Milburn Review: Interim Report

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend asks an important question and underpins it with an extremely important statement: this is not the fault of young people. They are not lazy. They have been let down for years by a system that does not serve their needs. The Government are putting in place £2.5 billion for the youth guarantee. We continue to work with employers and employment support providers to talk about how we can tailor support to the specific needs of young people to get the number of young people not in education, employment or training down.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Returning to the important points about mental health made by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), I draw the Minister’s attention to paragraphs 424 and 425 of the report, which states:

“It is mental health conditions that are now the most commonly reported health condition among NEET young people…This explosion has primarily been in mental health issues such as anxiety and depression, rather than in serious mental illnesses”.

We can all have our different ideas as to what might be causing this upsurge—I think there has clearly been a loss of mental resilience among young people—but does the Minister agree that, given that this is such a large part of the problem, further detailed research and analysis need to be done on why so many young people are so much more anxious and feel that they cannot cope?

[Andrew Western]

The right hon. Member is absolutely right to highlight the importance of that point, and the Department of Health and Social Care is undertaking a review of mental health provision, the causes of poor mental health and so on. I agree that 40% of young people citing mental health conditions as a driver for their not being in employment, education or training is a concerning increase—it has almost doubled in recent years. That is clearly unacceptable. That is why some of the interventions being led by the Department for Education are so important: more mental health support in schools, getting those CAMHS waiting lists down and ensuring that children and young people get early intervention when they need help, because, as we see in those numbers and this report, poor mental health blights them not just at school, but in later life.