Union anger as Labour minister indicates no living wage for over-18s before poll

Union leaders have voiced deep concern over suggestions that Labour may delay extending the full national living wage to workers aged 18 and over until after the next election, fuelling a growing internal battle over the party’s manifesto commitment.

Joanne Thomas, general secretary of the shopworkers union Usdaw, said she was “deeply concerned by voices within the government suggesting that Labour’s manifesto commitment to end minimum wage rip-off youth rates should not be delivered in full”. She insisted the policy must be delivered within the lifetime of this parliament, adding that although the Low Pay Commission had been tasked with equalising the over-18s rate and some progress had been made, “legally allowing them to be paid less undermines their position”.

Earlier, Maryam Eslamdoust, general secretary of the TSSA transport union, warned that dropping the pledge before the next election would be “disastrous”, accusing the government of potentially betraying young workers who are “far too often exploited as a source of cheap labour”. She argued that at a time of government unpopularity, abandoning such a popular policy would be a major error and called the removal of discriminatory age bands “a concrete step towards easing the cost of living crisis for millions of younger workers”.

The Trades Union Congress has also said that cutting the minimum wage for young workers would be a mistake, setting the scene for a fierce Labour internal conflict over the manifesto promise.

Timeline dispute over manifesto pledge

The row centres on how quickly Labour intends to act on its 2024 manifesto, which stated: “Labour will also remove the discriminatory age bands, so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage, delivering a pay rise to hundreds of thousands of workers across the UK.”

Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, indicated in a BBC Today programme interview that the party is not committed to equalising the rates by the end of this parliament. When presenter Justin Webb put it to Bell that people understood the pledge as meaning within the current term, Bell replied: “No, that’s not what it says in our manifesto, Justin. But it’s an understandable mistake. It’s a long document.”

Bell confirmed the government is “absolutely committed” to equalising the rates but said the manifesto “did not set the timeline”, adding that the process would rely on independent advice from the Low Pay Commission to avoid harming employment levels. He noted that previous increases in the minimum wage for young people had not been shown to affect employment, but that it remained right to keep monitoring the evidence.

The dispute has been further inflamed by Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister, who suggested the government should drop its commitment to paying all over-18s the national living wage as part of a major report on young people not in education, employment or training (Neets). His final report, due in the autumn, is expected to propose changes to the minimum wage system to encourage firms to hire young people.

Housing debate: Burnham versus Blair and centre-right critics

Separately, the Labour party’s direction has been debated through a series of responses to a recent essay by former prime minister Tony Blair. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and a Labour candidate in Makerfield, published his own article in the Times arguing that Blair’s analysis had a “gaping omission” – the fall in living standards since the 2008 financial crash, which he called the “single biggest driver of the turmoil in politics”.

Burnham doubled down on his earlier claim that Labour governments, including Blair’s, had failed to break from the Thatcherite direction. He pointed to the failure to reform right-to-buy and restore public housing stock as the root cause of today’s housing crisis, and criticised acceptance of deregulation and privatisation of essential services for the cost-of-living crisis. “Trickle-down economics did not in the end trickle down very much at all,” he wrote.

Burnham presented his mayoral record in Greater Manchester as an alternative model, emphasising interventionism and a “place-first” approach that contrasts with what he called Westminster’s “point-scoring”.

His views on housing drew a sharp rebuttal from Robert Colvile, the outgoing head of the Conservative thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies. Colvile said Burnham’s comments were “completely wrong”, arguing that Manchester’s housing success came from “prioritising maximum private building over number of subsidised units”. He quoted Richard Leese, the former Labour leader of Manchester City Council, who in 2021 defended the council’s approach, saying that imposing a 20 per cent affordability target would have resulted in “no housing at all, zero”.

Reform UK candidate controversy

Labour has also criticised Reform UK over its selection of Robert Kenyon as its candidate for Makerfield, after the party admitted it knew about his past social media posts. The posts – reported in recent days – included sexist, anti-migrant, vaccine-sceptic, pro-Russia and anti-abortion content, as well as a comment supportive of a sexually explicit remark about Carol Vorderman and a post blaming Hillary Clinton for the Manchester Arena bombing.

A Reform UK spokesperson told Politico that Kenyon “declared his accounts during the vetting process as everyone is expected to” and that the party “fully backed him”.

