Watch News at Ten - Stark warning as 1 million young adults are out of work

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]A start warning of a lost generation. A million young adults and rising out of work and education.

[00:00:08]Even if you go to the interview and you ace it, chances are you you probably still will be rejected because there's hundreds if not thousands of other applicants all trying to compete for the same role.

[00:00:20]>> Do you have a job? No. Are you looking for one? Yes. Okay. Bye. And they don't really offer you any help from other than that. The report by former health secretary Alan Milbour says young people are facing a perfect storm of challenges amounting to an economic and moral crisis.

[00:00:38]The >> scale and impact of this problem can no longer be ignored. We cannot throw a whole generation of young people on the scrappy before their adult lives have properly begun. The dangers and tragedy of lost potential were threaded through Alan Milbour's unflinching assessment, which will feel all too familiar to families across the country. Joel will take us through how we got here and where the solutions may lie. Also on News at 10 tonight, strikes between the US and Iran this morning. By this evening, a tentative deal on a truce emerges, but will Trump approve it? Ebola hit DRC is a catastrophic collision of disease and conflict. A warning from the WH chief arriving in the country.

[00:01:25]It's been the worst week of my life.

[00:01:27]Nicholas Sturgeon on her husband pleading guilty to a 400,000 embezzlement and buzzer.

[00:01:38]the laying of a ke >> the shipyards which shaped Sting his homecoming musical and its message for today.

[00:01:46]>> The social consequences of unemployment are are well known. They're, you know, well well researched. Uh, communities need need to have a purpose.

[00:02:12]This is ITV News at 10 with Julie Echingham.

[00:02:17]>> Good evening. It is an alarming headline, a lost generation. Today we learned what it means. a million plus young adults who live lives without work, training for work or education.

[00:02:30]The former government minister appointed to solve the problem called it more than an economic crisis. It is, said Alan Milbour, a moral one. The report he published today highlights wasted opportunities. How schools focused on academic grades don't properly prepare students for the world of work. How the NHS finds it easier to categorize young people as unable to work rather than helping them back into it and a benefit system that sucks people in. Mr. Milburn says the loss of earnings for the country is around 125 billion pounds.

[00:03:05]For each p person, the lifetime loss can approach £300,000.

[00:03:10]And that is not an abstract number. Mr. Melbourne said it is a deposit never saved, a home never bought, a pension never built, the hope of a good life never realized.

[00:03:23]>> This charity in Mansfield is trying to help 300 young people find work. The Melbourne Review says the odds are stacked against them, squeezed between a lack of opportunity and institutions that are failing them. Schools are not preparing enough young people for life in the workplace. For people like me with the autism and the neurode divergence things, people can find it a bit daunting the whole process.

[00:03:47]>> The welfare system traps young people on benefits.

[00:03:51]>> It's almost dehumanizing in a way that we're seen as nothing but a statistic to some people that were nothing but a number.

[00:03:57]>> The NHS deems too many unfit for work and entry-level jobs are drying up. Even if you go to the interview and you ace it, chances are you you probably still will be rejected because there's hundreds, if not thousands of other applicants all trying to compete for the same role.

[00:04:16]>> It's a perfect storm, says Alan Milbour, and it's getting worse.

[00:04:20]>> There aren't many causes left in modern British politics, but this is one.

[00:04:28]The scale and impact of this problem can no longer be ignored. We cannot throw a whole generation of young people on the scrappy before their adult lives have properly begun.

[00:04:39]>> For the first time, the number of young people not in education, employment, or training has risen above 1 million.

[00:04:45]That's 13.5% of all 16 to 24 year olds in the UK. That rate means we're almost bottom of the table compared with other European nations. France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands all do a much better job supporting young people into work. The Melbourne Review says one reason is that for every £25 the government spends on benefits for young people, only one pound is spent on employment support.

[00:05:11]>> Milbour highlights another issue. Young people today are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. And he says social media is a big part of the problem. had a small team of people going out across the country talking to literally hundreds of young people who are not in education, employment, and training. They ask them a question. They say, "What time did you go to sleep last night? 2:00, 3:00, 4:00, 5:00? Sometimes never. What are these young people doing living in their bedrooms, doom scrolling on their phones?"

[00:05:38]>> The former head of Ofcom yesterday, Michael Gray, called for a ban on social media for the under 16s. Would that be helpful?

[00:05:47]>> I think that the evidence is pretty overwhelming. Government policy is also under scrutiny.

[00:05:52]>> Delivering change, rebuilding Britain.

[00:05:55]>> Businesses say the chancellor's decision to raise employer national insurance and the minimum wage has led to fewer jobs.

