system for young people?
Milburn said the benefits system has “different purposes for different cohorts in the population”.
He said the system had to be geared to the needs of young people. That issue should be considered, he said.
Q: Are you worried that the structure of Pip (the personal independence payments) keeps young people out of the labour market? Does the government need to review how it works.
Milburn said:
In a sense it’s unfair to blame Pip for not getting good participation outcomes because that’s not what it was set up to do. It was set up with an entirely different purpose in mind.
But, in the light of how much Pip costs are rising, it is right to review it, he said. He said Stephen Timms is doing that for the government.
Milburn says UK should learn from Netherlands, where further education system much better and Neet rates much lower
Q: Spending on adult apprenticeships and adult education has fallen sharply since 2010. Is that part of the problem?
Yes, it is, Milburn said.
If you look at countries comparable to ours, take Holland as an example. Holland has a third of the Neet rate that we do in the UK.
Is that about Dutch kids being different from British kids? Not all.
Is that about their labour market being different? Maybe a bit.
What is it fundamentally about? It’s about some structural things.
First of all, it’s about the question that you ask, which is they make a priority of vocational education and investment in it. And when you look at the numbers, there’s a far higher proportion of Dutch kids, Dutch young people, in the equivalent of our FE colleges than there are here. So they’ve made a deliberate choice and it’s produced a pretty good outcome.
Secondly, they approach things in different structural way. So one of the very striking features of the Dutch system, for example, is it’s much more integrated. The services pull together. Ours is fractured. They’re integrated. They’re pulled together.
There’s one data set. Critically there’s one organisation responsible. We have no one responsible here because everyone is.
And the final part of the action that they seem to get right, that we get wrong, is that employers are much more engaged from the outset with the education system, so that kids are getting familiarity with employers, with the world of work, with work experience, with all of those things that we know that employers are crying out for.
I’m not saying you can do a lift and shift from the Dutch system because you can’t. There’s different traditions, different cultures, different structures. But, boy o boy, is there something to learn.
Milburn says Ofsted system needs to change so schools incentivised to stop pupils becoming Neets
Milburn said he would like to see schools given better incentives to stop their pupils endinng up Neet. He said:
You get five good GCSEs, that’s great, you get a tick in the box, the school does well, it passes its Ofsted inspection.
What happens if 30% of those kids end up Neet? Is that a good result or is it a bad result? I would say that’s a bad result.
So we’ve got to change the incentive system, we’ve got to change the inspection system, we’ve got to change what it is that schools and colleges are accountable for.
That’s quite a big change. But honestly, it needs to happen.
Milburn said he has been talking to mayors a lot as part of his review. They would be a big part of the solution, he suggested.
The labour market in Middlesbrough is just a different labour market from Islington.
And the people who’ve got to decide about what is right in that labour market for matching supply with demand have got to be based in those local areas.
And a big part of this equation is further education and vocational education more generally.
Milburn says migrants not to blame for Neets crisis - but falling immigration creates 'opportunity' to help solve problem
Q: Is immigration part of the problem?
Milburn replied:
We found no evidence that there is a link between levels of migration and higher levels of Neets.
Milburn said it was true to say that immigration has been high over the past 10 to 15 years, and that migrants were working in sectors of the economy, like hospitality and retail, where traditionally young people worked.
He went on:
I’d like to sort of couched it in a slightly different way if I can, which is I think migration is now an opportunity to help solve the problem.
We’re on a downward trend, migration levels down, not up. I don’t know how long that’s going to last, but it seems to be pretty consistent. All the economists tell me that it will keep falling, and we could have a minus net level of migration figure before too long.
And frankly, to be honest, too many employers have been on Easy Street. They’ve been able to import labour from overseas rather than grow labour and skills at home.
I know they’ve all got a problem. Talk to any employer, talk to employers and hospitality at the bottom end of the labour market, talk to employers in technology at the top end of the labour market, and they will all complain about the same thing, which is a shortage of skilled labour.
