Labour chancellor says jobs, not benefits, are best for young people
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Chancellor John Healey announced an expanded Local Apprenticeships Service and pledged fiscal discipline ahead of the budget, while emphasizing employment over welfare for youth.
Labour chancellor John Healey told the party’s annual conference in Liverpool that the most valuable support for young people is a first job with training and a wage, not a benefit payment. He unveiled plans to broaden the Local Apprenticeships Service, allowing any English mayor to access the scheme, which the Treasury says will receive an additional £100 million funded by savings from the Department for Work and Pensions’ fraud-prevention efforts. The service, slated to roll out across England from March 2027, will match young people with employers, including small firms that have not previously taken on trainees.
Healey said the upcoming budget will aim to give families and businesses “a bit of breathing space” and stressed that all government promises will be built on “the rock of fiscal discipline,” with him and Prime Minister Andy Burnham united in meeting fiscal rules. He acknowledged that the fiscal resources available in the 1990s are no longer present and blamed the Conservative Party’s previous tenure for leaving the country spending more on debt than on the Home Office, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice combined.
"The best thing we can offer a young person is not a benefit payment – it’s a first job with training and a wage," Healey said.
Conservative shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith responded that Labour would not support cutting the welfare bill and argued that benefits can become a “trap” for the one-in-eight young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs). He warned that a growing benefits system “does not offer a future.”
"It is not progressive to allow a bigger and bigger benefits bill, and a system which offers an income but doesn’t offer a future," Griffith said.
The chancellor also highlighted other initiatives, including a pledge that Rolls-Royce will invest an additional £300 million in its UK factories and the revival of the Union Learning Fund, a program previously abolished, to help workers acquire skills amid advances in artificial intelligence. He did not specify how the fund would be financed.
Helen Miller, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the BBC that adhering solely to fiscal rules would not be sufficient to reduce debt, describing it as “a promise to get down debt tomorrow.” She suggested that cutting the benefits bill could accelerate debt reduction. Healey said he would not set a timeline for reducing the benefits bill before the next election and noted that lowering the number of NEETs cannot be achieved “overnight.”