UK to be taught classes in ‘Neets’ disaster battle from European nation with lowest charge
Top Labour minister Pat McFadden told the Mirror he will travel to the Netherlands in the coming weeks after a landmark review warned the UK faces a ‘lost generation’
Britain will look to learn lessons in fighting the ‘Neets’ crisis from the Netherlands – the European country with the lowest rates.
Top Labour minister Pat McFadden told the Mirror he will travel to the country in the coming weeks after a landmark review warned the UK faces a “lost generation”.
The Netherlands has a Neet rate of around a third of the UK, with just 5.3% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 out of employment, education, or training. Bleak figures this week showed Britain’s Neet rate breaching the 1million threshold – or 15.8% – for the first time in over a decade.
Mr McFadden told The Mirror: “It’s interesting looking around at neighbouring economies – some other countries have also got a high proportion of young people not in education, employment, or training. But some countries are doing much better than us, and one of them is the Netherlands. So I’m going to visit the Netherlands to see how they have managed to achieve a Neet rate that is about a third of ours.”
He added: “One of the things they do, what I want to do more of, is have a structured offer for young people, with lots of different alternatives. It might be training, it might be work experience, it might be some sort of education.
“Whatever it is, what we don’t want is people leaving education and going on to a life of inactivity. We should be curious about what other countries are doing, we should be willing to learn. You can never just lift what one country is doing and transplant it wholesale, but we should try to learn. They’ve got good results compared to the UK, I’m going to find out how they do it.”
The Resolution Foundation think-tank has previously suggested if the UK had the same Neet rate as the Netherlands, 600,000 fewer young people would be out of work, education, or training.
In his alarming report this week into the ‘Neet’ crisis, ex-Cabinet minister Alan Milburn said the Netherlands’ youth guarantee schemes have been permanent for over a decade. He added: “When the crisis passes in Britain, the programmes are withdrawn. The institutional architecture that would sustain the response is never built. The country treats youth disengagement as a series of emergencies requiring temporary responses, when the evidence shows it is a permanent structural condition requiring permanent infrastructure.”
Mr McFadden also said the government’s commitment to phase out “discriminatory” age bands in the minimum wage still stood – despite criticism from firms. But he declined to say whether the promise will be delivered before the next election, saying the government will be guided by advice from the Low Pay Commission.
He said: “That’s our policy, that’s what the manifesto said. The precise rate for any given year is set by the Low Pay Commission. That’s an internationally admired model of doing this and it’s their job to take all the economic conditions, including the labour market conditions, into account when they set the rate of the minimum wage.
“But of course as the Labour Party you’d expect us to believe people should be decently rewarded for the work they do.” He added: “I can’t give you a precise timetable because the rate every year is set by the Low Pay Commission.”
It came as the DWP chief visited Gatwick airport to hear from their apprentices in construction and retail as the government said hundreds of thousands more work experience schemes will be rolled-out. Around 300,000 new placements over the next three years are being backed by some of Britain’s biggest employers, including Gatwick.
Beth Owen, 22, from South Croydon, was among those attending an interview on Friday to work in duty free. She told The Mirror she had been out of work for 10 months, saying: “I didn’t realise it would be this difficult.”
Asked about the impact on her, she added: “It’s quite de-motivating, it’s sending a lot off and getting very little engagement…. you don’t see much promise. It’s a lot of rejection.” But she was more hopeful after attending an interview at Gatwick: “I think it went really well. I come back for a right to work check next week, so it’s promising.”
