Whitehall has turned to one of the City’s most seasoned retail chiefs in an attempt to head off what ministers are now privately describing as the most acute youth unemployment crisis in more than a decade.

Marc Bolland, the former chief executive of Marks & Spencer, has been drafted in by the government to corral Britain’s biggest employers behind a renewed push to get young people into work, following an excoriating review by the former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn that warned the country risked sacrificing a generation to worklessness.

Milburn’s interim report, published this week, found that one in six 16- to 24-year-olds will be out of work, education or training within five years unless ministers act decisively. The figure currently stands at one in eight. Official data has already pushed the cohort of so-called NEETs above the one-million mark, the highest level in more than 12 years, and Milburn warned of a “generational fault line” opening up beneath the labour market.

“The problem is that for too many young people, opportunities are not growing, they’re shrinking,” Milburn wrote. His review found that six in ten NEETs have never held a job, yet 84 per cent of those surveyed said they wanted to work or train, a finding that has galvanised support inside Number 11 for a more interventionist approach.

Bolland, who also ran Morrisons and served as chief operating officer at Heineken, will report to Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden and take up the role of Lead Non-Executive Director at the Department for Work and Pensions. His brief, confirmed by the government, is to convene chief executives across sectors and to advise ministers on how to respond to Milburn’s findings.

It is familiar territory. In 2012, in the wake of the previous summer’s riots, Bolland founded Movement to Work, the employer-led charity that has since helped more than 200,000 disadvantaged young people into employment. That track record, built on persuading rival boardrooms to pool resources rather than wait for state schemes, is precisely what ministers hope he can replicate at scale.

“I believe the government is serious about tackling this generational crisis of youth unemployment,” Bolland said on his appointment, “and I know that working hand-in-hand with business to support young people gives them the best possible chance of success.”

Alongside Bolland’s appointment, the government has secured commitments from some of the UK’s largest employers to back 300,000 work experience and training placements over the next three years. McDonald’s was first off the blocks earlier this year with 2,500 paid work experience placements, and Whitehall is now banking on a long tail of mid-market and SME employers following suit.

The push dovetails with the Treasury’s £725m package of apprenticeship reforms, which is expected to create 50,000 new roles and introduce shorter, more flexible training routes from April. Together, the measures represent the most concerted attempt to rebuild the rungs of the working ladder since the Coalition’s apprenticeship drive of the early 2010s.

Whether it works will depend in no small part on whether Bolland can persuade boardrooms that the cost of a placement now is cheaper than the cost of a hollowed-out talent pipeline later. As Milburn put it in his own assessment of the review’s findings, for every £1 the state spent on employment support for young people in 2024/25, roughly £25 went on benefits. That, more than any speech from the Despatch Box, is the number business will be asked to help shift.

Jamie Young

Jamie is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, bringing over a decade of experience in UK SME business reporting.
Jamie holds a degree in Business Administration and regularly participates in industry conferences and workshops.

When not reporting on the latest business developments, Jamie is passionate about mentoring up-and-coming journalists and entrepreneurs to inspire the next generation of business leaders.