Will Burnham find a NEET solution?

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0:37hello and welcome to coffeehouse shots the spectators daily politics podcast i'm natasha froze and i'm joined today by my two favorites michael who's running away and james heel and today we are back talking about the neats those 16 to 24 year olds not in employment, education or training. James, why are we talking about them? Well, we're talking about them because the Prime Minister wants us to talk about them. Andy Burnham has done a big announcement suggesting that he's going to overhaul the way in which secondary education is done in this country, basing it much more on the so-called Manchester Baccalaureate, which is up in his favourite part of the world, Manchester.

1:16And effectively, what it's going to do is try to improve the NEATS crisis by getting people with more employable skills. Under this plan to be rolled out from 2028, those between 14 to 16 would have much more of an emphasis on technical education, the ability to get skills such as in an AI that would help them to go into the workplace. Burnham wants this to be a plan that you would have lots of local mayors with buy-in. So local mayors would work with their local education authorities and schools in order to kind of get them the places in businesses that would necessarily need to train them up and get them into the workplace.

1:48And it's based much more on a continental model. I think there's a couple of things this first of all there's the lack of detail and the immediate cry from the sector has been oh hang on a sec what about the funding for this planning we've tried many of these things before second of all there's this sort of scale of ambition here i mean we've had issues in terms of the divide between kind of the academic route and the more technical route ever since the existence of the you know the butler education act in the 1940s so there's always been this kind of divide and the point that people like sam friedman who was involved in the coalition school forms have made is there's always going to be a sense of social disparity between the rich who want their kids to basically stay in education and the less well-off who might want a more technical route.

2:30Currently, we have that divide that goes to 16 when some people go off into full-time employment, others stay in education until university, etc. But under this plan, it suggests that divide would be much earlier at 14. So you would then have that kind of disparity, difference in life chances at a much earlier stage. The third point is the one that the Conservatives are making, which is that actually you get this all wrong. Schools is one of the few things in the state that's working. You can see the success of the Gove education reforms. We've climbed up the world rankings in terms of our abilities and outcomes for schooling.

2:58The problem isn't about schooling, it's about the economy and the failure to kind of have young people into employment, not helped potentially by the so-called death of the Saturday job. So I think all of these issues are going to be debated out. It's the classic Burnham announcement, lots of vibes. It appeals very much to reformers and I think I was quite struck by the somewhat supportive quote by Sue Ella Braverman that reform have rushed out because they've obviously had a big thing about too many people going to university so I think that very much does indicate that Burnham versus sees reform as very much his opponent on this rather than the Tory critique I think it's quite a revealing and interesting announcement in that sense but overall it's going to be one that gets dissected and debated at a time of course we don't have parliament sitting.

3:33And Michael this is all well and good but this is the next generation of needs that Burnham's talking about what about this generation? Well, this is the thing. It's kind of hard not to be gloomy about this. And I don't want to be gloomy because I think Burnham has actually had quite a positive start to his premiership. But this is the first announcement where I'm like, we're back to kind of status quo. Because as James hinted at there, none of this is like new. I mean, it was, was it 2017 that Spreadsheet Phil was talking about T levels and, you know, whatever happened with them, every prime minister says that they want to sort out technical education.

4:07There's actually no evidence yet of the Manchester Baccalaureate because it's not really up and running but these things are not new I mean I literally personally have something called a Scottish Baccalaureate which was just like a load of nonsense so I'm kind of negative and I think in terms of fixing things now you know we've got the carrot for young people we're hearing there's going to be some sticks sorting out this incentive issue you know that's been reported that rather than being in a part-time job if you're on pip for anxiety you can be 100 pounds better off I think there's some suggestion at looking at that and certainly support only being available if young people do take up the opportunities but i think what employers will want to hear is where is the carrot for them and burnham has hinted at this and the two big things that employers would ask for i think one is possibly quite likely to happen the other is not and the one they'd really like is some kind of rollback on the national insurance um tax hike on the what employers pay in national insurance i don't think that's going to happen what i think is more likely to happen is a freezing of this Labour manifesto commitment to equalise the minimum wage.

5:11Because, you know, Andy Burnham's talked about Saturday jobs, we talk about why young people are not getting into the job market, and the minimum wage probably is one of, if not the main drivers of this. Because quite simply, if you're an employer, and it used to be, you know, you could hire 16, 17, 18 year olds quite cheaply compared to anyone else. They're untested, but doesn't cost you much money, so you do it. But if we get closer and closer to this position, where a 25 year old with, you know, five, six years of experience in the labour market and an 18-year-old has never had a job but you have to pay them the same who are you going to take and I think there's some room for Burnham to give employers what they want here because although there's a manifesto commitment to equalise minimum wage there's no date on it so they can knock that into the long grass and I think that would give employers the kind of carrot they need to get on board with this programme.

