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.
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