Ed Miliband To Address Labour Youth Conference After Week Of Internal Feuding

Miliband To Launch Youth Unemployment Scheme

Ed Miliband will launch a "Real Jobs Guarantee" for long-term unemployed young people at his party's youth conference in Warwick, pledging to give a full time, minimum wage job to any young person out of work for more than a year.

However the Labour leader's first public appearance since his pre-Budget news conference on Monday comes after several days of reported in-fighting among the Labour high command, which has seen bitter briefing about an apparent gulf opening up between party officials and the leader's office.

Miliband's youth unemployment scheme would be funded by a new bank bonus tax, which would be channelled into businesses to pay the wages of the young people they take on. Labour say it would apply to about 100,000 people. If it were introduced today it would mean around 10% of those 1m under-25s registered as unemployed would benefit.

His speech comes at the end of a week where the latest job figures showed youth unemployment continuing to climb.

Labour sources say the funding would be for a 25 hour week, so amounting to about £4,000 per worker. They'd be expected to also keep looking for work during this time.

Party sources say it differs from the various programmes the coalition has launched to try to tackle youth unemployment, because it creates a real job, rather than merely subsidising one which may have been created anyway.

Labour has been rocked this week by claims that Miliband's team is trying to launch a power grab at the party's headquarters. The newly-elected general secretary, Iain McNicol, is said to be furious at the creation of new executive officers which in effect push him to the sidelines of the leadership.

The party is moving offices to new premises in Westminster, reportedly to save money. It was confirmed that the party ran at a £1.7m loss last year - adding to existing debts approaching £10m.

Livesey reportedly admitted that Labour "has no strategy" at present, in a sign that the "blank sheet of paper" is still a long way from being filled in.

Miliband's unveiling of the youth unemployment scheme seems, in light of these reports, an attempt to prove that's not the case.

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