For any of you who haven’t caught it yet, my interview from Monday’s BBC Scotcast (which is also available on Spotify).

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Sadly due to a summer scheduling quirk the video version won’t go out on the telly, and seemingly not on the BBC YouTube page either, so you’ll just have to listen to the audio and somehow live without seeing my gorgeous face.

(But it looked like this.)

You may notice the occasional abrupt cut. That’s because 10 minutes were snipped from the recording to fit the show’s timeslot, and they were pretty much the same 10 minutes I’d have cut if I’d been editing it myself, including the bit where I accidentally called Jeffrey Epstein “Brian Epstein”.

(While making the point that Epstein had been jailed but none of his clients had. I hope Peter Murrell doesn’t also commit “suicide” in HMP Dumfries.)

If you’re interested, the other stuff that didn’t make the broadcast discussed:

 – Colin Beattie, and how he manifestly obviously wasn’t allowed to see the books any more than Douglas Chapman was, but was a compliant stooge who could be counted on by Murrell and Sturgeon not to ask any awkward questions. (Relating to Martin Geissler’s question about who the Crown Office could actually prosecute.)

– the SNP’s non-existent track record of actively pursuing a meaningful indy strategy, and what I’d have done instead. (Which is detailed here and here.)

– the fact that Alba failed (relating to the question about why I didn’t get involved in politics myself) because almost the only thing Nicola Sturgeon did competently and effectively during its near-decade in power was trash Alex Salmond’s reputation.

– the mystery of why even now no proper newspapers support independence, even as a purely cynical economic move, despite it being backed by half the population.

– the parallels, in terms of online media doing the job the mainstream press failed to, between Wings coverage of the SNP fundraiser scandal and that of the Rangers tax case, possibly because I made a plucky but ill-advised attempt at pronouncing Phil Mac Giolla Bháin’s name.

(I note in passing that he seems to be the most recent Twitter user to lose his account to a scummy crypto scammer.)

I don’t think any of it got “censored”, I think they just decided that what was left in was better material, and I agree. So there you go.

David Cameron and Boris Johnson | Image courtesy of: BBC/Zinc Television

3 min read4 min

“Ten years ago! God! Amazing!” Nigel Farage MP at the opening of the BBC’s celebration of the Brexit referendum. And he’s right. It was, this June, a decade ago that we took one of the most consequential decisions of our generation, which was followed by years of hectic debate.

The BBC has done an excellent job, bringing together senior commentators and participants in that hectic battle back in 2026. Unlike many documentaries, Brexit: A Very British Civil War avoids the temptation to editorialise – it’s more a collection of first-hand accounts, brought together to build a clear narrative of a confusing campaign.

But for someone in the trenches of the campaign (on, as it turned out, the losing side), this provides a clear gathering of ideas. Like the British Tommy who, caught in a foxhole during the Battle of the Somme, has an extraordinary first-hand experience, it is only with the help of historians that we know what collectively happened. And that is what the BBC has successfully achieved.

For those of us involved, it sheds some light on a few myths and reveals some unknown elements. Boris has been much mocked for his two articles – one for remain, one for leave – rather unfairly, I always thought. But Boris Johnson’s honesty over his indecision is enlightening. It seems he really was battling with the question of which side to support.

Similarly, it was fascinating to listen to Jeremy Corbyn’s arguments that the free-market economy should not be trusted to deliver prosperity from inside the EU, relying more on state investment to generate growth rather than EU bodies.

But for me, it was, and always has been, a case of who had the best campaign.

There is no doubt about it, a programme like this can be just a little triggering

George Osborne argues that the debate fell into two simple camps. Remain was economic; leave was immigration. But I think it was even simpler than that, and the programmes make the point.

Dominic Cummings – love him or hate him – is a brilliant campaigner. Those of us backing remain banged on about the economic arguments – how much it would cost each person, what would happen to our economy, how being outside the customs union would damage trade with our closest trading partner. So, while remain made these complicated points, leave shouted “Take Back Control” a thousand times. And when remain raised this with the broadcasters at the time, they explained they were giving each side equal airtime. And the three-word-slogan tactic was to revisit us all a few years later, with an election campaign in 2019 calling to “Get Brexit Done”.

