The Government has appointed former M&S chief executive Marc Bolland to help deliver its Youth Guarantee, giving Britain’s youth employment crisis the one thing every crisis has been waiting for: a senior business leader with a diary.
Announced on 30 May 2026, Bolland’s new role involves convening business leaders to help tackle the number of young people not in education, employment or training. He will also advise Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden on the Government’s response to Alan Milburn’s review into youth inactivity.
The Youth Guarantee is intended to give every person aged 18 to 21 access to employment, training or education. It comes backed by a stated £2.5 billion investment, which should be enough to ensure the first meeting about implementation has a very respectable fruit bowl and perhaps a second kind of biscuit.
The Government says around one million young people are currently not in education, employment or training, and warns that the figure could rise from one in eight to one in six within five years without urgent action. The response is to bring employers, charities, disabled people’s organisations and young people into the conversation, presumably after someone has found a room large enough for all the stakeholders and their individually labelled water.
Bolland brings experience from Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and Heineken, as well as his work founding Movement to Work. The charity says it has delivered more than 200,000 opportunities for people aged 16 to 30 facing barriers to employment. This gives him an impressive background in getting people into work, although the Government has wisely begun with the easier task of getting chief executives into a conference call.
The appointment reflects a familiar piece of public administration. When a problem becomes too large for a department, it is given a review. When the review becomes too complicated, it is given a business leader. When the business leader arrives, everyone agrees that partnership is essential and schedules another meeting to decide who will arrange the meeting about partnership.
The serious aim is to create clearer routes into work and learning, especially for young people with health conditions or disabilities. That will require practical support, willing employers and systems that function outside the conference room. It may also require somebody to explain that “earn or learn” is a destination, not an agenda item.
By the end of the first meeting, the Youth Guarantee had acquired a lead, a review, a business network and several billion pounds. All it needs now is a young person, a job and the revolutionary discovery that none of these things should be trapped in the minutes.
Source: GOV.UK.
