Labour Pledges Compulsory Jobs Guarantee for 50,000 Long Term Young Unemployed

The Labour Party will pledge to give every young Briton out of work for more than a year a paid "starter job", which they will have to take up or lose their benefits.

Labour Leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls will announce the policy after arguing that thousands of young people still struggling to find work are "not seeing any economic recovery at all".

The announcement sets out for the first time that a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee will be in Labour's manifesto next year for the 2015 General Election and that it will be funded for the whole of the next Parliament if Labour are voted into office – not just one year.

"The government will work with employers to help fund paid work with training for six months," Balls is expected to say.

"It will mean paid starter jobs for more than 50,000 young people who have been left on the dole for over a year by this government."

He will add: "But it will be a tough contract – those who can work will be required to take up the jobs on offer or lose their benefits. A life on benefits will simply not be an option.

"As a country we simply cannot afford to be wasting the talents of thousands of young people and leaving them stuck on the dole for years on end. It's bad for them, it's bad for our economy and it's bad for taxpayers who have to pay the bill."

Labour explained The Compulsory Jobs Guarantee will also apply to adults aged 25 or over claiming Jobseeker's Allowance for two years or more and will be funded for the whole of the next Parliament by a tax on bank bonuses and restricting pensions tax relief for people earning more than £150,000 to the same rate as basic rate taxpayers.

Ed Balls will explain that the bank bonus tax will help to fund the first year of the Compulsory Jobs Guarantee "when there will be a large number of long-term unemployed people to help" and the changes to pensions tax relief will ensure an annual revenue stream to fund the policy throughout the next Parliament.

The announcement comes after the most recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures revealed that there are more than 900,000 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK who are out of work.