Alan Milburn is right, a young generation has been betrayed. Forget Tony Blair: we must attend to this | Polly Toynbee

The new and excoriating account of the dire prospects for UK young people is a call to action. It could be the Beveridge report for our time

The diagnosis is dire. Alan Milburn has published the first part of his forensic report on the lives and chances of young people, their fate after leaving school or college, the inadequacy of their health, education and pastoral care, and the reluctance of employers to hire them. This is a “moral crisis”, he says. There are now more than a million young people not in work, education or training (Neets), and Milburn expects that number to rise to 1.25 million without radical change. The government needs a “big idea”, he tells me. This should be it, “the spine, the purpose”.

Perhaps he was expected only to solve the particular problem of left-behind and lost Neets. What he has delivered instead is an excoriating overview of how badly this young generation is treated altogether. A sense of shock reverberates through every well-written page. Why have children and young people had such a low priority in resources and political concern, especially since 2010? There has been institutional neglect, loss of youth and careers services, chaotic non-communication or data exchange between dislocated silos, small schemes coming and going. Milburn describes a catastrophic failure: it needs a whole “system reset” and no more “tinkering”.

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