Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme.
He was speaking on a visit to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham on Wednesday, where several 18- to 21-year-olds were taken on under the job guarantee – with their wages paid by the taxpayer for six months.
Some of the recruits were packing and labelling boxes of products to be posted out to households, and others are in administrative roles. They told McFadden about long periods of fruitless jobhunting.
“It was just amazing for me to hear their stories,” McFadden said of the recruits. “These are young people who have been out of work for one, two, up to four years. Most of them have been working here for a few weeks. And you can already see how it’s changed their confidence in themselves – their sense of belief in themselves.”
A rise in cases of mental illness is widely cited as one cause for the increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) in recent years.
But McFadden said the reasons could run the other way, too. “Work is part of the answer. Work is good for you. It’s bad for your mental health to be sitting at home, isolated.
“I see this not only as an economic thing, but as a response to greater instances of mental health problems for young people. The last thing we want to see is a diagnosis of problems leading to a life on benefits.”
At a roundtable discussion, McFadden asked each of the young people how they felt as a result of their move into paid work. They cited better social lives and clearer daily routines.
“I’m so conscious, having done this job for almost exactly a year now, that belief and confidence is a big part of the picture,” McFadden told journalists afterwards. “We mustn’t blame young people for the challenges they are facing in the labour market.”
The number of Neets in the UK recently topped 1 million – with the latest data due out on Thursday.
Alan Milburn, the Blair-era cabinet minister reviewing youth inactivity for the government, has warned that the number could hit 1.25m by 2030, without intervention. His final report is due in the autumn.
McFadden made clear that welfare reform would probably be part of the government’s response, criticising the “black and white” distinction in the current universal credit system.
“There’s a design flaw in the universal credit system, which too readily separates people into ‘fit for work’ and ‘unfit for work’, and when they are unfit for work, leaves them without any support or any conditions,” he said. “That’s what I call the culture of ‘signed off and written off’. I think we need to change that.”
He highlighted a recent initiative under which claimants with no obligation to look for work have been asked to attend voluntary interviews with work coaches at their local Jobcentre.
McFadden had started the day at a branch of Sainsbury’s in London, stacking shelves in the bread aisle, alongside the prime minister, Andy Burnham, and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan.
The trio were highlighting the fact that Sainsbury’s is offering 10,000 internships for young people.
McFadden praised Boots and Sainsbury’s, and encouraged other big employers to play their part in what he called the “national cause” of tackling youth unemployment.
Asked whether it was a good use of public money to be subsidising corporations to take on young people, he said: “I’m enthused when businesses like Boots or Sainsbury’s – or any business in the country – steps up and says: ‘I want to play my part here.’ And if there’s a bit of a financial incentive in it, that’s fine.”
The jobs guarantee scheme will eventually be available to 18- to 24-year-olds in Great Britain who have been claiming universal credit and seeking work for at least 18 months, with the aim of creating 90,000 subsidised placements over the next three years.
It is initially being piloted in six areas with high unemployment, including central and east Scotland, Birmingham and Solihull, and south-east and south-west Wales. The government intends it to be nationwide by November.
