The chancellor has been speaking to broadcasters this morning – and didn’t rule out a potential 16th U-turn from the government coming down the tracks.<\/p>\n
This centres on the promise from Labour to bring up the minimum wage for 18 to 20 year-olds in line with the rest of the workforce.<\/p>\n
However, there are reports this could be delayed or scrapped due to the impact it is having on youth unemployment.<\/p>\n
Asked if the government is sticking to its manifesto plans on youth wages, Rachel Reeves dodges answering.<\/p>\n
She replies that more people are in work than a year ago, but accepts the challenges around youth unemployment and inactivity.<\/p>\n
The chancellor then repeats the policy position on wanting more apprenticeship places.<\/p>\n
“We value the fact that wages over the last year and a half have risen at a faster rate than prices,” she says.<\/p>\n
“And that is something that didn’t happen under the previous Conservative government, which is what contributed to the terrible cost of living challenges that people face.<\/p>\n
“So we want to get that balance right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“People deserve a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work, but we also need to do more to ensure that young people have those opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Pushed again on if the government could be planning another volte-face, Reeves again doesn’t give a straight answer.<\/p>\n
Instead, she says there are incentives to hire younger people – like the lower apprenticeship wage, and lower national insurance contributions.<\/p>\n
“But we do recognise there are challenges.<\/p>\n
“And that is why we’re extending the number of further education college places, extending the number of apprenticeship places to help young people get the skills and the experience that they need to move into work.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chancellor has been speaking to broadcasters this morning – and didn’t rule out a potential 16th U-turn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-432520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}