The Conservative party leader said that Labour’s plan allows for too many serious offenders to be freed early
Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister, is carrying out a government review intended to address the crisis of the growing number of Neets – young people not in education, employment or training. His first report, analysing the causes of the problem, was published in May to wide acclaim. He is due to publish a final report with recommendations in the autumn.
The plan announced by Andy Burnham today for more localised, technical education is not just a response to the Neets problem. But it overlaps with what Milburn is recommending, and in a statement Milburn said:
The changes the PM is announcing today are very welcome. They are a big step in the right direction and consistent with the findings of my review. A whole system reset is needed across health, welfare and labour market policy as well as in education and skills. I know the PM recognises this and my final report will outline the further changes that are needed.
Obviously, the trend is rising at the moment, so first thing I’ve got to do is to stop that rise.
It’s hard to say and put a firm date on it at the moment when you can say there are fewer than now, but certainly I am completely on a mission with relation to this. I cannot accept the situation where we have so many young people in their 20s on benefits. It’s just not right for them.
It would be wrong to blame the young people when we have an education system that doesn’t set them up properly, where some struggle to find opportunities at 16, where work experience and work placements aren’t there for them. We’ve got to put those building blocks in place, and then, in time, that number will come down.
And I will commit, in my time in office, to get the number of young people who are not in education, employment, and training down. I will commit to that. When precisely I can get there is a hard thing to say right now.
We know that the situation with prisons is challenging. When we were in government, we saw the challenge. We created 14,000 new prison places – it was nowhere near enough.
We had a prison-building target in our manifesto. Covid derailed that programme.
We also had early release but not like this. We never had this category of prisoners being released. We never had killers, rapists, paedophiles on early release. That is what I want to stop.
If Andy Burnham wants to prove that he is serious about this, he needs to revoke the commencement order [the regulation saying the Sentencing Act measures will come into force on 2 September]. That is a simple action that I’m asking for today.
It’s quite clear that the prime minister sees that this is a problem, but I don’t think he knows what to do about it.
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