[00:06:02]>> It's definitely had an impact. There's no doubt about that. But what nobody should pretend is that somehow the problems that you're seeing in the youth labor market began in the last two years. They go back for at least two decades. At a time when apprenticeships are in short supply, the prime minister was at a training center in West London.

[00:06:20]>> This is a real sobering report and we cannot afford, we will not allow a lost generation. And so we'll work with Allan now on what more needs to be done.

[00:06:31]Melbourne will publish his final recommendations in September, by which time Saky Star may no longer be prime minister.

[00:06:40]Well, as Joel mentioned there, the number of so-called neats is now over a million, but it is not a record. That was actually back in 2011 when almost 17% of 16 to 24 year olds were out of work. In the years that followed, the number fell, dropping below 10% during COVID, but after several years on the rise, it has now reached 13.5% with the prediction it could return to peak levels if nothing is done. And there are also worrying details behind the headline figures. While in 2005, four in 10 of those out of work or training had never had a job, that numbers now stands at 6 in 10, and the options for help have been reduced too.

[00:07:24]The number of apprenticeships is down 35% in England since 2017, while the number of entry- levelvel options have fallen, too. There are 1.6 6 million fewer low and mediumskilled jobs now than 20 years ago. Well, Joel has joined me to talk through I mean all of these figures are so stark. The warnings and that diagnosis were all stark from Alan Milbour to uh Joel. This has been a tragedy that clearly that has been building for years. Where might the solutions lie?

[00:07:56]>> It's the key question and he's holding he's keeping his his powder dry. Today was all about pointing out Julie in his view that young people in Britain face a crisis that previous generations just didn't. And it's not one of qualifications. One in three of these young people have good GCSEs. One in six have actually got a degree and they're still struggling to get on the career ladder. On the one hand, they're being restricted because of a lack of opportunities in the job market. On the other hand, the systems that are supposed to be supporting them from welfare to health, they're just being failed by and schools are just not giving the not preparing kids for uh life in the workplace. On top of that, there's the issue with mental health as a result of COVID. Yes. But very strong words about what social the role the social media is playing. So today was about diagnosis, as you say, not about cures, but there were hints of what's to come. I think he's talking about a fundamental system reset. I think in September he will be asking for more money for further education, more money for mental health support in schools, more money for work coaches, more money for wage subsidies, incentives for employers to take on young people, and he will almost certainly call for a ban in some form on social media if that hasn't already happened. The question is, where's all this money going to come from? I asked him earlier today, are you paving the trail here for benefits to be cut in order to pay for all this extra support? He wouldn't say, but he didn't deny it.

[00:09:26]>> Okay, fascinating, Joel. I know you'll be tracking this for us. Thank you very much indeed for that. Thank you.

[00:09:32]Now, for once, it wasn't President Trump himself talking up or down the prospect for an agreement with Iran, but reports from Washington suggest the current ceasefire could be formally extended by 60 days. Part of any memorandum of understanding would allow discussions about Iran's nuclear program, but and there is always one, isn't there?

[00:09:53]President Trump has yet to give final approval.

[00:10:00]It is a peculiar way to negotiate an end to the conflict.

[00:10:06]Thran firing a new wave of ballistic missiles at US allies in the region.

[00:10:13]Attacks that followed US strikes on Iranian coastal facilities.

[00:10:19]The propaganda war remains in full flow.

[00:10:22]The Revolutionary Guard releasing video complete with a soundtrack. and anti-American posters being affixed to missiles.

[00:10:34]>> But at the White House this afternoon, the US Treasury Secretary faced a barrage of questions.

[00:10:40]>> You you you in the glasses >> on reports that a deal with Iran is now imminent. He said America's red lines remain in place. It is a multiaceted agreement and um nothing is going to be on the table until we see the straight over open and the Iranians agree that they they have to turn over the the highlyenriched uranium and that they can't have a nuclear program.

[00:11:08]>> But he added everything depends on his boss and that the ultimate decision has not yet been made. Everything depends on what the president wants to do. It's always a mistake to get out ahead of the president.

[00:11:21]>> But if the commander-in-chief hasn't yet made his decision, yesterday he shocked many observers by threatening not just Iran, but also the close US ally of Oman, which has a coastline along the straight of Hormuz.

[00:11:34]>> Nobody's going to control. It's international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else. So, we'll have to blow them up. They understand that. They'll be fine.

[00:11:48]>> A new generation of Americans is preparing for combat deployment.

[00:11:52]>> Dismissed.

[00:11:54]>> The US Air Force Academy held its graduation ceremony today.

