LABOUR IN BRIGHTON: Brown to unveil pounds 1.4bn youth jobs package

Labour will today make a firm commitment to earmark pounds 1.4bn for youth job creation and training, while setting its face against shopping lists of "irresponsible" spending commitments.

Disclosing a four-pronged package of measures for the under-25s on the conference's opening day, Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, will tell delegates that the "fate of this generation of Thatcher's children - now Major's young unemployed - is a human tragedy on a colossal scale that affects millions of families. Our objective is nothing less than the abolition of youth unemployment."

The package to help 620,000 unemployed people aged 18-24 will form a manifesto commitment at the next general election. Cash from the one-off "windfall tax" on the private utilities would be used to help the "forgotten generation" of jobless young people find work, Mr Brown told BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme yesterday.

Private-sector employers would be offered a pounds 60-a-week rebate for six months for each person taken on full time under the age of 25 and unemployed for six months - on condition they guarantee one day off a week to study for National Vocational Qualifications.

For non-profit voluntary sector jobs, young people would be allowed to keep their welfare benefits, averaging pounds 55 a week plus pounds 20, again on condition that they are allowed one day a week day-release for NVQ study. Graduates would be exempted from NVQ work. Alternatively, young people who signed up for Labour's planned environment taskforce would be allowed to keep their benefits plus pounds 20, again subject to the day-release requirement.

Under the fourth avenue, Labour would relax the so-called 16-hour rule to enable young people following approved full-time training course to keep their benefits.

But firing a warning shot across the bows of his party's left wing, and in a rebuff to the Liberal Democrats, Mr Brown will deliver one of the strongest denunciations yet of Labour's "tax and spend" image. "The real economic issue facing Britain is not the Tory 1p down or the Liberal 1p up. The real economic issue that concerns millions is how to end job insecurity," Mr Brown will say during the debate on the party's economic policy paper, A New Economic Future for Britain.

"I say to those who propose that we tax, spend and borrow, it is because I care not just about our responsibility to one another but our responsibility to future generations that we we build our future on the hard foundations of a just and efficient economy. Under a Labour government there will be no inflationary boom, no massaging of figures, no quick fixes, no short cuts, no pay explosions, and no shopping lists of irresponsible commitment."

Under the new proposals, 700,000 offers of employment and training would have to be made during the first year to cope with the 305,000 young people already unemployed for more than six months and the 400,000 who would join them.

Labour economists say the scheme would cost pounds 1bn in the first year and pounds 400m in the second but would reap savings by the end of the Parliament. The party estimates that the one-off levy on the privatised industries would produce between pounds 2.5bn and pounds 3bn of revenue.

t John Prescott, Labour's deputy leader, and Mr Brown, emphasised their belief in universal benefits yesterday. Mr Brown said child benefit could be taxed, while Mr Prescott said he would fight for universal benefits but acknowledged the possibility of taxation.