Milburn’s ‘participation-first’ NEETs report omits years of evidence linking DWP with deaths

A high-profile report by former Labour minister Alan Milburn suggests he will recommend more young disabled people must engage with employment support and face sanctions if they fail to do so, but ignores the safeguarding risks of such a strategy.

Milburn’s interim report for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) repeatedly highlights the cost of benefits provided to disabled young people, that nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET), and “the virtues of work”.

It also says disability rates among NEET young people have more than doubled over the past 15 years, while the proportion of disabled NEETs citing mental health as their primary condition almost doubled from 24 per cent to 43 per cent between 2011 and 2025.

The number of NEETS saying they are neurodivergent has also increased sharply, he says.

Milburn (pictured) makes it clear that the social security system “must always protect those who cannot work”, but he also claims that “taking a pathway to inactivity can offer higher income, less hassle and lower risk”.

And he repeatedly stresses in his report that there should be a “participation-first welfare system” which should be asking “what can they do and how can it enable that to happen”.

He says in the report: “…the welfare system treats many of its interactions with young people as administrative, rather than as early opportunities to intervene to prevent young people falling out of participation or falling further into disengagement.”

But Milburn is clear that young people are not to blame for the high levels of NEETs and that they “are not inventing their distress”.

The report also says that a third (32 per cent) of young people claiming health or disability benefits are not in work and feel they will never be able to work or work again.

But across the report’s 217 pages, there is no mention of the risks attached to pushing young disabled people with significant mental distress into employment support and the workplace.

There is also no mention of the years of evidence linking DWP safeguarding failures and the actions of civil servants and ministers with the deaths of claimants.

Many of these claimants, such as Michael O’Sullivan, took their own lives as a result of DWP’s attempts to find them fit for work and push them back to work.

Roy Curtis was only 25 when DWP began its efforts to force him towards employment support and work.

That would lead, two years later, to his suicide at his flat in Milton Keynes.**

But despite hundreds of secret internal reviews carried out by DWP into deaths linked to its actions and failings, there is no mention in Milburn’s report of the risks involved in trusting what is widely seen as a failing government department with the safety of young disabled people, particularly those with significant levels of mental distress.

Milburn also ignores recent research by the Office for National Statistics – although it was only published late last month – which questions the success of a DWP scheme that adds employment advice to NHS talking therapy, particularly when it is applied to unemployed disabled people with the highest barriers to employment.

Milburn suggests in his report that he will recommend greater engagement with young people who are waiting for a work capability assessment, which he describes as a “key opportunity to engage young people before they become long-term inactive”.

This may again pose the risk of DWP advisers with no healthcare training engaging with young people with significant mental distress before healthcare professionals have assessed their capability to work or to take steps towards employment.

There will also be concern over Milburn’s suggestion that young people receiving personal independence payment (PIP) – which is not supposed to be linked to whether someone is in work or not – should be provided with employment support.

He describes the failure to ask young disabled people about work during the PIP application and assessment process as “a symbol of a wider failure on the part of the benefits system to provide practical help for sick and disabled youngsters into work”.

His comments are sure to feed into the Timms Review on PIP that is set to report in the autumn, just as Milburn is due to produce his final report.

And they will raise alarm among disabled campaigners aware that DWP civil servants have been trying to persuade ministers in successive governments to merge PIP with universal credit.

In the report’s chapter on “a welfare state not designed for participation”, Milburn appears to approve of the government’s decision to reduce the health element of universal credit for most new claimants, which he described as a “rebalancing” which “makes the health journey significantly less financially attractive”.

He also suggests that more conditions and sanctions should be imposed on young disabled people, saying in the report: “Young people found fit for work can be required to search for work full time, meet the terms of their claimant commitment and attend a face-to-face appointment once a week or fortnightly.

“If they miss this appointment, they can be sanctioned up to 100 per cent of their benefit payment.

“By contrast, many young people on the health journey have no regular, personalised engagement.”

Because so few people are placed in the limited capability for work group of universal credit – who can face some conditionality – he says the system has essentially become “a binary choice between looking for work on very little money with heavy conditionality and not looking for work on more money with no requirements and no support”.

But again, there is no mention of years of concerns about the impact of DWP’s sanctions regime on disabled people, despite research showing how imposing strict conditions on claimants is ineffective and harmful.

*The following organisations are among those that could be able to offer support if you have been affected by the issues raised in this article:  Mind, Papyrus, Rethink, Samaritans, and SOS Silence of Suicide

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, is published by Pluto Press