UK chancellor pledges help for jobless youths

The United Kingdom's finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, told delegates at the annual Labour Party conference on Monday that young people facing long-term unemployment will be guaranteed paid work, and could lose their welfare benefits if they refuse jobs.

In a speech that heavily emphasized traditional Labour Party heartlands, with references to shipbuilding and steelworkers, Reeves sought to demonstrate the government's commitment to working-class industrial communities, addressing internal critics who claim the party has drifted from its core values.

She presented the government's vision of a society built on "contribution", arguing it must be founded on "our duty for each other" and "hard work matched by fair reward", while revealing details of a "youth guarantee" initiative designed to tackle joblessness.

According to the Office for National Statistics, one person in eight in the UK aged 16 to 24 is currently not in education, work, or training.

Reeves said: "We won't leave a generation of young people to languish without prospects — denied the dignity, the security, and the ladders of opportunity that good work provides."

She said the pledge is "nothing less than the abolition of long-term youth unemployment".

The chancellor said every young person would be guaranteed either a place in a college for studies, an apprenticeship to help them learn a trade, or one-to-one support to find a job, subsidized by the government. Any young person out of work for 18 months will be given a paid work placement, she added.

Reeves also announced support measures for British steelmaking and shipbuilding alongside plans for a "hit squad" of investigators to pursue fraudsters, who illegitimately claimed taxpayer money through business support programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of wider education initiatives, the chancellor further pledged to establish libraries across England's primary school network, addressing a significant gap where one state primary school in every seven — a total of approximately 1,700 schools — lacks library facilities, with the shortage more acute in disadvantaged areas where the ratio rises to one in four.

Reeves defended the Labour Party's record after 15 months in government and highlighted achievements it had made, though she admitted there was "more to do".

The chancellor faces the prospect of having to find up to 30 billion pounds ($40.3 billion) in tax rises or spending cuts in her November budget if, as expected, the Office for Budget Responsibility reduces its forecast for future productivity growth to match the consensus of other experts.

The government's emphasis on "contribution" at the conference emerged as party insiders expressed concerns about the need to present voters with a more defined governmental direction, reported The Guardian newspaper.

In a BBC interview on Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer expressed his aspiration that, following the conference, the public "can't say they don't know what we stand for, what this government is trying to achieve".