Miliband proposes new benefits system for young jobless

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Labour leader Ed Miliband has proposed planned significant reforms to the benefits system for young adults, replacing jobless allowance with only those individuals to get entitled for the benefits  who will sign up for training courses or further education to enhance their skills.

Under the new Labour policy, the 18-21 year olds will only get the ‘youth allowance’ if they already have the skills to undertake job.

Other modifications will include the increase of Jobseekers’ Allowance from £71 to £100 a week with the condition to the period of employment needed to qualify for that will also extend from two to five years.

Also the unemployed young people will also lose entitlement to the benefits if their parents earn more than £42,000 a year. 

The initiative comes as Mr Miliband insisted he could “defy the odds” by winning the general election 2015 after a recent poll suggests that the Labour leader’s ratings have been lagging significantly behind those of Prime Minister David Cameron, while the voters believe his brother David would make a better prime minister.

In a speech to the IPPR think-tank, Mr Miliband has promised “big changes, not big spending”.

He has said: “We can’t just hope to make do and mend and we can’t just borrow and spend money to paper over the cracks.”

Talking about the proposed youth allowance, the Labour leader has said: “It is a principle deeply felt by the British people that people should get something back for all they have put in and not get something for nothing.

“The next Labour government will change the way JSA operates to make sure that someone who has been working for years and years and paying in to the system gets more help if they lose their job than someone who has been working for just a couple of years.

“And we will pay for it not by spending more money in the social security system overall, but by extending the length of time people need to have worked to qualify.”

He has added: “A Labour government will get young people to sign up for training, not sign on for benefits” by providing them with the opportunities to through reshaping “the country’s social security system so that it does everything it can to get people into decent jobs and the world of work.”

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