Concerns over Neets plan amid fears young disabled people ‘could lose out’

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Former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn acknowledged the changes he will recommend in the report will not be “pain-free,” with some young people likely to lose out on financial support.

Mr Milburn was commissioned under former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to review the so-called Neets — 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training — which topped a million earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade.

Statistics out earlier this month showed 45.3 per cent of Neets were classed as disabled in the year to March.

Mr Milburn has promised a “big rewriting of the welfare system,” with The Times reporting it will suggest under-25s should no longer claim the health element of universal credit (UC) or personal independence payments (Pip), instead getting a new youth allowance paid at the standard rate of universal credit.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said the government has ruled out “crude cuts.”

Harriet Edwards, of disability charity Sense, said: “We share the ambition to create a welfare system that gives more young disabled people the opportunity to work.

“But we’re deeply concerned that, if these proposals are taken forward without proper funding for specialist employment support alongside welfare changes, some young disabled people could lose out.”

Chrystyna Chymera-Holloway of the National Autistic Society said the plan will “live or die on the sequencing,” adding: “Jobs and support to get into those jobs have to exist… before any changes that remove vital funds from people.”

Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, who was part of a rebellion which forced the government to abandon proposed welfare reforms in 2025, said that “I don’t see how you fix the first by punishing the second,” noting Pip is not an out-of-work benefit.

George Bangham, of the New Economics Foundation, said the government must avoid cuts that would push people further into poverty and “won’t create jobs where they don’t exist,” adding it should reject “the false choice between funding employment support and funding benefits.”

Green MP Sian Berry said: “So the solution to young people without education or jobs is to continue demonising young and disabled people instead of addressing the structural inequalities stacked against them?”

She added: “The Prime Minister must remember that social security is a human right whatever your age.”

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