Events | 2009.08.28
Brown to press firms on jobs for young people
• PM challenges business to help 18- to 24-year-olds
• Party leaders back to work with eye on 6 May 2010
Gordon Brown will mark the start of the countdown to the general election by challenging British businesses next week to do more to help young people find work.
In his first major appearance on the domestic stage since his summer holiday, Brown will make clear that jobs and the economy are his priority when he calls on businesses to focus attention on the 18 to 24 age group.
Brown will travel out of London on Wednesday for the autumn launch of Backing Young Britain, the government\'s initiative to encourage business to "play a part" in ensuring that young people do not join the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
The prime minister will ask businesses to follow the example of a series of high-profile companies, attending the event on Wednesday, that have signed up to a series of commitments. First launched in July, these ask businesses to offer voluntary places for school and university leavers; to consider young people for a job through a work trial; and to bid for help from the future jobs fund, which is sponsoring 100,000 jobs.
One Downing Street source said: "Next week will have an economic focus. The prime minister\'s first meetings on Tuesday morning will be about the economy; he will be maintaining the momentum that will be vital to moving the UK out of recession."
The leaders of the three main parties will all be back at work on Tuesday as they make preparations for the general election, which is likely to be held on 6 May 2010, the same day as the local elections.
Brown is pinning his hopes of denting the Tories\' poll lead on two core points. First, that Labour took the right action at the height of the recession, by bringing forward capital spending and boosting the economy with a fiscal stimulus, while the Tories adopted what the FT dubbed a "strangely pre-Keynesian" approach by opposing the extra spending.
Second, that the Tories have a superficial commitment to public services and are failing to draw up substantive economic and industrial policies to help Britain recover from the recession. One source said one of Labour\'s main challenges to David Cameron would be: "Do the Tories have a genuine commitment to public services or would they make ideological and swingeing cuts?"
Ministers believe that Labour is now on stronger ground to take the fight to the Tories because Brown has finally abandoned his pre-holiday mantra that voters will face a choice at the election between "Labour investment and Tory cuts". With Britain facing the toughest spending round in a generation, Brown has accepted that Labour will have to acknowledge there will be spending restraint.
Labour is planning to frame the debate between compassionate – and sensible – cuts under Brown or ideologically driven cuts under Cameron as the Tories make reducing Britain\'s fiscal deficit their priority. "We will have to make sure the public finances are sustainable in the long term and that will include making choices and setting out our priorities," one government source said.
But Brown was warned today of a rebellion when backbenchers spoke out against plans to remove the right of low earners to keep up to £15 a week of their housing allowance if they pay rent at a lower level than the maximum benefit.
Frank Field, the former welfare reform minister, told the BBC: "I think there will be a natural revolt on Labour benches if the government tries to push this reform through … I don\'t think any Labour backbenchers are going to be in the mood to allow the first of these cuts to fall on people who are at the bottom of the pile."
Cameron will also be back at work from Tuesday after what he believes was a successful summer despite a hiccup over the NHS and the claim by shadow cabinet member Alan Duncan that MPs now live on "rations". The Tory leader was irritated when the MEP for South-east England, Dan Hannan, described the NHS as a "60-year-old mistake" but believes the intervention ended up helping the party as he was able to flag up his commitment to the health service. This appeared to be borne out by this week\'s Guardian/ICM poll, which showed a narrowing of Labour\'s lead on the NHS.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]rdon-brown-business-young-jobs
