The crisis facing Britain’s young people is politicians’ fault. To fix it, we need a generational response | Andy Burnham

Alan Milburn’s review will mark a watershed moment for our approach to welfare and childhood. This is how I’m determined to create change

• Report: Burnham pledges early intervention and ‘benefits backstop’ to tackle youth jobs crisis

A generation of young people did not wake up one morning and decide they did not want to work. The fact that a million 16- to 24-year-olds are now not in education, employment or training (Neet) is not their fault. It is ours, as politicians.

We have failed to give them the support they need as they have grown up in a tougher world. This has become an economic catastrophe for the country – and a moral one too.

Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom