Former Marks & Spencer chief Marc Bolland has been appointed as a government jobs adviser, putting one of the retail group’s best-known former bosses at the centre of a new push to tackle youth unemployment. Downing Street said on Saturday that Bolland would also become lead non-executive director at the Department for Work and Pensions.
The appointment lands as ministers face fresh pressure over the number of young people outside work or training. About 1 million people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are not in education, employment or training, a figure that has helped turn the search for marks and spencer uk into something bigger than retail history alone: a reminder of how Bolland’s next role now reaches into a national jobs problem.
Bolland, who ran Marks & Spencer from 2010 to 2016, will lead a summit of business leaders and work with leading chief executives across sectors to create clearer routes into work. He will also advise work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden on how the government should respond to the findings of former health secretary Alan Milburn, whose interim report warned on Thursday that the Neets cohort could rise to 1.25 million by the 2030s without radical action.
The government said Bolland’s work would not stop at corporate recruitment. A central part of the role is expected to involve charities that support disabled young people, with an emphasis on making sure they can reach training and employment opportunities rather than being left out of them.
That promise matters because the government says its collaboration with Movement to Work has already helped more than 200,000 unemployed young people find jobs, yet the scale of the problem remains stubborn. Milburn’s report found that six in 10 young people had never had a job, and about 12.5% of 16- to 24-year-olds in Britain are not in education or work, compared with 5% in the Netherlands. Almost half of those who claim a health or disability benefit before the age of 24 are still unemployed or not in education a decade later.
Bolland said he was honoured and passionate about working with the government and that working hand in hand with business to support young people gives them the best possible chance of success. McFadden called the appointment a clear signal. The practical question now is how much reach Bolland can bring to a problem that is already large, still growing and proving difficult to shift fast enough.
