Ed Miliband: Benefits Should Be Taken Away If Young Refuse Work

Posted: 16/03/2012 13:58 Updated: 16/03/2012 13:58   PA

Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for long-term unemployed young people to be guaranteed a job but stripped of benefits if they refuse the offer.

All under-25s out of work for more than one year would be given paid employment, funded by a bank bonus tax, for six months, under Labour plans.

The scheme would bring together government and business to create opportunities for youngsters but, in return, they would have a responsibility to seize those chances.

Announcing Labour's "real jobs guarantee", he criticised the Government's Work Programme for allowing the number of young people without jobs for more than six months to double over the past year.

"No young person should be left languishing on the dole for a year, two years, three years," he said in a speech to Labour's Youth Conference on Jobs at Warwick University.

"It is not the Britain I believe in, it is not the Britain you believe in, and it is not the Britain we would have under a Labour government.

"And that's why my ambition is this - to conquer long-term youth unemployment.

"The first line of a Labour Budget would be a tax on bank bonuses to get young people into work.

"To business we say: we'll pay the wages, if you provide the training. To young people we say: if you're out of work for a year we'll guarantee you the opportunity to work.

"Responsibility on the part of government to give every young person a chance, responsibility on business to make that chance real, and responsibility on the part of young people to take that chance.

"Saying no is not an option."

Mr Miliband insisted Labour's plan went much further than the Government's youth contract, which offers a subsidy to employers hiring young people.

It is also stronger than the previous Labour government's Future Jobs Fund, which offered six months of work to the long-term jobless, as the new scheme will include a training requirement, according to aides.

Under the scheme the Government would pay a full wage directly to business to cover 25 hours of work each week at the minimum wage, the equivalent of £4,000 per job.

In return, employers would be expected to train the young person for a minimum of 10 hours a week.

Young people who turn down the work or are sacked would face sanctions, including temporary withdrawal of benefit payments.

Lashing out at the coalition's record on youth unemployment, which has reached more than one million, he accused the Government of cutting opportunities for young people.

He said: "What is their solution? A Work Programme which does not guarantee work. A jobs programme scheme from this Government which does not offer jobs.

"Work experience of course has a role to play in helping people into work. But work experience is not the same as a real job. It cannot be the summit of our ambitions. There is only one solution to a jobs crisis - jobs."

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Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for long-term unemployed young people to be guaranteed a job but stripped of benefits if they refuse the offer. All under-25s out of work for more than one year...
Labour leader Ed Miliband has called for long-term unemployed young people to be guaranteed a job but stripped of benefits if they refuse the offer. All under-25s out of work for more than one year...
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SecularAdvocate
Media Watcher
10:02 AM on 03/19/2012
How about this for a plan - we expand our hours of business and reduce our hours spent working. Create more jobs and more leisure time for everyone.

For all our labour saving devices, we work as much now as we ever did. We give the profit from those labour saving devices to the rich, and we collect up all the leisure time they've won us and force it on the young and disadvantaged, and then despise them for having it.

The Labour party are forever seeking to be Tory lite.

We need a new opposition with some genuinely radical ideas.

And the nearest thing we've got to one is the Scots Nats.

They are the only trouble on Cameron's horizon. Labour is pitifully ineffectual.
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janno000
08:31 PM on 03/18/2012
Milliband is unfortunately so out of touch with what life is like on benefits, as are a lot of posters on here. Benefits are not a free gift given by the taxpayer, and most people on benefits WANT to work but there are NO jobs. I just hope those of you who think life on benefits is easy end up on them soon, mind you I don't just hope that, I know that.
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Yorksgal
'Conservative Christian' is a complete oxymoron.
04:35 PM on 03/17/2012
Moronic twerp - does he have jobs coming out of his wahzoo?

99.9% of the people want to work - the other .01% go for labor leader. There are not enough jobs out there.