So where they’re going to recruit from. There’s a pool of labour [young people – the Neets]
Is it straightforward, is it easy? No. Is the pastoral burden for an employer higher? Yes it is. And that means back to some of these questions about national insurance contributions.
And we’ve got to accept that the pastoral burden for employers will be higher and therefore the support that employers will need, particularly small and medium sized enterprises will be higher too.
Reverting to what he said earlier (see 11.48am), Milburn said this should not be a “blame game” issue.
It’s one of those issues that’s a blame game issue. We just blame immigration as the problem. It’s not really, it isn’t.
Milburn says welfare system failing to help get young people into work
Q: Do you want to see more conditionality in the benefits system, with people losing welfare payments if they don’t take part in work or training?
Milburn said that he was not making policy recommendations today.
But he said the report explains how the system works, and he said that some of incentives in the welfare system were “perverse”.
He went on:
There’s a backlog of two million waiting for a reassessment of their work capability. That’s two million people who could be helped into being in a job.
We’re not doing face to face assessments in the way that we once were. That means you can’t have a meaningful conversation with a young person who might have autism, might be living in a rural area where there’s no public transport. You want to be able to have a meaningful conversation with these people.
Milburn says he would like to see benefits spending fall, but via getting more people into jobs not via 'arbitrary' cuts
Q: Do you think Labour has the appetite for welfare reform in the light of what happened last year when it tried to cut Pip (the personal independence payment – a disability benefit)?
Milburn replied:
I’ve always taken the view that you live and learn. And I like to think that people in government – and Pat [McFadden] is one of them – have lived and learned.
Look, if you frame welfare reform is all about cost out and taking money away from people, particularly those who are sick and disabled, you are going to get an appropriate response. And that is what has happened.
So what are we trying to do here? We’re trying to do something entirely different, which is to say what is going on for young people from early years all the way through to the welfare system. What is it that we need to do to enable them to do what they want to do, which is to be in work?
Miliburn said he was regularly asked if he thought the benefits bill should be lower. He went on:
The honest answer to that question is yes, it should.
But the sustainable way to reduce the benefits bill is not by plucking an arbitrary figure out of thin air and saying, we’re going to cut it.
The way to do it is to get more young people into work, because if they’re working, they’re earning. If they’re earning pay, paying taxes. If they pay in taxes, they’re less reliant on benefits.
Milburn said the problem with the system now was that it was set up in the wrong way.
The first instinct is to say to a young person, particularly with a health condition or a disabled person, you can’t work, rather than saying to them, what would it be that would enable you to work? How can we help and support you to do so?
So I think honestly, that is the right question.
Milburn said he thought cabinet ministers agreed.
My sense is that there is an appetite to go back into this [welfare reform], but to go back into it in the right way.
Updated
Milburn says he's not interested in blame game, and wants to focus on solutions
Q: Why has the problem got worse in the UK compared to other countries?
Milburn said this had been a problem for years. It was a structural issue.
The easiest thing is to do the blame game. Everybody wants to blame everybody. You know blame the smartphones, blame the parents, blame the benefit system, blame the employers, blame the politicians.
Fine. But that doesn’t get you anywhere. It really doesn’t.
You’ve got to understand what the hell is going on, why it’s getting worse, not better.
You got to take a systems-wide view of it.
And what is unique about what we tried to do here is we’ve tried to look at it through a systems lens, both on the supply side and the demand side.
And that will point us to getting answers that are sustainable.
Milburn warns 'bad things' will happen if people conclude politics can't solve problems like Neet crisis
Q: [From the Mirror] Is instability in the Labour party making this situation worse?
Milburn jokes about that being outside his terms of reference, “thank God”.
But he says this is a problem all the political parties need to address.
If politics can’t get its act together and deal with the future of this generation, then honestly, people will take a view about politics, which is that it’s not working. And when that happens, bad things happen.
So my view is that, whatever happens, whoever’s around, whoever’s up, who’s down, whoever’s in power, this is an issue that is not going to go away. The question is, is somebody going to lean into it and solve it?
Updated
Milburn is now taking questions.