There is no doubt about it, a programme like this can be just a little triggering. Some of us – especially those on the government benches through 2016 up to early 2020 – still bear the scars, a touch of PTSD, and a desire to put it all behind us. And I imagine the BBC will have a series of 10-year anniversary programmes – Theresa May’s time in office, Boris’ rise to power. There’s a lot to go on, and the final quote from Boris suggests more to come: “It wasn’t our job to have a plan.”

But it was also a delight to see old footage of colleagues, especially Boris with his hair in order. Who knew he owned a comb?

Mark Garnier is Conservative MP for Wyre Forest

Brexit: A Very British Civil War

Narrated by: Laura Haddock

Directed by: Max Stern & Olivia Bernhardt Brogan

Broadcaster: BBC iPlayer

Jonathan Portes analyses how increasingly strict immigration policies may have impacted the overall economc contribution of migrants in the UK. He argues that if the objective is to maximise economic contribution, the UK system may now be ‘too selective’.

All advanced economies have “selective” immigration policies. Unless a country closes itself off to immigration entirely, or has fully open borders, this is inevitable. And politicians and economists generally agree that one important criterion on which policies should be based is that of economic contribution – that is, giving some preference to those who are likely to contribute positively to the host country’s economy. This is rarely the only criterion – others, such as legal and moral obligation to refugees, the ability of families to reunite across borders, and so on – also matter. And it can be measured in different ways – earnings, current or prospective, likelihood of making a positive fiscal contribution, skills or qualifications that are seen as particularly likely to be beneficial, and so on. But all systems use one or more such measures.

This perspective has informed the UK policy debate before and after Brexit: the coalition government’s desire to reduce migration while attracting the “brightest and the best”, Vote Leave’s promise of a “skill-based points system”, the post-Brexit migration system that equalised conditions for EU and non-EU origin migrants while setting earnings and skills thresholds, and the decisions by both the Sunak government and the current one to substantially tighten these thresholds while barring entry entirely in some occupations, particularly care work, where most workers are relatively low-paid.

In particular, the story of the post-Brexit period would seem very clear. In the face of post-pandemic labour shortages, and in an attempt to mitigate the negative impacts of Brexit, the system for non-EU migrants was radically liberalised – that is, it became significantly less selective – in 2021. As a consequence, numbers soared, with particularly strong growth among less well-paid migrants, especially in care. More recently, partly as a result of political backlash, policy was tightened substantially in 2024 and 2025 and numbers arriving, especially to work, fell sharply.

Given these changes in selectivity operated primarily through salary thresholds, the obvious implication is that new non-EU migrants arriving after 2021, but before 2024, should have had substantially lower earnings than those arriving either before 2021 (under the pre-Brexit system) or after 2024 (after the substantial rise in salary thresholds that was introduced then).  There is just one problem. The data says otherwise.

Using HMRC data, we can track the earnings of migrants by the year in which they entered the UK employee workforce. As the above narrative suggests, there was indeed a sharp rise in new entrants from 2021, and a more gradual fall from 2023 to 2025. However, we see no evidence at all that earnings were lower during this period of lower selectivity. Indeed, quite the opposite. The median earnings of non-EU migrants who entered the employee workforce in 2018 attained parity with the whole workforce in three years; for those who entered in 2022 and 2023, it took only two years, a slight but visible improvement.

And what about those who entered in 2024, after the tightening? So far they seem to be tracking the 2018 cohort rather than the later ones. And those who entered in 2025 have extremely low earnings compared to any of their predecessors, although we cannot attach too much weight to the first year figure, which may be dominated by students working part-time. Broader labour market conditions, which seem to have disadvantaged new entrants to the labour market across the board, may also have played a part here.

In other words, the 2021 move to lower selectivity and much higher numbers does not appear to have reduced either initial earnings or early years earnings progression among new non-EU migrants, if anything the opposite; outcomes did not worsen, but may have improved. And the very sharp reversal, designed to increase selectivity, appears, although any conclusions must be very tentative at this stage, to have coincided with a substantial worsening of labour market outcomes – precisely the opposite of what might have been expected and what policy was intended to achieve.

