I got my first job at the age of 10. I am not quite old enough to have been unwillingly stuffed up chimneys, but I was happy to do a milk round.It was all completely unofficial, of course.
The local milkman was a well-known and well-liked figure in our neighbourhood. He appreciated the extra help to complete his deliveries, and my parents were not worried about me and a mate tagging along.
We had huge fun hanging off the side of his float as it crept along and depositing bottles on people’s doorsteps. And, although I didn’t know it then, getting out of bed in the early hours was great training for the GB News Breakfast show in later life.
I can’t remember how much he paid us out of his own wages, but it kept us in sweets for the week. Can you imagine that happening today?
For a start, door-to-door milk deliveries are a thing of the past. The milky would have needed DBS checks to have us along, and health and safety rules would have prevented us from joining him anyway.
At 18, I was a rookie journalist on the local paper, at 21, the youngest reporter in Fleet Street for a while before another took my place, and by 24, a fully-fledged foreign correspondent based in New York, trusted to fly into exotic hotspots in the Caribbean and Central America to cover coups and revolutions.
I was far from the only young person being given fantastic opportunities, and getting a new job never seemed to be a problem.
Contrast that with now. Nearly a million under-25s are not in work or training, and the State is shelling out £25 in benefits for every £1 spent on helping them into a job.
It is easy to blame this Labour Government for hiking National Insurance and the minimum wage as the cause of this misery, but according to Alan Milburn – who got his first job at 13 as a paper boy – the problem long precedes that and has been festering for 25 years.
The former Health Secretary has been commissioned by the Government to find out what has gone wrong to reduce the welfare bill, and his report is due this week.
He told the BBC: “This is a failure. This is the failure of the welfare system, but it’s a failure, I’m sorry, of the school system, the skills system, the health system.
Business needs a kick up the backside to end the youth unemployment scandal | Getty Images
“We’re not prioritising getting young people into a situation where they can be learning or earning, and instead we’re transporting them into the world of benefits with incalculable costs for their life chances.”
Employers have their part to play, too, by being more willing to give young people a chance in their workplaces instead of ignoring them.
We have a 17-year-old currently sitting at home firing off emails for work and apprenticeships, and not even getting a reply. That is not just appalling bad manners on the part of bosses and HR departments, but dispiriting for him.
His application for an RAF apprenticeship following education in a military school went fine while the uniform side was in charge, but foundered as soon as it got to the private outsourcers.
There were months of delays and no communication about what was required or expected. It was almost as if they wanted to discourage young people from taking the King’s shilling.
It discouraged him, and he is no longer interested in a career as an air engineer. His experience was far from unique. Others from his school had the same difficulties with the Army.
Defence Secretary John Healey needs to urgently get a handle on the recruitment process if Britain is to be kept safe in the future.
And businesses need a kick up the backside to hire the young people who will forge that future.