Get Britain Working White Paper full of good intentions – but ‘youth guarantee’ needs to be cast-iron

Today’s ‘Get Britain Working’ White Paper should nudge Britain closer to the Government’s stretching 80 per cent employment target. But to really make a difference, the Government will need to properly resource its ‘youth guarantee’ and get benefit reforms right – a challenge that has been left for another day.

The Foundation says setting Britain on a path towards an 80 per cent employment rate has the potential to boost both growth and living standards – even if the poor quality of official data means we don’t currently know for sure how far we are from the target.

While the measures announced in the White Paper are not sufficient to hit that target, they do offer steps in the right direction.

The new ‘Youth Guarantee’ is welcome: too many young people still enter adulthood with low levels of qualifications that scar their career prospects. Among young people out of work due to ill-health, four-fifths don’t have any qualifications above GCSE-level.

However, for the ‘Youth Guarantee’ to be effective it needs to be cast-iron. The Government at present has little control over how many apprenticeship opportunities or jobs are available in a local area. The eight ‘trailblazer’ areas will offer test cases over whether policy makers can live up to their promise to young people. But scaling up what works will cost money, not least to ensure there are real opportunities available in more challenging local labour markets. That extra funding hasn’t yet been committed, and will depend on the outcome of the forthcoming Spending Review.

The ‘prevention and retention’ approach to reducing long-term sickness – encouraging healthcare providers and employers to play a more proactive role in preventing illness and ensuring that periods of illness don’t lead to far longer spells out of the workforce – is also very welcome.  The success of this approach will, however, ultimately depend on action elsewhere – such as reducing NHS waiting lists to give health providers more capacity to intervene.

Finally, a strategy to reduce long-term sickness is incomplete without reforms to ill-health related benefits – and the Government has delayed action on this thorny issue for another day.

Reforms pencilled in for next year plan to save £2 billion from the health-related benefits bill by 2029-30, but a consultation on the details of these changes is not coming until Spring 2025. The approach proposed by the previous government of simply restricting access to health-related benefits is unlikely to help a significant number of people into work and could mean sharp income cuts for some low-income families.

Greg Thwaites, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation, said:

“Rising employment played a crucial role in boosting living standards and growth during the 2010s and could do so again in the decade ahead.

“The measures set out in the White Paper should move Britain in the right direction towards higher employment. But it needs proper resourcing to really make a difference. It’s not yet clear, for example, how the Government will ensure that there are enough employment, training and apprenticeship opportunities to make its ‘job guarantee’ cast-iron for young people.

“Its ‘prevention and retention’ approach to long-term sickness is also welcome. But the strategy won’t work without reforms to health-related benefits – a challenge that has been delayed for another day – and reductions to NHS waiting lists, which lies far beyond the scope of this White Paper.”