And coming up with the plan that people will intern and work 60+ hours does not count - why would employers then hire these people, when they know they can get more "volunteers" for nothing.
04:10 PM on 03/17/2012
Never ever trust this man.
03:11 PM on 03/17/2012
Great. Just what young people without hope need to hear. Another neo fascist politician thinking his privilege is just down to his own brilliance.
How dare these people pick on the vulnerable and victims of inequality in society. How dare they use the despair and hopelessness in communities that politicians have fostered and encouraged through their own greed and dishonesty.
Not everyone wants to work in poundland or starbucks mr.millisevertes.
We should make it a rule that politicians are made to live in the most deprived communities and if they want to start illegal and unjust wars - let them send their own children to fight. Otherwise it ain't happening.
Milliband is just another thatcherite neo conservative. I'd think twice about letting him drive a minibus - never mind running down a country.
These people are getting more and more extreme and yet everyone seems to think that's ok.
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Blackwatch176
One of billions at Planeta Tierra / Planet Earth
09:59 AM on 03/17/2012
Typical political posturing from a weak leader with no idea of which direction to take the party for fear their Union masters might withhold funding
11:08 AM on 03/17/2012
Agreed, but where were the unions when labour were flooding the country with a cheap foreign workforce?
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Blackwatch176
One of billions at Planeta Tierra / Planet Earth
08:42 AM on 03/18/2012
Collecting the dues off their members and Living it up like the Champagne Socialists a lot of the Union leaders are. They did nothing to help me and my fellow workers when my former company closed our pension scheme in the 90s, but they enjoyed the diner invitations from the directors of the company before and after the scheme was closed.
northern git
fed up with all the political crap in life
08:37 AM on 03/17/2012
this latest outpouring of Milli looks like another case of trying to steal the tories clothes, just as Bliar and Brown did in 1995/6.
Both parties are devoid of credible ideas for stimulating youth employment.
Big companies only want youth for cheap labour, while universities turn out young people too qualified for the jobs going, at least when they are qualified in proper useful relevant subjects.
The economy needs stimulating for the ordinary person as they, when they have money in their pockets, as they are the ones that will spend and money circulates. everyone gains!
the small businesses will then thrive and the big money stops moving upward in the social and financial ladder. if they government uses the money in ciculation the jobs will follow.

Cut the taxes therefore for lower earners and increase taxes for the higher earners, they don't spend in the areas that will help the economy.

Jobs WILL follow for youth and all
08:37 AM on 03/17/2012
This idiot couldnt stick lego bricks together,never mind lead a political party
08:18 AM on 03/17/2012
New Labour under REd Milibands previous idols Phoney Bliar and Incapability Brown created millions of NON JOBS the majority of which the electorate are still paying for to this day.

Noe REd Miliband wants to create even more no doubt to produce such things as left handed screwdrivers and metric umbrellas . . . . . . . . .
08:10 AM on 03/17/2012
Well well well the penny has finally dropped! Whilst the rest of the hardworking population have been screaming for this for years Ed suddenly realises he needs to do something very radical like making people work for their money. The labour diehards must be furious. I often wondered how any of them would feel if things were taken down to an individual level and each working family including Ed Milliband's were ordered to pay all the bills for a non working one.
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Stefan Davey
01:34 PM on 03/17/2012
The fact of the matter, we cannot afford a welfare state as it's currently is. I'm glad that the question that no politician dare to ask previously is now in the public domain.
02:57 PM on 03/17/2012
Typical Wastemonster greed, Millie. Put down the other party never mind the good of the UK. Here's a good idea for the dire situation of today. Ditch party politics and look at the big picture of dire straits and a current debt of over £3 Trillion. With a massive divide between the very rich and the very poor with rich getting richer off the backs of the very poor. The ONLY way forward is more even distribition of wealth, A flat tax rate, NO evasions and no complexity. A rate around 20% with no exception. It will trim the Civil Service, put accountants on the dole, stop tax evasion and government fiddling around. The City will learn there is no easy salery+B-I-G Bonus payments and the way to riches is by creating more manufacturing jobs. Just now the far too rich can only get rich, and stay rich, by making the poor pay. Hence welfare cuts to force the old, sick & didsabled into non-existant jobs. With massive unemployment among the young, able bodied, people, who is going to employ the old, sick and disabled? Are we to now starve them to death or die from cold and neglect? No wonder the Scots are going independent.
05:12 PM on 03/17/2012
If you put your head in the sand you'll never see anything!
07:24 AM on 03/17/2012
Benefit shouldn't be free full stop. They should do something to qualify other than not work. Brush, black sack and clean the street should be a minimum. It shows willing and respect for your area / country. How can eastern Europeans travel hundreds of miles to find and hold a job. We've become to selective and a lot think they're to good to do the lower paid jobs because the disposable income from benefits are easier
northern git
fed up with all the political crap in life
08:54 AM on 03/17/2012
Of course benefits should not be free