What is the explanation? First, it is important to note that increasing the selectivity of ’economic’ routes may well, paradoxically, reduce the selectivity of the migration system overall. By definition, those coming on work visas are likely to be in full-time work, and, even under a relatively liberal system, most will be on average or higher earnings; by contrast, those coming through other routes – family, refugee routes or asylum – often will not be in work, especially at first, and may often be on low earnings. So reducing work flows may increase the average earnings of work migrants, but may reduce the average earnings of new migrants overall (and indeed the overall workforce).

This seems very likely to be part of the explanation here –  while care workers and others in middle-skilled occupations excluded by recent policy changes are not generally highly paid, they and their dependants are not (especially if they work full-time, as most do) at the lower end of the earnings distribution either for new migrants or for the population as a whole.

Second, even within economic migration routes, tightening the rules, supposedly to favour the “brightest and the best” may in fact deter them. As is often observed, we can choose migrants, but they also need to choose us – and those who are most likely to be economically beneficial have the most choice. As thresholds, fees and bureaucratic burdens rise – and policy changes signal a more hostile environment towards immigration and immigrants more generally – these workers may substitute toward alternative destinations, even if they remain formally eligible.

Does this mean that there is no point trying to select migrants on economic grounds? No – as noted above, some selectivity is inevitable, and at some point, lowering requirements will indeed reduce average outcomes. But it suggests that, if the objective is to maximise economic contribution, the UK system may now be ‘too selective’: a liberal and flexible system towards economic migration routes is likely to produce better results overall than one whose primary aim is to limit eligibility to a very narrow set of potential migrants.

[The data in this blog is taken from my work with Ben Brindle and Madeleine Sumption of Migration Observatory, published here. The opinions expressed here are my own.]

By Professor Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London.

Credit: Adobe Stock

Earlier this year, nexfibre agreed to acquire Netomnia, one of the UK’s largest alternative network providers. With planned investment of £3.5bn in full-fibre infrastructure, we are set to establish the first genuine wholesale competitor capable of challenging BT Openreach at national scale.

The decision regulators reach on this transaction will determine whether Britain’s broadband future is defined by vigorous, sustainable competition or continuation of the status quo of monopoly-style dominance. It’s a clear choice.

Openreach still dominates the full-fibre market

Despite a decade of alternative-network (“altnet”) build-out, Openreach retains overwhelming market power. Its expansive footprint, retail relationships and deep balance sheet allow it to set terms that shape the entire sector. Many altnets remain geographically fragmented and financially fragile, limiting their ability to exert sustained, nationwide pressure on the incumbent.

These concerns are echoed in the latest Assembly Research report on the UK full‑fibre market, which warns that Openreach’s grip “risks replicating copper-era monopolies in the fibre age”. Unless a challenger with comparable scale and reach emerges, the UK risks compounding the Openreach dominance that has long constrained innovation and consumer choice. nexfibre’s mission is to change this.

Testing the limits of regulation

Openreach’s latest pricing tactics are testing the boundaries of Ofcom’s Telecoms Access Review (TAR) and are at odds with the government’s aim of promoting long‑term competition, investment and growth in the fibre market.

While headline price cuts may appear attractive for consumers in the short term, these are infact deep and targeted wholesale discounts, which make it uneconomic for rivals to scale. If allowed to proceed, it would entrench BT Openreach’s monopolistic position.

Sustainable competition depends on a level playing field. Ofcom scrutiny, and decisive action, is essential to ensure the market will mature to become sustainably competitive, enabling it to deliver investment, innovation and lower prices over the long term.

Building a national wholesale challenger

The combination of nexfibre’s network, Netomnia, and 2.1 million Virgin Media O2 premises which will also be upgraded to full fibre by nexfibre, will create a scaled, financially secure challenger to BT Openreach, with a full fibre footprint of around 8 million premises by the end of 2027.

When combined with the growing fibre footprint of Virgin Media O2, the two networks will collectively reach 20 million premises and give internet service providers a highly attractive wholesale alternative to the incumbent.

It is a bellwether transaction and will deliver three essential outcomes.

First, it will unlock £3.5bn of new investment at a time when capital for standalone altnets is increasingly scarce.