Q: [From the Sun] Do you think there is a case for some sort of national service for young people?
Milburn says he is not really addressing solutions at this point. He says he is focusing on what causes the problem.
Milburn says Labour policies have not helped jobs situation for Neets - but stresses problem goes back much longer
Milburn says young people have been hit by a perfect storm.
A generation ago almost 2 in 3 of this age cohort were in work.
Today, it’s barely 50% for under 18s.
In education, the number also holding down a job has halved during that time.
Now, there’s been much focus about the impact on youth employment of recent policies like the youth minimum wage and the rise in national insurance contributions.
Employers repeatedly raised this with me as an issue, and it is true; the changes have had an impact. It’s always a risk for an employer to take on a young person precisely because they’re unproven.
So if public policy wants more young people in work, it has to minimise risks and maximise opportunity incentives for employers.
But no one should pretend that the structural change that has been taking place in the youth labour market has only recently been triggered.
Over the last few decades, Britain has had jobs boom, but one that has largely passed.
Young people’s entry level jobs have long been in sharp decline compared to the start of the century. There are 1.6 million fewer low and medium skilled jobs in the economy. Vacancies in hospitality have halved in the last four years. Saturday jobs have long since been in freefall. Apprenticeship starts amongst young people have fallen by 35% over the last decade.
The first rung of the ladder in careers has thinned for too many young but is now simply out of reach.
That places them in a hopeless catch-22 position where employers ask for work experience, but opportunities for young people to gain it have either narrowed or have gone.
Milburn says 'great British promise', that each generation does better than last, 'is being broken'
Milburn said his team spoke to countless organisations when they produced this report.
I’ve been around politics and public policy for more decades than I care to remember. I can genuinely say I’ve never come across an issue as visceral as this with the public.
Wherever I’ve been, whoever I’ve spoken to. I’ve come across a deep concern bordering on a fear about the future facing young people.
Parents are more worried than ever about their kids. Grandparents, too, about their youngsters’ prospects for a job, a home, a decent future.
For decades in Britain, the foundation of our unwritten social contract has been that each generation would be able to do better than the last.
That great British promise for this generation is being broken.
The DWP has now published the Milburn report, and associated data tables.
Milburn said this situation is not sustainable.
The problem is that for too many young people, opportunities are not growing. They’re shrinking.
Reversing that starts with understanding what is driving it in the first place.
This is the first of two reports that I’ll produce, as Pat was saying. The next in the autumn, will provide proposed solutions to the Neet crisis.
He said today’s report focuses on diagnosing the problem.
Milburn says Neet crisis 'a moral one', as well as financial, costing Neets £300,000 over their lifetime
Milburn said this was more than just a financial crisis.
There is much talk, of course, of this being an economic or a fiscal crisis.
And indeed it is. The cumulative cost to our country of almost one million young people outside of education and work is estimated in my report at £125bn a year – more than we spend on education.
But the principal cost isn’t borne by the taxpayer. It’s borne by the young person.
Being Neet has a long term scarring impact – cost to their confidence, cost of their health, cost to their future income.
For those who spend the whole period from 18 to 24 years of age outside of education and work – as about a quarter of 24 year old Neets do – the lifetime loss can approach £300,000.
That is not an abstract number. It’s a deposit never saved, a home never bought, a pension never built, the hope of a good life never realised.
So this is more than an economic crisis. It’s a moral one.
Neet rate could rise to 1 in 6, says Milburn, as he warns detachment 'becoming permanent' for young people
Milburn said he thought every young person had something to offer.
When Pat [McFadden] first asked me to do this work. I came to it with this view. Every young person has something to give the scale and aptitude of potential.
Every one of them should have an opportunity to learn or to earn.
He said youth unemployment had been a problem for a long time.
The Neet [not in education, employment or training] rate in our country has barely been below 10% in 25 years. It’s one thing to be ignorant about a problem. It’s quite another to be neglectful.
And I’m sad to say that for far too long in our country, the Neet crisis has been swept under the carpet.
