Alan Milburn

You know, the system was really set up to deal with yesterday's problem and it's not equipped to deal with today's.

You know, people tend to look at this over the years.

If you think about public policy, it's basically tried to address this question of youth and employment through a supply side lens.

In other words, if you make young people more employable, improve standards in schools, improve their skills, stuff in their benefits, then that will solve the problem.

But if you have a labour market that isn't working to bring them in, then you can fix the supply side and the demand side remains unaltered.

And that's what you've got.

What's really interesting and so worrying about this

is that if you look at the numbers, the proportion of young people who've got five good GCSEs who are NEET is now 30%.

15% of the NEETs have got a degree.

I said earlier today that this was, it used to be a problem for other people's children.

And it's now something that every mum and dad worries about, that their kid could end up neat.

So you've got something profound going on in the labour market.

It's sort of largely been disguised for the last 20 years.

It's been going on and on and on.

Fewer entry-level jobs, death of a Saturday job, startling decline in the number of young people starting an apprenticeship.

That's down by about 35% in 10 years.

And on the supply side, you've got a school system that is more geared to qualifications than it is getting these kids work ready.

That's what every employer will tell you.

They'll all talk about lack of work readiness as being the problem.

And what they mean by that is not that they're not literate or numerate.