Second, it will create a financially secure wholesale platform covering millions of premises nationwide, giving internet service providers a meaningful alternative to Openreach.

Third, it will accelerate the full-fibre rollout while supporting AI adoption, cloud services and the productivity gains a modern economy demands.

The latter is a point that I made at the New Statesman Politics Live Conference earlier this week.

The UK is searching for growth, backing AI adoption, and our government is increasingly digitising. nexfibre is a next generation network provider, delivering the latest XGS-PON technology to premises across the country, ensuring Britain is connected – and prepared for the next stage of digital growth. But the full fibre market, which underpins the investment and growth we need, is often taken for granted.

Full fibre is essential growth infrastructure – and we need to make sure the conditions are there to support it – and fast. Every day of delay reinforces the incumbent’s advantage and slows the progress of genuine competition.

Britain’s choice

The UK faces a clear decision. We can allow dominance to deepen and maintain the monopolistic status quo that is holding our country back. Or we can equip the UK with a credible wholesale challenger and a sustainable competitive framework for the full-fibre era.

Britain’s broadband moment is here. Let’s seize it.

Suella Braverman (PA Images/Alamy)

10 min read29 min

In February 2018, a junior minister in Theresa May’s government stood up in Parliament to make one thing very clear: post-Brexit Britain would not be a place in which rights and equality laws are rowed back on.

Citing the UK’s “proud record, history and tradition” of “supporting workers, protecting civil liberties and championing human rights”, then-Brexit minister Suella Braverman proudly declared: “Our gender pay gap reporting requirements and our public sector equality duty are world-leading initiatives that go beyond EU law in many ways”.

Braverman was referring to measures enshrined in the 2010 Equality Act – a statute that, eight years later and in a new party, she is now determined to abolish.

Until relatively recently, the Equality Act was not a controversial piece of legislation, and no major political party was proposing changes to it.

“Originally, the Tories resisted it, but then the consensus grew – with [David] Cameron and with Theresa May… about the role of the state in promoting equality,” says Baroness Harman, the architect of the legislation. “There were arguments about how that should be done, but there was a consensus that it should be done.”

When Braverman, now Reform UK’s equalities spokesperson, announced in February that Reform would scrap the Equality Act if it won the next general election, she was re-committing the party to a policy that had already featured in its 2024 manifesto. Removing the legislation, she said, would allow Reform to “build a country defined by meritocracy, not tokenism” and “personal responsibility, not victimhood”.

In June, the Conservatives then set out their own stall on the issue by promising to ditch the Equality Act’s public sector equality duty. The duty requires public bodies to have “due regard” to the legislation’s overarching aims of eliminating unlawful discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and “fostering good relations” between groups of people with or without different protected characteristics.

Braverman said this “half-baked and half-hearted attempt to copy Reform” was “embarrassing”, but shadow equalities minister Claire Coutinho counters that Reform’s plan would backfire.

“White men have successfully fought discrimination claims under the Equality Act because it protects everyone on the basis of race and sex, not just ethnic minorities and women,” she tells The House. “They would lose this protection under the plans Reform has announced, as would disabled people.”

Coutinho continues: “Reform’s plan would also make positive discrimination and race quotas in the workplace legal. We want to maintain protections against genuine discrimination whilst getting rid of the grievance culture which says minority groups are worthy of special treatment.”

But she confirms that other parts of the Equality Act would also be amended by the Conservatives, as party leader Kemi Badenoch has said removing the duty would only be the start of a wider “overhaul”.

“People should be judged on merit, protected from discrimination and abuse, and free to live their lives with everyone equal under the law,” Coutinho says. “There are other elements of the Equality Act, such as positive action and ‘work of equal value’ pay claims, which are social engineering in a way that undermines those principles.

“We will be rooting out anything that is incompatible with our values, but that doesn’t mean just binning the entire act without properly understanding what’s in it. Just to get a political headline, Reform was willing not just to throw out the baby with the bathwater but pregnant women, new mums and disabled people as well.”

It is a line of attack that Reform is clearly conscious of the need to counter. To replace the Equality Act, the party has pledged to introduce a Workplace Fairness Act that will treat people “as individuals”.