5:55It's worth pointing out of course that a lot of the models that Burnham and people around Burnham are looking at are from the continent where they have a very different style of economy you know look at Switzerland there's a different relationship between the services of manufacturing germany as well these are huge fundamental changes and again it's it's you know in some ways a credit to and burnham's ambition he wants to overhaul it but these things take many many years and i would argue that given the awesome challenges he's setting himself on defense social care and now education is he really going to be able to pull this off and the other missing piece of the puzzle here because again as as we've been saying this is not new i mean ian duncan smith when he was working pension secretary was visiting like technical colleges in Holland and talking about this.

6:34The thing that's changed in our country now is that the unemployment, the sickness problems among young people, among everyone, but specifically among young people is driven by anxiety and depression and how we as a society view anxiety and depression. And I think if we're to really tackle this problem for good, you know, it's all well and good sorting out the education system. But if we don't do something to either call out this mental health crisis or fix this mental health crisis, depending on your position on how real it is, then this problem is not going to go away, whatever you do with skills and training.

7:03And of course, the obvious Tory critique will be that Burnham prefers to talk about things like schooling and kind of things of, oh, we've had the system where if everyone's to blame, then no one's to blame rather than things such as incentives and sickness payments. I was really struck by that line in the Laura Koonsberg interview when he talked about the needs crisis. And she said, well, all about sanctions. He said, oh, I don't want to suggest anyone's to blame here. And I think that's going to be very different. You need those sticks as well as carrots. Yeah, Michael, just remind us of some of those stats with the mental health and needs, because it is staggering.

7:30So we've now got over a million of these needs, people not in education, employment and training. And what's remarkable about this youth unemployment crisis, because we have had kind of youth unemployment levels similar to this before, but what's different now is that it's not just that people are not getting into the job market because the jobs aren't there or they lack the skills. That is an issue as well. But increasingly, as we've mentioned, there's this sickness problem. So of the NEAT population, we've gone from in 2015 about a quarter of them had some sort of work limiting health condition but by last year that had climbed to nearly a half so nearly half of the needs say they're too unwell to work and of these sicknesses it's not physical conditions you know we've not had some mass disabling event it's anxiety it's depression it's these mental health conditions that not only make it harder for people to get into the workforce but they change the incentive structure of our benefits and I think this is a crucial point because if you just look at the universal credit payment you get for example if you're out of work it's really not generous it is not generous compared to what you can get in European countries but as soon as you get that incapacity element added on or you get your requirement to work removed then the top-ups make it really generous and you get to this point where the incentives can mean you literally are better off on these benefits than you are in work.

8:50Yes and James a different topic Burnham has now made some appointments towards the more left-wing faction of the Labour Party, which has been interesting this week. Tell us about that. Yeah, so this is the final appointments to the government. This is going to be the parliamentary private secretaries, which are the traditional first rung of government. And interestingly, Burnham has appointed three members of the socialist campaign group, Olivia Blake, Mary Foy, and Noah Hoffman broke the story about the sort of discontent in some parts of the party at these appointments. Hang on a sec, these people were campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn five minutes ago.

9:23I suppose my take is slightly different. I think Burnham really does mean what he's saying about trying to govern with the PLP rather than against their wishes. I can see the benefits in kind of taking people in who were very much involved in stirring up the welfare rebellion. I think this has been a reshuffle that has been good for assassins. You look, for instance, Miata van Bulla was, I think, the first person, the first minister to resign and call for Starmer to go. Could all the different people who've been involved in the kind 12 months or so in trying to get Starmer out. They've been very much rewarded by this.

9:53And I can see the merits against included them in the sense that, do you want to reward treachery? I think on the other hand, these are the most capable people who are able to stir up dissent. Anneliese Midgley is one of the most intriguing appointments and very much a shrewd operator. I think after the last time I posted about her online, I said that, you know, remarkable to go for being a candidate to chief whip in only two years. And I had one Labour MP saying, well, Midgley's been around for years. You know, she's been involved as a unite political director etc and so she will be very shrewd so burnham produced this letter yesterday suggesting that pps is going to be much more of a visible role in the future i think that will help some of the 2044 intake were a bit frustrated that some pps is kind of stuck to that and others didn't most notably torston bell very much was able to keep writing guardian articles which frustrated some female pps as i spoke to at the time so i think that pps is now going to be seen not just as bad carriers and as a sort of funnel for um suggestions and discontent but also a kind of megaphone and shouting about their successes.

10:47I mean, that is an interesting kind of minor cultural innovation, which I think will go down quite well with the PLP. Obviously, there are those who feel upset to be missed out. We've heard people like Tulip Sadiq, very much making their feelings known, Sam Rushworth online. But overall, I think that given the trade-offs involved, he is doing the right things at this stage. The question is whether happy families can hold as the decisions get more and more fiscally difficult. And he's achieved his 50-50 gender balance. So a victory there for fans of Virtue Signalling. Fantastic. Truly our first female Prime Minister.

11:17A delight. Well, thank you, James. Thank you, Michael. And thank you for listening.

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