The European country with almost no youth unemployment - and what the UK can copy

How do you solve a problem like youth unemployment, which has hit its highest level in Britain since 2013?

The latest data shows that there are now more than 1 million 16-24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) across the UK.

Welfare Secretary Pat McFadden is looking across the North Sea to the Netherlands for solutions, where the NEET rate is the lowest in Europe at 4.1 per cent. This is less than a third of the UK’s rate, which stands at 13.5 per cent.

While visiting Dutch construction apprentices on a building site, McFadden noted that if Britain’s NEET rate mirrored the Dutch rate, 600,000 more young adults would be in work.

Over coffee and stroopwafels, 21-year-old Loet van Berkel told the cabinet minister about his apprenticeship as a groundworker at the major Dutch construction company BAM.