Not any longer. This review exists because today Britain faces a genuine generational faultline.
But the problem was getting worse, he said.
We do not just have a chronic problem, it is getting worse, not getting better.
And we have neither a system or a plan to deal with it.
A decade or more ago, the problem was temporary youth unemployment. And youth unemployment today is still, of course, far too high.
But now it is something deeper and far more corrosive. It is youth detachment from the labour market. Nearly six in 10 young people who are Neet today are economically inactive. That means they not only don’t have a job, they’re not looking for a job.
Six in 10 have never had a job. 20 years ago, that figure was closer to four in 10.
Detachment is no longer temporary for too many young people, it is becoming permanent.
If the current trajectory continues within five years, we forecast in this report that today’s one in eight young people who are Neet will climb to one in six.
We are at risk of a lost generation.
Milburn opens press conference saying Neet crisis 'probably most significant crisis facing country today'
Alan Milburn is speaking now.
He says the Neet crisis is “probably the most significant challenge facing our country today”.
New figures released showing that there are now over one million young people in our country not in education, employment or training.
It’s actually more than a statistic. It’s a warning. A warning that far too many young people are reaching adulthood only to find the door to opportunity closed, then Neet.
It’s an ugly term, but it’s a term with ugly consequences – aspirations thwarted, confidence drained, futures narrowed before they’ve properly begun.
Updated
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, is introducing Alan Milburn.
He says Milburn’s report is “really important and powerful”.
He goes on:
I could see in the first few weeks after being appointed as the secretary of state what was happening, both in human and in financial terms, [in terms of youth unemployment].
And I knew that we had to get properly under the bonnet of this problem, because there’s a lot more thing than one thing happening here …
Alan Milburn has cared about these issues for many years. I could think of no one better to lead this work. He’s a former health secretary. He’s a former chair of the government’s Social Mobility Commission. But more important than either of those, he is someone who cares deeply about opportunity and about giving people the best chance in life. He grew up in the West End of Newcastle, and he wants young people right across the country to be able to fulfil their potential.
He says responding to the report will not just be a matter for his department. He says it will be for the whole of government, and indeed for the whole of the country.
The Alan Milburn press conference is about to start. I will be covering it in detail here.
The Guardian would like to hear from young people who have had experience of struggling to get a job. You can contribute here.
Zack Polanski says media scrutiny he gets is 'incredibly disproportionate' compared to attention given to Nigel Farage
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has said the amount of scrutiny he gets from the media is “incredibly disproportionate” compared to the attention given to the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
He was speaking in an interview with Rob Powell from Sky News, who quizzed on some of the embarrassing revelations that have come out about him in the media recently.
The rightwing papers have been particularly hostile, and Powell pointed out that some of the things said by the Green party in response to queries about Polanski’s houseboat, and whether he voted in the local elections, were not true.
Polanski said he wanted to build trust with the public.
He went on:
There’s an easy narrative here to say he’s not telling the truth, but what I would also say similarly, I think if you pick someone apart enough on very, very minute things and trivial things, you can start to paint a picture of someone that isn’t true.
It’s right that I’m scrutinised. It’s right that I’m asked questions, but also the disproportionality of which I’m scrutinised … I think I can say very clearly that if you compare the scrutiny that I receive compared to what Reform receives, it’s incredibly disproportionate.
I should receive scrutiny – as should Nigel Farage.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensisons secretary, issued this statement overnight about the Milburn report into youth unemployment.
I commissioned this report because we cannot afford to lose a generation of young people, and I welcome Alan Milburn’s vital work which lays bare the scale of the challenge and the root causes of youth unemployment we now need to confront.
We are already taking action by bringing forward the biggest youth employment reforms in a generation to create 500,000 opportunities for young people, including a youth jobs grant for businesses starting next month, more apprenticeships, and subsidised employment to help young people get a foot on the ladder.
Early intervention is also key, and that’s why we are supporting families with special educational needs, lifting over half a million children out of poverty, and improving vocational learning to give every young person the best start in life.
