Labour\u2019s 2024 manifesto committed to closing the gap on pay for 18- to 20-year-olds, but last week\u2019s budget brought in a blanket increase of 3.9%.<\/p>\n
The chancellor told the BBC he would \u2018continue to make trade-offs between jobs and wages\u2019 amid fears about youth unemployment. Photograph: Jeff Overs\/PA<\/p>\n
Some senior MPs \u2013 including the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, while she was out of government \u2013 have previously expressed concern at the slow pace of the equalisation. In June, Rayner warned the government it must deliver<\/a> on the promise.<\/p>\n Healey said the government was still committed to the eventual equalisation. \u201cI legislated as a new MP for the national minimum wage when we first brought it in [in 1998], and so we\u2019re going to have to continue to make those trade-offs between jobs and wages,\u201d Healey said. But he denied Labour would break its manifesto commitment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no question about whether or if. It\u2019s a question of when. It\u2019s a question of how fast. And I want to make sure that we can look hard at those trade-offs that inevitably are there between jobs and wages.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to take business, I want to take trade unions with me, and with the government, because together we have to get into what at the moment is a moral shame on this nation, a million youngsters written off, without any prospect of being helped into work and making a contribution to this country for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Healey also told the BBC he was prepared to keep the spending cuts \u2013 some more than 2% year-on-year \u2013 planned for before the next election in the last spending review.<\/p>\n Some thinktanks, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies, have criticised how the government\u2019s deficit reduction plans seem predicated on making unpopular cuts that are unlikely to be enacted at a crucial electoral moment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will carry that through to the 10-year plan and the spending review next year,\u201d Healey said. \u201cBut in the budget I also set out the ways that we\u2019re preparing and the work we\u2019ve got under way to prepare for those spending review decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n But Haldane, the former Bank of England economist who advised Burnham in the summer before he became prime minister, said there was a \u201cfierce urgency\u201d to get spending and borrowing in better shape.<\/p>\n
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