Burnham Vows To Tackle Youth Unemployment

**Aaron Bastani** (0:03)
Welcome to Novara Live. Coming up tonight, Andy Burnham is, quote, on a mission to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training or NEETs, as they're sometimes referred to.
He has, however, stopped short of pledging a concrete target. But the number of millionaires in Britain is falling, and the reason why might surprise you. Reform have embarrassed themselves yet again. No wonder they're plummeting in the polls, and a group of Palestine Action activists are facing terrorism charges over spray paint and broken windows. My goodness, I would have been in trouble as a child playing football in the school playground. I'm Aaron Bastani, and tonight, I'm joined by Michael Walker. Michael, how are you?

**Michael Walker** (0:38)
Very well. Imagining you breaking windows, a little terrorist child, you.

**Aaron Bastani** (0:42)
Well, that's it. Literally a terrorist.

**Michael Walker** (0:45)
You would have deserved it, you know. The Palestine Action guys, they had a reason.

**Aaron Bastani** (0:49)
I mean, I don't want people... You were just causing chaos. Yeah, I don't want people to think we're making light of this. We're not. But, I mean, breaking windows is quite a common thing, right?
Either accidentally or intentionally.

**Michael Walker** (0:59)
It's not terrorism.

**Aaron Bastani** (0:59)
It's not terrorism. Walk down the nearest high street where I live in Portsmouth. I mean, there are people getting drunk every weekend and they're breaking lots of windows. I don't condone it.

**Michael Walker** (1:08)
Oh, you'd lock them up and throw away the key.

**Aaron Bastani** (1:10)
They're not terror. Navy in my darken moment, so I'd call them that. But no, they're not terrorists. They should maybe pay for the window to be fixed.
We'll talk about that story later on, because by the way, the cost of those windows, I don't think that's really the actual cost. It's being reported by the prosecution. If you'd like to support our work here at Novara Media, you can of course sign up at novaramedia.com/support.
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Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been talking about education and work today. Specifically, he's been exploring how to change education to help more young people into work. But in the background, there's the issue of NEETS, young people who aren't in education, employment or training. In May, the number of 16 to 24 year olds out of work and education passed the million mark and has sit to hit 1.25 million by the early 2030s. That's a shocking statistic and a generational tragedy. And of course, each one of those million young people has been very, very let down. That's something that Burnham admitted to today.

**Andy Burnham** (2:42)
I am committing today to get the number of young people not in education, employment or training down. Obviously, the trend is rising at the moment.
So first thing I've got to do is to stop that rise. So it's kind of hard to say and put a firm date on the moment when you can say there are fewer than now. But certainly, I am completely on a mission with relation to this. I cannot accept the situation where we have so many young people in their 20s on benefits. It's just not right for them. Why do we have that? The support just isn't there.
It would be wrong to blame the young people when we have an education system that doesn't set them up properly, where some struggle to find opportunities at 16, where work experience and work placements aren't there for them. We've got to put those building blocks in place and then, in time, that number will come down. And I will commit in my time in office to get the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training down. I will commit to that. And precisely I can get there will be hard things to say right now.

**Aaron Bastani** (3:49)
But it was Reform Z Yusuf who seemed most incensed. He wrote a series of tweets in response, starting with this one.

**Andy Burnham** (3:57)
I hear wherever I go that young people are often looking for something different from education. We've had a system built for too long around the university route. And it sends a message to some young people that they're some kind of second class citizens.