Young people could lose benefits if they refuse work or training

Young people who refuse work, training or education will face ‘consequences’ under ‘tough’ new government plans.

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said this morning that those who ‘repeatedly refuse’ to take up these opportunities will lose their benefits, a suggestion which a mental health campaigner warned would be ‘terrible’ for young people suffering with their mental health.

The government plans to introduce a new ‘youth guarantee’, offering more apprenticeships and basic skills training to the almost one million young people who are economically inactive.

Speaking on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Kendall said: ‘If you are out of work or lack basic skills when you are young, it can have lifelong consequences.

‘It is so damaging for young people not to have skills or not to be in work. We do not want that future for our young people.

‘For people who repeatedly refuse to take up the training or work responsibilities, there will be sanctions on their benefits.

‘We believe in our responsibility to provide those new opportunities, which is what we will do. But young people will be required to take them up.’

The work and pensions secretary did not rule out taking away people’s current benefits under Labour’s plans.

Kendall’s warning comes as nearly are also 2.8 million people are currently out of work due to long-term sickness and an further 1.5 million people are unemployed.

The work and pensions secretary argued today that there are people who could work but choose not.

She said on the BBC today: “I know from speaking to our job coaches, our fantastic job coaches in jobcentres, that there are people who could work, who aren’t.

‘But I think they are in the minority.’

The prime minister, on the other hand, has declared a crackdown on ‘criminals” who ‘game the system’, said in the Mail on Sunday that the the growing benefits bill is ‘blighting our society’.

Kendall is promising ‘big reforms’ to work and pensions, including reforming job centres into a ‘genuine public employment service.’

A mental health campaigner and crisis worker has warned of the ‘dark’ consequences of the government’s plan to take away benefits from young people who do not enter work, training or education.

John Junior, 36, who was nominated for a BAFTA for a Channel 4 documentary about suicide, said: ‘Benefits are giving young people security. If you take them away from them they will feel helpless.

‘They will feel like the ground is swallowing them up.

‘Young people are having their choices taken away from them.

‘The government are trying to force young people into doing something they do not want to do.’

Junior worries that young people who suffer from mental health conditions are waiting ‘months and months’ on waiting lists for support and are unable to hold down a job.

The mental health campaigner added: ‘Half of the people I speak to cannot get out of bed and brush their teeth, what are they going to be like if they are forced to go to training?

‘A lot of dark things will end up happening to people.’

The number of young people who say they are out of work, training or education because of a mental health problem has doubled in the last ten years.

The work and pensions secretary said that there is a ‘genuine problem with mental health in this country’ and promised that the government would provide more mental health support to those struggling.

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