[00:11:59]>> And even as they celebrated, cadets were told they would be needed to enforce the president's Iran strategy. When the president says he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, it is the men and women you will join in just 60 days who give force to that promise.

[00:12:19]Tonight, the US Iran crisis remains on a night watch.

[00:12:24]A diplomatic deal tantalizingly close, but both sides also warning.

[00:12:31]But escalation remains a distinct possibility.

[00:12:35]Robert Moore, News at 10, Washington.

[00:12:39]>> And Emma joins me now to talk further about this. I mean, tantalizingly close indeed, but we've been there before.

[00:12:44]These statements seem positive. What are you reading into who we're hearing them from? Well, I think they sound positive and the spin is positive, but there's an awful lot of spin going on. And at the moment, it's mainly coming from the US administration and that's where the initial leaks came out of today that there was this memorandum of understanding that's been accepted. And I think it's important that we actually just take a moment to think about what is being agreed, if anything is here.

[00:13:12]It's not a peace deal. It's not um anything hugely significant in terms of um a real nuts and bolts change to the situation on the ground. It's a 14 or so paragraph document that says that they can extend for another 60 days the ceasefire and then start to deal with the tricky stuff and not necessarily deal with all the tricky stuff. I was speaking with um a regional uh politician a few days ago and they've been very involved in these negotiations and the sort of backwards and forwards and they were saying the real issue is what each country thinks they should get when. So basically the US are very keen to get this whole nuclear issue uh dealt with. The Iranians say that that's fine.

[00:13:55]They will have those conversations but they want the immediate release of frozen funds. Now the Americans say they want that to be trickled out over a period of time and kind of a reward for for progress forward. And I think that is where the real difficult points are.

[00:14:11]Let's not also forget that they have to try and get the straight of horm open.

[00:14:14]The straight of horm that we've said before was open before this war began and it's just another massive issue that's been brought to the table as a result of this military action.

[00:14:24]>> Okay, Emma, thank you very much indeed.

[00:14:26]Thank you.

[00:14:28]Health workers fighting the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been doing so with barely any medical supplies. Today, a plane load donated by the European Union did arrive, including masks, gloves, and medicines. The head of the World Health Organization arrived there tonight, saying much more international help was needed as the number of deaths rose to 238 and suspected cases passed the 1,000 mark.

[00:14:59]For those it touches, Ebola can be a one-word death sentence and the victim a source of infection even as they're carried to their grave.

[00:15:12]Armed police keep mourners at a distance. There is fear and mistrust as health workers take as much care with the dead as they must do with those still living.

[00:15:26]At this clinic, a young woman, exhausted, is examined by medical staff who suspect the worst.

[00:15:36]>> She's trying to speak, but her condition is not good. He says she can't walk. You can see she doesn't have much strength.

[00:15:46]>> In the absence of a vaccine, the front line is a volunteer armed with a loud haler and good advice.

[00:15:57]that goes only so far.

[00:16:02]>> We know about Ebola, says this woman.

[00:16:05]We're told to wash our hands, but we have no soap, and the taps are dry. Aid has been slow to come, and tonight that's brought a fresh appeal for help from the head of the World Health Organization who's just arrived in the country. The amount of support we're asking is still not uh uh received a third of what we asked we we're getting in terms of funding and I use this opportunity actually to uh ask the international community to uh increase uh their support >> in this troubled region. There are millions of people displaced by decades of civil strife. A catastrophic collision of disease and conflict, warn aid agencies, hampering efforts to track Ebola's spread.

[00:16:57]>> The contact tracing isn't entirely in place as yet. I'm sure they're working very hard on that, but unless that gets in place, fundamentally, you will not know how far it spreads and to be able to contain it. won significant victory today with the release from hospital of the first Ebola patient successfully treated, but it will be weeks before medical teams have everything they need in place to combat a disease that carries such a threat. John Ray, News at 10.

[00:17:27]>> The man who forced the cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Austria by planning an attack on one of them has been sent to jail for 15 years. The 21-year-old intended to target fans outside the stadium in Vienna with knives or homemade explosives. The singer was in the middle of her record-breaking eras tour in August 2024. Thousands of her fans, Swifties, who traveled to Austria for the concerts, gathered at the time in downtown Vienna as a show of support for her.

[00:17:59]Nicholas Sturgeon appeared in public today for the first time since the start of the Melstrom over her estranged husband. pleading guilty to embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds of SMP funds. She told an audience at her book signing session today that she'd spent years married to somebody that she obviously didn't know at all. The past week had been the worst in her life. She said, and Harry's here to talk further about this. I mean, she still wasn't taking any further questions about this matter, but she was uh speaking pretty vividly of the personal strain she was feeling.