The Equality Act consolidated more than 116 pieces of pre-existing equalities legislation into one statute and Braverman has said that “much of what was valuable” in it stems from those earlier laws.

The Workplace Fairness Act, therefore, would re-consolidate the pre-2010 legislation into a new statute – including, Reform says, protections which apply “both inside and outside the workplace”, despite the proposed legislation’s name. But it will not carry over provisions like positive action or the public sector equality duty.

Braverman has pledged to repeal the Equality Act on “day one” of a Reform government and the party says its Workplace Fairness Act would be implemented on the same day. “The repealing and replacement legislation will be in the same act,” a Reform spokesperson tells The House.

One source familiar with Reform’s political operation says the policy is not so much about broadening the party’s appeal with new voters as it is about firing up its base and the commentariat. It also stems from a concern within the party that the Equality Act could prove an obstacle to parts of its agenda in government.

“The second-order issue is, of course, that the Equality Act can be used to frustrate a whole lot of legislation Reform would want to bring in,” the source says, pointing to the party’s plans to ban foreigners from accessing social housing as an example of a policy that could be challenged under the current equalities framework.

“The big issue for Reform is making it clear – particularly to female voters, where they’re aware they have a weakness – that getting rid of the Equality Act doesn’t therefore mean they want women to go back to the kitchen, or that they’re going to dump maternity rights.” The insider believes Reform has “not successfully communicated that”.

“The genius of the Equality Act is that the branding’s very good. Most people in the modern world are in favour of equality. But, on the other hand, what it creates by [introducing] special categories [of people] is a whole lot of inequality,” they add.

Earlier this month, Reform announced plans for a Women and Motherhood Protection Act, which will consolidate the pre-2010 legislation pertaining to women’s rights, while also building on them, they say – such as by increasing the time limit for pregnancy and maternity discrimination claims from three months to 12 months.

The Trades Union Congress criticised the proposals as “shameless and deceptive”, as Reform’s press release appeared to cast doubt on the Equality Act’s principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Reform said its changes would ensure that “genuine cases of pay discrimination” would be tackled but avoid “allowing courts and tribunals to determine the relative value of fundamentally different occupations”.

“Just to get a political headline, Reform was willing not just to throw out the baby with the bathwater but pregnant women, new mums and disabled people as well”

The Women and Motherhood Protection Act would confer “explicit breastfeeding rights” for mothers. Reform’s spokesperson clarifies for The House that, in practice, this will not necessarily mean women gaining any new rights to breastfeed. Rather, breastfeeding rights that currently exist “across employment legislation and the Equality Act will be brought together and, where necessary, made explicit or further codified”.

In the case of older people, meanwhile, regulations introduced in 2006 were limited to employment. It was only under the Equality Act that older people gained additional rights in other areas like the provision of services.

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, tells The House that scrapping the Equality Act “would be a disaster for older people”.

“We would strongly oppose any repealing of this act, because it would legitimise age discrimination, in a way. It’s bad enough with the act – it would be a lot worse without it,” she says. “It’s totemic and it gives a signal to society that we think it’s important to respect different people’s rights.”

The 2010 legislation, she argues, has played an important role in governing how NHS treatment decisions are made, for example.

“Certainly, digital exclusion is another issue that arises here – your ability to physically access or in other ways access a service,” Abrahams adds.

“Older people already have to pay more for things like travel and motor insurance, but without the Equality Act they would have total freedom to be very discriminatory in who they sold their products to.”

Asked whether Reform intends to carry over rights that were introduced for the first time in 2010, a party spokesman replies: “We are considering what additional protections would be needed for genuinely vulnerable groups in society.”

When Disability Rights UK raised similar concerns about protections specific to the 2010 legislation being lost, in an article published by Disability News Service, Reform was adamant that no protections would be removed.

“Of course these protections won’t be scrapped and all provisions for disabled people will be kept,” a spokesperson said. “A Reform UK government will always support protections against discrimination based on disability, including in services. Neither Suella nor the party have ever made any suggestion that we will water down provisions for disabled people.”

At the same time as the Equality Act is under fire, Labour is under pressure to fulfil its manifesto pledge to expand the legislation’s reach.

