The distinction between a commitment of principle and a commitment of timetable is now the central question, and the chancellor has left the second deliberately open.
The Chancellor, John Healey, has declined to guarantee that younger workers will receive the full minimum wage on any fixed timetable, according to a report in The Guardian. Speaking on Sunday, Healey said the government remained committed to eventual equalisation of the rate for younger workers, but framed the question as one of timing rather than principle.
Healey told the BBC that there was "no question about whether or if" Labour would honour its manifesto commitment, adding that "it's a question of when. It's a question of how fast." He said he wanted to examine the trade-offs "that inevitably are there between jobs and wages", and to bring business and the trade unions with the government. He described the position of a million young people written off without any prospect of work as "a moral shame on this nation".
The chancellor also said he was prepared to carry through the spending cuts planned before the next election, some of them more than 2 per cent year-on-year, into a 10-year plan and next year's spending review. The report notes that thinktanks including the Institute for Fiscal Studies have criticised deficit reduction plans that appear to rest on unpopular cuts unlikely to be enacted at a crucial electoral moment. Healey said the budget had set out the work under way to prepare for those spending review decisions.
On welfare, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Emma Reynolds, told GB News that the government would not make "crude cuts" to balance the books, arguing that pushing people into crisis simply moves costs into another part of the public sector. She said proposals would be set out in the new year and legislation brought forward to reduce the welfare bill in what she called a fair and sustainable way. She acknowledged that the prime minister, the chancellor and the whole government accepted the need to bring the welfare bill down.
What the report does not establish is whether the equalisation will happen within this parliament, what rate younger workers would receive, or what conditions Healey attaches to the trade-offs he describes. No figure is given for the cost of equalisation, and no date is offered for the welfare proposals beyond the new year. The distinction between a commitment of principle and a commitment of timetable is now the central question, and the chancellor has left the second deliberately open.