[00:18:30]>> Yeah, absolutely. And this is a case that has shaken the S SNP in recent years. And it's clearly shaken Nicholas Sturgeon as well. Uh she told this audience in Ireland that she was deceived, betrayed, and lied to by her ex-husband, the former S&P chief executive Peter Morell. The last few years, she said, have had some tough ones for me, but this one, I think, surpasses all of them. And she said she'd probably need to sit with a therapist to talk through this. And said, I am not okay. Now, Peter Morell pleaded guilty on Monday to embezzling more than £400,000 of SMP money uh between 2010 and 2022. He used that money uh to buy luxury goods, homeware items, two cars, and a motor home.

[00:19:13]Nicholas Surgeon has always denied any knowledge of Peter Morel's crimes, and she was never charged by police. But she said tonight to this audience that she could understand why some of the public will be asking the question, how could she not have known about this? and she said that as recently as Monday, she was reading for the first time about some of the items her ex-husband had been purchasing. Now, Peter Morel was remanded in custody on Monday after pleading guilty. Um, he could face a lengthy prison term. Uh, he will be sentenced uh later in June on the 23rd of June.

[00:19:46]>> Okay, Harry, thank you very much. Thank you.

[00:19:51]One of the key tools in bringing down the number of deaths from cancer is of course a national screening program.

[00:19:56]There is one for women with breast cancer for example that saves hundreds of lives a year. But a committee of experts has decided there should not be one for the most common cancer in the UK prostate cancer which is diagnosed in 68,000 men every year. They're sticking to their claim that the invasive part of testing can cause more harm than good and only recommending it for men known to have a particular cancer-causing gene.

[00:20:26]The body of another teenage boy has been pulled from a river bringing to 11 the number of people to die cooling off during the ongoing high temperatures.

[00:20:35]The 14-year-old had got into difficulties in the river temps in Ox Oxfordshire and those high temperatures are going to last a bit longer than previously expected.

[00:20:47]Tonight, a small community in Oxford is remembering a teenage boy who died yesterday in the rivers. They spelled out LLB, long live Baltazar, in telights, forever 14. paying tribute to a boy who I'm told had been swimming in this spot many times before.

[00:21:07]Baltazar Elqui lived locally, but his family are from the island of Teeour in South Asia. The Oxford Te-our Community Association said they are all grieving and that this tragedy is a reminder to all communities about the importance of child safety around open water. In Kent, the body of a 15year-old boy has also been recovered. Rescue workers were called to this spot in Swansum yesterday afternoon after reports a swimmer had got into trouble in the water.

[00:21:40]Across England and Wales, there have been multiple deaths every single day this week in open water during this hot May heatwave. 11 people are dead, nine are children.

[00:21:52]17-year-old Muhammad Secker has been named as the teenager whose body was recovered from a lake in Rother Valley Country Park in South Yorkshire on Monday. 15year-old Declan Sawyer died on Sunday in Lincolnshshire. Reco Put who was 13 died in West Yorkshire on Monday.

[00:22:09]And the body of 12-year-old Junior Slater was recovered from open water in Lancasher on Tuesday.

[00:22:16]Becky Ramsay knows what their families are going through. Her 13-year-old son Dylan died in 2011 while swimming in a quarry in Chile. She now campaigns on water safety. Got bags under my eyes cuz I haven't slept properly for the past three nights thinking about all these poor families and I'm reliving their nightmare because I'm reliving my own nightmare in their time if that makes sense. So, every time I hear about a tragedy, it takes me right back to the beginning. We don't even talk about the fact that we've got firemen and fire women and police officers that never signed up to pull dead children out of the water. Let's be honest.

[00:22:55]>> The UK Health Security Agency is warning of more water related incidents over the next few days because of this prolonged spell of hot weather. It has issued a new yellow heat health alert for parts of the east, London, and Southeast England running until Saturday night.

[00:23:13]But the number of lives claimed by open water this week is raising alarm across the country and there are concerns that the safety messages are just not getting through. Stacy Foster, News at 10, Oxford.

[00:23:26]The hot weather has been blamed by Southeast Water for 22,000 customers having to go without totally or partially. That would be the same Southeast Water that blamed the cold for cuts in supplies either side of last Christmas.

[00:23:42]A familiar crisis in Kent. Thousands of homes once again without water following this week's heatwave.

[00:23:51]And like supplies, patience is running dry.

[00:23:55]>> We've all had to sit in hours of cues just to get water, which it's a bit ridiculous. You know, >> can't have a shower half the time because it's you can never trust it.