But we know there is more to do. I will work across government and with employers, charities and young people to drive real change, so more young people are earning or learning, not left behind. I look forward to working with Alan as he brings forward his final recommendations later this year.
Milburn suggests he favours ban on social media for under-16s
Alan Milburn signalled this morning that he favours a social media ban on children under the age of 16.
In an interview with LBC, he said he was alarmed by the number of young people who do not sleep properly because of “doomscrolling”.
He said:
This is an anxious generation for a whole variety of reasons, it’s a world of uncertainty, opportunities are lower, in the way they’re described. They’re living in the digital age.
I’ve had a small team going around the country talking to these young people, these Neet young people and they do this exercise where they ask them what time did you go to sleep last night?
2 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 4 o’clock, 5 o’clock, sometimes never. This is a generation that are doomscrolling in their bedrooms on their phones.
Asked if he favoured a social media ban for under-16s, Milburn replied:
We’ve really got to look at that. The government is looking at that. If the government hasn’t pronounced on it by the time I come to report in the autumn, I definitely will.
The government has just this week concluded a consultation on a social media ban for under-16s. Keir Starmer says there will be action, although it is not clear yet whether that will include a full ban.
UPDATE: Sophy Ridge says they asked Milburn about this on Sky too.
Very interesting to hear Alan Milburn on social media ban - ‘the evidence points in one direction’
And he says of Keir Starmer - “I know this is an issue he is really bothered about. The question is not are you bothered, are you going to do something about it?’
Milburn says he’s talked to young people who go to sleep at “2, 4, 5am - sometimes never” because they’re scrolling on their phones
“The distress is real amongst young people, and it is leading to functional impairment. This is a real thing. It’s not a fake thing. They’re not making it up. This is a more anxious generation.”
Updated
More than one million young people not in education, employment or training, ONS says
Graeme Wearden writes the Guardian’s business live blog.
The number of young people in the UK not in education, employment or training (Neets) has risen over one million, for the first time in over a decade.
The Office for National Statistics has just reported that there were 1,012,000 young people, between the ages of 16 and 24, who were ‘Neet’ in January to March 2026.
That’s an increase of 89,000 over the last year, and 55,000 more than in the previous quarter.
That’s a timely example of the growing Neets crisis, as Alan Milburn releases his report into the situation today.
There is more on this story on the business blog here.
Mitigating Mandelson risks would have been impossible, says former MI6 chief
Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, has said it would have been “totally impossible” for the Foreign Office to put in place mitigations to manage Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel when he was the UK’s ambassador to the US. He was speaking to the Guardian in response to our revelations yesterday about the reasons by UK Security Vetting argued that Mandelson should be refused security vetting. Paul Lewis, Pippa Crerar and Henry Dyer have the story.
In other Mandelson news, the Telegraph says that the government will publish his communications with ministers and officials while he was ambassador next week. This is the latest batch of information being released under the terms of a Commons humble address and we’ve been told there will be a huge volume of documents released. It will be the biggest government data drop since the multi-volume Chilcot report into the Iraq war.
In their story, Tony Diver and Janet Eastham also say that Mandelson advised numerous cabinet ministers on how they should do their jobs. They report:
The Telegraph understands that the disgraced peer often messaged senior Labour politicians and officials with suggestions on how to conduct official business far outside his remit as Britain’s ambassador to the US.
The messages are expected to be published next week alongside thousands of pages of material about his appointment, vetting and communications.
Whitehall sources said the advice was “mostly unsolicited” and that Lord Mandelson was not usually consulted by members of Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet on policy issues unless they related to the US.
This will come as no surprise to people who know Mandelson, or indeed any high-ego political figures. On his Political Currency podcast with George Osborne, Ed Balls was recently discussing Keir Starmer’s decision to appoint Gordon Brown as an adviser on international finance. Balls said Brown’s advice was always worth hearing, but he sounded sceptical about whether the appointment would change much. All prime ministers were used to getting advice from Brown on international finance, he said – whether they wanted it or not.
