It’s time to abolish the minimum wage

Forty-five per cent of 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment, or training – known as ‘NEETs’ – have never had a job. Not a Saturday shift at a café, not a summer stacking shelves, not an entry-level role that teaches you what an invoice or balance sheet looks like. Alan Milburn, former Labour health secretary and now chair of the government’s own young people and work review, delivered this verdict this week with the weary authority of a doctor who knows the patient is deteriorating but cannot persuade them to change the treatment.