[00:24:04]It's always on and then it's off and then when it comes back on again, it just goes mental.

[00:24:08]>> I'm not happy at all. and I I I'm not going to be paying my bill this month.

[00:24:11]>> Southeast Water says soaring demands this past week pushed supplies to the limit with customers urged to ration for essential needs only. But for businesses, that simply isn't possible.

[00:24:23]>> Yesterday, it was just off all day. So from first thing in the morning, we had to close the salon all day. 95% of the customers obviously have their hair washed to have it cut or obviously coloring and stuff like that. So we can't do any of the services really um without any water. And for the vulnerable, the disruption has been even harder.

[00:24:42]>> I'm 93 now. And uh it was really distressing not to be able to turn the tap on. So I managed to pour some water into the kettle and heated that up, carried it through into the bathroom and I was able to wash my face and clean my teeth. For window cleaner Andy, minimal water has meant down by 40%.

[00:25:03]>> Bit of a nightmare at the moment because you don't know when it's going to come on. It's not like someone tells you. So, you can't plan and tell the customers, "I'll be there tomorrow because you don't know if you're going to have water."

[00:25:14]>> And this isn't the first time.

[00:25:16]Throughout last winter in Kenton, Sussex, it was a similar story. For Southeast Water, this is becoming a familiar problem, and the pressure at the top is only growing. In the past month, its chief executive David Hinton and chair Chris Train both resigned following a damning report by MPs.

[00:25:36]Today, Southeast Water desperately trying to reassure customers.

[00:25:41]>> There is water in the aquifers. So, we have have have had enough recharge over the winter period. And actually the challenge that we face here today is then making sure the water that's in our service reservoirs, so they're the smaller reservoirs, that we can get that water out into the network and get it around the network for where we're seeing those increases in demand.

[00:26:02]>> But after months of on andoff disruption, confidence is low and the people here have had enough. Subchowry news at 10 in Kent.

[00:26:12]And the heat wave is also having an effect across the channel in the French Open tennis with red hot favorite Yanick SA falling foul of the red hot Paris temperatures. The Italian world number one was just one game away from a routine straight sets win over unseeded Argentine Juan Manuel Serendelo. But SA suddenly appeared to wilt in the 35 degree heat taking a medical timeout and losing 18 of the next 20 games to crash out the biggest tennis shock in years.

[00:26:45]Finally, the rockstar Sting has been reflecting lyrically on growing up on Timeside as he prepares to take his musical The Last Ship on tour again.

[00:26:53]What that growing up was done in Wool's End, then a ship building town. Echoing themes at the start of our program tonight, Sting says politicians need to be radical to find ways of creating jobs for young people.

[00:27:08]In the streets around here, there was nobody tougher than me. Before Sting was well sting, he was a boy from the banks of the Tine brought up in the shadow of the shipyards.

[00:27:24]>> But while fighting was useful.

[00:27:25]>> So when he sings songs of his childhood, you can hear the accent from the part of the country which made him.

[00:27:32]>> There had to be something that was better than this. in later life and you know been fortunate enough to have this extraordinary international career as a successful musician I realized that I've been gifted something as a child um a value system uh an identity a work ethic and a story and I thought I want to I want to tell the story of my hometown >> the last ship is a reworking and reststaging of a musical for which Sting wrote the score and in which he stars.

[00:28:13]>> It's about what happens to a community when the work that sustains it is taken away from them. But I think it has a resonance. All of us seem to be in danger now of losing our our jobs to this AI thing.

[00:28:27]The ship building industry thrived on the time for more than a hundred years.

[00:28:32]Replacing the living's heavy industry once provided. It's something governments have struggled with ever since.

[00:28:39]>> The social consequences of unemployment are are well known. They're you know well well researched.

[00:28:46]Communities need need to have a purpose.

[00:28:49]>> The government now is dealing with a climate crisis an issue which is very close to your heart. The business of job creation, the business of creating work often is quite energy intensive. There's a tension there as well, isn't there?

[00:29:02]>> Yeah. You you you can't separate industrialization or de-industrialization from the the climatic concerns at all. It's beautiful weather today, but it's only May and it feels like August in Italy. There's something wrong. I think as a strategy for life, it's better to be optimistic than it is to be it's opposite. Um but of course the window of of optimism is is is definitely narrowing. So we need to to get radical.

[00:29:39]>> Garantine talking to Sting earlier. That is tonight's news at 10. Join Charlotte and Robert for GMBB tomorrow from 6.

[00:29:45]I'll see you tomorrow. Good night.