Britain ‘sleepwalking into a food crisis’ without urgent action, experts say
Britain is “sleepwalking into a food crisis” caused by extreme weather, inflation and the impacts of the Iran war – and the government is failing to take the threat seriously, food experts have said. Fiona Harvey has the story.
Streeting criticises Blair for wanting to leave too much power in hands of markets
Today we are expected to get Andy Burnham’s considered response to Tony Blair’s critique of Labour published yesterday. Wes Streeting, the former health secretar who, like Burnham, is also pitching to be next Labour leader, published his rebuttal in a Guardian article last night.
Here’s an extract.
Labour succeeds when it combines dynamism with fairness, wealth creation with wealth distribution, enterprise with solidarity, ambition with security. The centre-left’s task is not simply to speak the language of markets more fluently than the Conservatives. It is to ensure markets serve society rather than dominate it.
This challenge is not only domestic. The international order itself is fragmenting. The institutions built after 1945 increasingly struggle to regulate a world defined by multinational technology firms, climate pressures and resurgent authoritarianism. It remains unclear whether democracy or tyranny will define the 21st century …
The future belongs to those prepared to harness change in the service of justice. That is the real dividing line in modern politics: between those who believe the future can still be shaped democratically for the common good – and those content to leave it to markets, monopolies and fate. The answers must be new, but they must also be Labour.
And here is the full article.
Minimum wage rise has made it difficult for employers to hire young people, says Alan Milburn
Good morning. For the second day in a row, the Westminster news is dominated by the thoughts of a leading Labour figure from the Tony Blair era. But this time it’s an intervention commissioned, and welcomed, by Keir Starmer’s government. Alan Milburn, who has health secretary under Tony Blair, once seen as a future PM, and later chair of the Social Mobility Commisson, was asked last year to lead a review into why the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) is rising. Today he is publishing his first “diagnostic” report, focusing on the causes of the problem. A second report, focusing on policy recommendations, is due in the autumn.
As Richard Partington reports, Milburn says Britain risks a 25% rise in the number of Neets, to 1.25 million by the early 2030s, without urgent government action to avoid a “lost generation”.
Milburn is publishing the full report, which runs to more than 200 pages and which is described by people who have read it as exceptionally thorough and hard-hitting, at a press conference this morning.
In the meantime, he has been giving interviews on the morning news shows. Inevitably, Milburn, who was a leading Blairite in the last Labour government (when the cabinet was factionally divided, and many ministers sided with Gordon Brown) was asked about his former boss’s essay published yesterday. Milburn did not get drawn into all the arguments in Blair’s essay, but he did say that he agreed with the former PM about the need to review some of the government policies that reduced the willingness of firms to hire young people.
In an interview on Times Radio, asked if he ageed with Blair that Labour had created a “climate of difficulty” for business to create entry-level jobs with an increase to the minimum wage and workers rights bill, Milburn replied:
Well, certainly every employer that we spoke to raised these issues as real concerns, the minimum wage. No employer really wants to be paying poverty wages to young people, that’s not what you come across.
But there is, particularly in low-margin sectors of the economy, like retail and hospitality, there is no doubt that these changes have had an impact. So that is something the government really needs to think about. If the priority is to create young people’s jobs, then it’s got to create the right conditions for employers to do so.
And, in an interview on the Today programme, Milburn was asked if he was willing to ask government to “think again” about the rise in employer national insurance, and the increase in the minimum wage. Milburn replied:
Yes, I am … Every employer that I talk to, they will say the same thing. There’s no doubt that the changes that were made a couple of years ago have had an impact on employers.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: The ONS publishes its latest figures on young people not in education, employment or trainining (Neets). It is also publishing figures on personal wellbeing.
11am: Alan Milburn holds a press conference to mark the publication of his report on young people and work.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.
Afternoon: Keir Starmer is on a visit meeting apprentices in London, where he is expected to speak to broadcasters.
Afternoon: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and Labour candidate in the Makerfield byelection, is expected to deliver a response to Tony Blair’s ‘Labour and the future’ essay.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Updated