Anna Turley, Labour’s chair, called it “astonishing” that Reform admitted prior knowledge, and demanded that Nigel Farage explain why he was “happy to put forward a candidate who has made vile degrading comments about women, multiple homophobic posts and spread dangerous false narratives about the Manchester Arena bombing”.

Kenyon defended his record in an interview with the Manchester Evening News, saying: “I’m not a polished politician. I am rough around the edges. I have made mistakes in my life.” Regarding the Vorderman comment, he described it as “a crude attempt at a joke to probably about 50 followers” and said no offence was meant. When asked if he would apologise directly to Vorderman, he replied: “If you go into any building site in the area or any public barracks, I think you’d hear a hundred times worse said.”

Separately, Labour reported the alleged hacking of Nigel Farage’s phone to police and government cybersecurity officials after Reform UK failed to do so itself.

Starmer’s essay: a defence and a call for bolder action

Keir Starmer used his Substack blog late last night to publish a lengthy response to Tony Blair’s essay, defending his government’s record while acknowledging mistakes and calling for a bigger, bolder response on growth, defence, Europe, energy and opportunity.

Starmer said the “stark” message from the local election results meant the government “needs not just to be better, but also to be bolder”. He argued that Blair’s analysis ignored the way growing inequality, the financial crash and austerity had fuelled populism. “Populism cannot be ‘bought off’ with higher growth and old school redistribution,” Starmer wrote, suggesting a new economic settlement was needed that gives working people “an economy that they have a stake in”.

He conceded that the government had made mistakes – “most obviously when setting the level at which to means test the winter fuel payment” – and that the “mood music in the early part of the government was too negative”. But he insisted that on the “big political choices” he had been right, and that government could not be judged as a “to-do list” but rather as acting on every major problem simultaneously.

Starmer also joined Nato leaders in condemning a Russian drone attack that hit an apartment building in Romania, issuing a statement on social media.

Defence delays, fraud risks and other developments

The government is facing criticism over the continued absence of a date for the long-awaited defence investment plan (DIP), a year after the strategic defence review that identified its requirements. Whitehall officials concede the plan has not been signed off because it has not been decided how to fund an £18bn spending uplift, with difficult “trade-offs” involved. Nato officials have made clear the DIP must come in time for their summit in Ankara on 7 July, or risk raising “big questions about Britain’s credibility”. Downing Street officials insist they will not be “boxed in by supposed deadlines”.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey called the situation “shambolic and dangerous”, urging ministers to publish the DIP immediately.

Meanwhile, the Commons public accounts committee published a report warning that the Ministry of Defence is not properly addressing the risk of losing £1.5bn a year through fraud. The committee said the MoD had recouped on average just 48p for every £1 spent tackling fraud over the past four years, well below the government’s expectation of saving £3 for every £1 spent. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said there must be a “radical change of culture” within the MoD.

An MoD spokesperson responded that the figures “primarily relate to a period under the previous government” and that the department is turning the situation around, citing savings of £1.34 for every £1 spent last year.

Ministers are also proposing new laws to crack down on damage to undersea cables amid “hostile activity by Russia”. Tougher penalties for ship owners and operators who recklessly damage underwater infrastructure will be set out in a white paper later this year, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said. Telecoms minister Liz Lloyd told the Royal United Services Institute that the government would consult on replacing 140-year-old legislation to make the law clearer, adding: “As hostile activity by Russia and others grows, protecting these cables matters more than ever.”

In a separate development, Shabana Mahmood’s plan to house more asylum seekers in former army barracks faces a major hurdle after the high court ruled that a policy forcing torture victims to share rooms was unlawful.

Tom Watson, the former Labour deputy leader, announced he is on leave of absence from the House of Lords for health reasons after his prostate cancer returned earlier this year. He said initial tests suggest the cancer has gone, but he will not know for certain until further tests in the summer.

On the jobs front, the government is launching 300,000 new work experience and training placements for young people over the next three years, backed by major employers including Manchester and Gatwick airports. The placements – announced by work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden – come a day after figures confirmed the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training (Neets) rose to more than a million. Alan Milburn, who led a review into the issue, said lack of work experience is “the single most-cited barrier to work amongst young people” and that the “first rung of the career ladder has thinned” for many.