hows about putting the unemployed and unemployable into the army and deploying them to Afghanistan replacing the trops already there
03:19 PM on 03/17/2012
Aye! How about it? Like they are cutting benefits from OAPs, long term sick, disabled people and unmarried mothers. Do you really think these are great candidates to join the armed forces? Just how many of those millions of unemployed are actually workshy? There ARE no jobs for these people. It's a scam to fool the brainless into demonising many quite decent people who have done nothing wrong but just cannot get a job. It could be YOU tomorrow.
03:14 PM on 03/17/2012
Total lack of clear thought there, John Boy 1. Do you imagine there are available jobs doing just what you suggest? As to the Eastern Europeans coming for such jobs that is because they work for lower wages as their home cost of living is lower. They often live here in hellish conditions to be able to send a little home. The net result of making jobless people work for dole in a vast unemployment situation is to drive down already low wages. The problem is that there is a far too large gap between the very rich and the very poor. At the moment the rich are still getting richer by making the unemployed, old, sick and disabled pay. Yet nothing is done to restrict the very rich. The UK has the fourth largest gap between the rich and poor in the World. We need to introduce a flat rate tax with no way to avoid tax. Say 20%. This would throw lots of civil servants out of work, lots of accountants too, and stop the very rich getting richer by financial trickery. They would either have to create real jobs or ship out, (and good riddance to those who go). When a nurse gets less than a money changer we need a rethink.
03:33 PM on 03/17/2012
1. Yes I do think there are jobs in cleaning the streets for your benefits, it's better than giving money for nothing. why should we give money to people for nothing.
2. I already agree that eastern Europeans work for the low wage jobs. Job seekers allowances in less than these wages but easy and free. You only have to attend an appointment every two weeks. There home cost of living is less mainly because they make sacrifices. Some unemployed aren't making sacrifices. I don't have any understanding like yourself of wealth gaps or how to solve any problem like that. I just, like a lot of hard working class people, are sick of giving money to unemployed whom do nothing when we are working fifty hour weeks. That's the clarity in my thought.
02:03 PM on 03/18/2012
I'll ask it as simple as possible. Why should we give benefits for free. You refuse to answer and keep going on about the rich. Why should someone get money for nothing.
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GingerlyColors
No will to change it, no right to criticize it
07:09 AM on 03/17/2012
Haven't we heard that all before, not just from Labour but from the Tories as well.
03:27 PM on 03/17/2012
Yes indeed we have. They are all, Red/Yellow and Blue Tory Rainbow Alliance. These guys are career politicos. They come, mainly, from the same background, go to the same public schools, universities and then choose a party to become an intern for some party hack. Then pushed, (over the heads of a constituence association), as a candidate into a safe seat as a candidate and on and up to a head of a ministry. Then, with their pockets well lined, on to a skunk tipped robe and lordship in the best club in London.
03:02 AM on 03/17/2012
Expect more of this from Milliband. As ever the response of a politician when the penny drops that they are failing is to drip us with a bunch of phoney initiatives designed for nothing more than grabbing our attention. This is a sure sign of desperation.
northern git
fed up with all the political crap in life
07:33 AM on 03/17/2012
yup

in one ear and out the other
08:14 AM on 03/17/2012
In one ear and stays there as that what happens in the vacuum between his ears!
11:59 PM on 03/16/2012
And where are all these jobs coming from?
10:50 PM on 03/16/2012
Gee, almost as good a wage suppression tactic as turning a blind eye to whole sectors being taken over by illegal immigrants willing to work for less than minimum wage or be willing to be paid "under the table". Is this far from the government "conscripting" workers? Didn't we already try that whole nobles/serf deal once upon a time? Oh yes, by all means, let's pay the employers and punish the workers if they aren't satisfactorily compliant. The US and UK both helped companies with tax schemes that facilitated the move of jobs out of their countries. "good for the economy" and "bottom line" and all that rot. What a bout a little economic parity for a country based on a wider and more shared "economic benefit". All wealth ultimately derives from labor of one sort or another. How about factoring that in to the equation with a little more attention and credit for the actual workers in all of these "companies" and "industries" that get government support. why is it patriotic to support them as they ship their jobs off elsewhere and considered to be "charity" or "philanthropy" to reward or base policies upon the retention, creation and expansion of jobs in our own countries?
northern git
fed up with all the political crap in life
11:14 PM on 03/16/2012
forget the bottom rungs of the industrial aldder

look at the greed at the top

to get the bottom line they want the investors dont give a damn about the minions

the employees are cannon fodder for profit (aka GREED)