The diagnosis is dire. Alan Milburn has published the first part of his forensic report on the lives and chances of young people, their fate after leaving school or college, the inadequacy of their health, education and pastoral care, and the reluctance of employers to hire them. This is a “moral crisis”, he says. There are now more than a million young people not in work, education or training (Neets), and Milburn expects that number to rise to 1.25 million without radical change. The government needs a “big idea”, he tells me. This should be it, “the spine, the purpose”.

Perhaps he was expected only to solve the particular problem of left-behind and lost Neets. What he has delivered instead is an excoriating overview of how badly this young generation is treated altogether. A sense of shock reverberates through every well-written page. Why have children and young people had such a low priority in resources and political concern, especially since 2010? There has been institutional neglect, loss of youth and careers services, chaotic non-communication or data exchange between dislocated silos, small schemes coming and going. Milburn describes a catastrophic failure: it needs a whole “system reset” and no more “tinkering”.

There is nothing new about the social portrait he paints. Britain’s gross inequality was always starkly revealed in the fate of children: those from the poorest families and in geographically deprived, job-free areas are most destined to be Neet when they leave school, many opting out earlier through absence from schools they hate. Those already lacking support in their early years, not ready to learn when they reach school, are three times more likely to end up Neet. Every passing year makes catching up less likely.

All this has been well chronicled, from Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree’s surveys in the........

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