Section One of the Equality Act – the socio-economic duty – has never been implemented, as Theresa May cancelled its planned enactment within months of taking office as women and equalities minister in 2010.

The duty, which requires public bodies to consider how their decisions might help reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage, has since been implemented in Scotland and Wales – but not in England. 

In 2024, Labour promised to enact it, but Keir Starmer’s government never confirmed when this would happen.

“It was good that it was in the manifesto, but we should have done it straight away,” Harman, who was appointed as Starmer’s adviser on women and girls in May, tells The House.

“I’m a bit frustrated that two years in, we haven’t set a time for implementing it,” Harman says – not least, she adds, because when she was in government in 2010, working on the Equality Act with the then-chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Trevor Phillips, they drew up draft guidance for implementing the duty. “We were ready to go but we lost power. So, that guidance is still there and still ready.”

With the Equality Act’s principles being more politically contested than ever before, she urges: “It’s important for the government to recognise that that consensus is being challenged, and they need to remind everybody why it’s the right thing for this country to be done – and get on with the socio-economic duty.”

Labour says it remains “proud” of the Equality Act and will “robustly” defend it in government.

“It’s fair to say we will be talking more about the importance of it and defending the core principles of it,” says one party source, speaking prior to Starmer’s resignation announcement, “but where it’s challenged, we’ve pushed back pretty firmly.”

When it comes to implementing the socio-economic duty, they admit that the legislative timing is ultimately “a decision of the centre”, though they insist it will be delivered.

In answer to a written question in April, equalities minister Baroness Smith said: “We are currently working toward commencement of the duty, which includes drafting statutory guidance that will clarify how the duty can be applied effectively. As part of this process, we are working with listed public bodies to ensure the guidance supports them effectively.” 

Credit: Adobe Stock

3 min read33 min

This article was commissioned by the Total Politics Impact team.

The Courts and Tribunals Bill was carried over into the new session, having completed 12 Commons Committee sittings in April 2026. Its central objective is to reduce delays in the criminal justice system, currently standing at some 80,000 cases – twice the pre-pandemic level – in the Crown Court alone. It seeks to do this by rebalancing the respective functions of the Crown Court and magistrates’ courts.

The most radical provisions are in clauses 1-7 of the bill. These allow Ministers to expand magistrates’ sentencing powers by regulation to as much as 24 months, to replace automatic appeals from magistrates by a permission-based system limited to appeals on points of law, and to remove defendants’ right to elect jury trial for “either-way” offences in cases where the anticipated sentence is less than three years. Such intermediate level cases, together with complex financial cases, will in future be eligible for trial by judge alone.

These proposals take their lead from Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts but go significantly further in a number of respects. In particular, Leveson advised retaining magistrates’ sentencing powers at 12 months, and would have allocated intermediate cases not to a judge alone but to a judge sitting with two magistrates.

The bill also revises the tests for the admissibility of evidence relating to a complainant’s sexual history and previous bad character and changes the rules around the use of special measures (such as screens and video links) to support vulnerable witnesses. It contains provisions on tribunal leadership and judicial deployment and includes family justice reforms such as removing the statutory presumption of parental involvement in children’s cases.

These proposals take their lead from Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts but go significantly further in a number of respects

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In its report on the 10 June 2026, the Commons Justice Committee regretted the absence of time for pre-legislative scrutiny, particularly given that the bill will not be implemented before March 2028. It pointed to weaknesses in the evidential basis for the anticipated savings of court time and voiced doubts as to whether the magistrature would be able to expand at the rate necessary to cope with the likely increase in their caseload. The report also drew attention to the lack of diversity of the judges who would sit alone in intermediate cases and referred to the conclusion of the Lammy Report in 2017 that juries are one of the few areas of the criminal justice system where Black and minority ethnic defendants do not face disproportionate outcomes.

With some criminal trials now listed as far ahead as 2030, there can be no doubt that decisive action is needed to reduce delays. But the proposed expansion of magistrates’ powers and roll-back of jury trial are controversial with practitioners and judges: there is no consensus that any time-saving benefit will justify their possible negative effects on the quality of justice and public perceptions of fairness. The House of Lords is not short of relevant expertise: Baroness Levitt, the Justice Minister, was a serving Crown Court Judge until she became a peer in 2024. A vigorous work-out may be expected there.

