Milburn review to recommend state-backed 'flexi-jobs' for disabled young people in a jobs revolution

A major overhaul of jobs support for disabled and chronically ill young people in Britain is about to be recommended. The Milburn review of youth employment, due to report this month, will say the British state should create and subsidise paid jobs for thousands of disabled young people. The review will describe the step as an 'opportunity revolution' aimed at reversing years of labour market discrimination.

One of the review's central recommendations is the introduction of 'flexi-jobs', alongside employment subsidies and intensive skills support, to make it easier for disabled and chronically ill 16- to 24-year-olds to get work. The review will argue that the state should step in to underwrite jobs for young people who are locked out of employment and training opportunities, as part of an overhaul of an outdated welfare and skills system.

The figures show that about a million young people in Britain are now classified as 'Neet', meaning they are not in education, employment or training. Nearly half of them (45%) are disabled or in ill health. Disabled young people are three times as likely to be Neet as their non-disabled peers.

The review's author, the former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn, has described the soaring numbers of Neets as a moral and economic crisis, warning that failure to tackle rising youth disengagement from work risks creating a 'lost generation'. He has rejected what he called 'myths' about young people being 'snowflakes', insisting that the crisis in youth mental health is real, most youngsters want to work, and it is the duty of government and employers to provide support and opportunities.

The review will say young people with disabilities need a flexible and supportive approach to work that acknowledges fluctuating medical conditions and lack of work experience. It will also recognise the importance of part-time roles in helping them build confidence.

One eye-catching recommendation is for the UK to adopt a Danish-style 'flexi-job' scheme. It guarantees disabled participants employment while allowing them to set working hours that suit their individual capacities — in some cases starting with as few as four hours a week — with wages topped up by the government.

Another proposal is 'job carving': creative ways of shaping jobs to individual capabilities, such as splitting the three component parts of a single entry-level role and matching youngsters to each of those roles. A retail role that comprises stock-filling, till work and locking up would become three job opportunities.

Nearly half of 24-year-old Neets have never worked. In his interim report earlier this year, Milburn argued that abandoning a cohort of Covid-era youngsters coping with high levels of depression, anxiety, autism and ADHD would have a scarring effect on their life chances and lifetime earnings.

The government has said it will not endorse 'crude cuts' to benefits. However, Milburn has suggested that the state should switch some of the £4bn a year it spends on disability benefits for young people into comprehensive, high-quality employment and training support.

He will probably face pushback, though, from campaigners, and potentially backbench Labour MPs, who argue that job support should not be funded by disability benefit cuts that would push many young people into poverty and further away from the job market.

Milburn's proposals are in part a recognition that young people with disabilities face huge barriers around recruitment processes and inflexible job design, and that many businesses are unlikely to create job opportunities for them without government support. The plans have echoes of the postwar Remploy scheme, which created state-funded workplaces providing 'sheltered' employment for disabled ex-service personnel. At its height, Remploy had 90 factories across the UK; the last closed in 2013.

The review will urge large employers to voluntarily adopt employment targets for disabled 16- to 24-year-olds, although it is expected to stop short of recommending statutory quotas. As well as creating jobs, the review will call for a boost for job support, including supported internships, placements, specialist job matching and coaching, and support for employers to provide workplace adjustments.

The most common conditions reported by disabled Neets were depression, bad nerves or anxiety (23.8%), followed by autism (22.7%) and other health problems or disabilities (18.5%), according to the latest official figures. Milburn, who has been critical of the limited ambitions of existing government job support programmes, has previously called for a 'turbo-charging' of specialist internships for young people with special educational needs who are moving on from school and college.