Camilla Uses Unassailable Evidence Against Labour.

CAMILLA TOMINEY.

The Left still refuses to admit the truth about 

mass migration.

Immigration is not the sole cause of our youth 

unemployment crisis, but figures suggest it has 

had a huge impact

Former Labour minister Alan Milburn has led a government review into worklessness 

Camilla TomineyAssociate Editor
Camilla Tominey is an Associate Editor of The
 Telegraph and co-presenter of the Daily T podcast
 with Tim Stanley. She also hosts a Sunday
 morning politics show on GB News. During her
 25-year career, she has covered major news events
 including 9/11, seven general elections and Brexit
 alongside being one of the world's leading Royal
 commentators. Her exclusive story breaking the
 news of Prince Harry’s relationship with Meghan
 Markle was nominated for Scoop of the Year at
 the 2016 British Press Awards.

See more 

Published 29 May 2026 4:23pm BST

While Alan Milburn was busy insisting that Britain’s youth worklessness crisis has nothing to do with immigration, a think tank quietly published figures that told a very different story.

According to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), which was set up by former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, 27 young non-EU migrants have been hired for every one young British worker since 2020.

In other words, while the number of non-EU under-25s on UK payrolls has risen by 290,000 since the start of the decade, the number of young Britons employed increased by just 11,000 over the same period. Meanwhile, young people classified as Neet (not in education, employment or training) rose by almost 200,000.

How can anyone seriously argue there is no correlation here? Of course, immigration is not the sole cause of youth worklessness. But to pretend mass migration has had no impact whatsoever on the youth labour market shows a wilful kind of blindness.

Milburn’s headline findings are alarming enough. An interim report by the former Blairite minister has warned that the number of Neets is on course to soar by nearly a third over the next five years. That would mean more than 1.25 million young people effectively cut adrift. That would amount to one in six under-25s being classed as economically inactive, compared with roughly one in eight today.

Mr Milburn described the situation as a “whole-system failure”, blaming outdated education, welfare and healthcare structures that were no longer capable of preparing young people for adult life. There is undoubtedly truth in that diagnosis.

Britain’s institutions have failed many young people, particularly since the pandemic. Some schools aren’t fit for purpose, mental health services are overwhelmed and welfare systems that were once a safety net have become a trap.

Yet, when Mr Milburn was asked whether immigration might also have played a role, he flatly denied any link. “There’s no evidence,” he insisted. “It’s a blame game issue. We just sort of blame immigration as the problem – it’s not really, it isn’t.”

Imported labour

That response epitomises the modern political class’s refusal to engage honestly with the issue. Any attempt to discuss the relationship between mass migration and employment is instantly dismissed as bigoted.

I experienced exactly that during an episode of the Daily T podcast last week with former RMT union boss Mick Lynch. When I asked whether mass migration may have affected job availability or depressed wages for British workers, his response was to imply that the question itself was somehow racist.

Yet, as the CSJ has shown, the facts increasingly speak for themselves. Further, according to the CSJ’s analysis of HMRC payroll data, the number of non-EU workers aged under 25 has risen by an extraordinary 355 per cent since 2020. By comparison, the young British workforce has grown by just 0.3 per cent. These are the Government’s own numbers, spelling it out in black and white. Yet much of Westminster continues to avert its gaze.

The broader immigration picture has also played a part. Between January 2021 and June 2024, an estimated 3.9 million people arrived in Britain during the so-called “Boriswave”, when visas were handed out like confetti. Net migration reached a record 944,000 in the year ending March 2023.

Conservative ministers repeatedly insisted that these migrants were overwhelmingly “high-skilled workers” needed to plug labour shortages. But that argument no longer withstands scrutiny, since we now know the Home Office classified workers earning as little as £25,600 as “skilled”.The reality is that many sectors have become increasingly dependent on a constant flow of cheaper imported labour. Nowhere was this more evident than in the social care visa scheme, arguably one of the most reckless immigration policies introduced in modern times.It allowed employers to recruit large numbers of low-paid overseas workers with no meaningful age cap. Dependents could accompany them in large numbers, and little thought appeared to have been given to the long-term fiscal implications. Many of those workers did not remain confined to the care sector. Increasingly, migrants recruited under such schemes moved into retail, hospitality and service industries – precisely the sort of entry-level jobs that once provided British youngsters with their first foot on the career ladder.Walk down almost any British high street and the transformation is obvious. This is not about attacking migrants themselves, who are only trying to pursue a better life for themselves and their families. The responsibility lies with an immigration system that has been designed with little regard for the long-term consequences for domestic workers.

What is undeniable is that many of the jobs once traditionally filled by British youngsters – supermarket shelf stacking, café work and bar shifts – are no longer functioning as reliable gateways into employment. And those jobs matter far more than many politicians seem willing to admit.

More than one million Neets

16-24 year olds not in employment, education or training (Neets) by quarter

Oct-Dec 2001Apr-Jun 2008Oct-Dec 2014Apr-Jun 20210.600.700.800.901.001.101.201.30m

Source: ONS

They may be menial, but for generations, these low-level roles served as the foundation upon which young people built the self-confidence required for a future career. Working behind a till, serving pints in a pub or handling customers in a busy shop teaches lessons no classroom can replicate.These roles don’t just develop resilience. They teach punctuality, communication, negotiation and responsibility. Young people learn how to deal with pressure, solve practical problems and interact with people from all walks of life. These are not trivial skills. They are essential building blocks for adulthood. Employment teaches what the national curriculum can’t.When young people are excluded from the workforce at the beginning of their adult lives, the consequences often last decades. Economic inactivity becomes entrenchedThe biggest irony of all? We now have a post-Covid generation that is suffering from unprecedented mental health problems and record unemployment – when work would actually be the best medicine.The betrayal is two-fold: young people have not only been abandoned by the very institutions meant to prepare them for adulthood but also misled about the forces that helped shut them out in the first place. 

                                                                                                             DT.