(Credit: Volunteer It Yourself)

In May, the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) passed one million for the first time in over a decade. Despite the flurry of media attention, this crisis has not come out of nowhere. It is a chronic issue caused by long term structural trends that have left swathes of our young people disengaged and left behind.

Since committing to a Youth Guarantee, the Labour government has thrown £2.5bn worth of reforms at tackling the problem. Alongside this, Alan Milburn¹ is conducting an independent review into why so many young people are falling through the cracks, and what can be done about it.

In his interim report, Milburn was unflinching in his diagnosis. Alongside wider problems with young peoples’ health, welfare and the structure of the system that takes them from education into work, too many are leaving education unprepared. Low GCSE attainment, persis­tent absence, suspension and exclusion, and a weakening sense of belonging at school all set young people on the path to becoming NEET long before they leave the classroom.

Between the ages of 16 and 18, many of these young people reach a cliff-edge, when the support that surrounded them in school abruptly stops. Once a young person becomes NEET, the system strug­gles even to find them, let alone help them: according to the Youth Futures Foundation, around 500,000 young people are ‘hidden NEETs’, known to no service at all. But behind all of this, Milburn identifies a deeper systemic failure. No one – at central or local level – is accountable for these young people, and there is no national data infrastructure to track who they are, where they are, and whether support is reaching them. Without that, we, and they, are lost.

A crisis of inequality

The NEET crisis is among other things a crisis of inequality; the costs of being NEET are profound, life-long and fall disproportionately on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Impetus’ research into the Youth Jobs Gap,² using the government’s Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data, is referenced multiple times in Milburn’s interim report. It shows that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be NEET as their better-off peers. This should come as no surprise; low attainment and lost learning through school suspen­sion and absence affect pupils from poorer backgrounds far more than their better off peers. And early disad­vantage follows them from there, through the abrupt loss of pupil premium funding at age 16, ever-reducing access to apprenticeships and vocational training, and health barriers that compound with time.

The costs of being NEET are profound, life-long and fall disproportionately on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds

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Reaching the furthest behind

In the next phase of his review, the challenge for Milburn is to propose a comprehensive and ambitious response to the NEET crisis that can also break the cycle of inequality that links disad­vantage in childhood to worse lifelong outcomes.

The Milburn Review’s final report is expected in the autumn, and with it comes a moment of real opportunity, not just to bring down the NEET numbers but to do so in a way that promotes equity and ensures that young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds get the extra support they need. Get the response right, and the Youth Guarantee could become the most significant youth employment intervention in a generation. Get it wrong, and a million becomes the new normal.

Delivering on that ambition will require more than new funding announce­ments. The solutions Milburn proposes need to be capable of reaching those furthest away from the job market, and the young people who face the highest barriers.

At Impetus, we have spent decades building the evidence base for doing just that. As a leading impact funder, we support the most promising youth organisations working to improve education and employment outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our unique position means that not only do we know what works, but we can harness on-the-ground insight, ensuring policy considers the realities of delivery.

This summer, we will publish the final report in our Youth Jobs Gap series, setting out what we think the government needs to do to deliver the Youth Guarantee in full, and in particular to deliver it for young people from disadvan­taged backgrounds.

It will seek to answer the vital questions that the Milburn Review has posed, focus­sing on the practical reforms needed to address the crisis: How to find hidden NEET young people, what to do about the data gap and the cliff edge young people face when they leave formal education.

We will publish new tools and analysis to help policymakers understand who is becoming NEET, where disadvantage is most concentrated, and what is at stake if action falls short.

Above all, we will make clear that the cost of inaction is not neutral, and the return on investment is huge. The Milburn Review has provided a clear diagnosis. The next task is finding solu­tions equal to the scale of the problem.

Click here to find out more about Impetus’ Youth Jobs Gap research.

References

1. Young People and Work Interim Report 28 May 2026; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/young-people-and-work-interim-report
2. Impetus Youth Jobs Gap series; https://www.impetus.org.uk/policy/youth-jobs-gap