Alan Milburn has released an interim report on young people not in employment, education or training. He cites the ‘NEET’ rate as having barely been below 10% for 25 years. Now it is at crisis point, but remains “absorbed into the background noise of public life,” according to the former minister.
Also in that same background part of wider society is the coach and bus industry. To the public, it is there and does its job. There is little more to say, barring on occasions when a failure is recorded. When that happens, staff shortage is often a factor.
In his foreword, Mr Millburn observes that work is about connection, self-respect, and independence. It gives structure to a day and purpose to a week, alongside confidence to the person and a contribution to the country.
Coach and bus has plenty of that work. In most cases, paying a fair wage, organised, and something that gives validity to the employee carrying it out. And yet the sector still suffers staffing deficiencies while at the same time the NEET cohort is growing.
Government finances swallow the welfare impact of that. But consecutive administrations have been less keen to consider allocating some of those many billions to readying people for careers in transport and other sectors to help turn NEETs into productive members of society.
There can be few more productive jobs than driving or maintaining a coach or bus. 50 children taken to school, 50 adults to work, or 70 students to university. Tourism businesses are supported in the manner illustrated by calculations of the wider economic impact of the coach industry. That is real productivity.
Mr Milburn briefly acknowledges the relevance of bus services to the NEET problem. His interim review identifies how transport “recurred repeatedly as a hidden driver of youth detachment from the labour market.” Cuts to buses have fallen on areas where NEET rates are highest, he observes.
The obvious conclusion from the above is that investing public money in the coach and bus industry – to help recruitment and to increase services – will make a solid contribution to solving what is a much wider systemic problem.
Ministers talk of a ‘youth guarantee’, but the interim NEET report says much more is required. Final recommendations are being worked up by Mr Milburn, and thus what the government will do in response is awaited. Maybe it will come good.
Found is how 84% of NEETs want a job or training, so with the right political will, the industry could tap into a vein of recruits. It is three-and-a-half years since one coach operator said it would be keen to hire and train new drivers direct from school, if only the 50km, regular service restriction did not preclude it from doing so.
Add to that a few more shekels – national and devolved – towards bus services, and solving the NEET issue becomes easier, at least in theory.
None of this is rocket science. The benefits are obvious. Trade bodies must highlight them while hoping that acting on Mr Milburn’s excoriation does not get filed in Westminster’s too difficult pile.
