Labour’s plan to get Britain working: How we’ll boost employment, deliver better training and secure higher wages

Labour’s plan to get Britain working: How we’ll boost employment, deliver better training and secure higher wages

Labour has a plan to get Britain working, with an ambitious target to get two million people into work and deliver the highest employment levels in the G7.

After 14 years in Downing Street, the Tory record is in:

  • More people are economically inactive and excluded from the labour market
  • Nearly a million young people are not in work or learning
  • The cost of worklessness is rising fast
  • Wages are flat, workplace insecurity goes unaddressed, and employment support has been stripped back

Under the Tories, the Department for Work and Pensions has lost its focus on work. The DWP has stopped being the department for increasing employment, spreading opportunity or powering the economy.

The 2024 General Election provides a choice: more of the same under Rishi Sunak after 14 years of the Conservatives, or a changed Labour Party with Keir Starmer, back in the service of working people.

With Labour, the DWP would decisively refocus on work – with action to drive higher engagement, higher employment and higher earnings – to boost living standards, power the economy and improve the public finances.

Labour will target an increase in the employment rate from 75% to 80%, which would be the highest in the G7 and mean over two million more people in work across the UK.

Labour’s Back to Work Plan

As part of Labour’s first step to deliver economic stability, Keir Starmer will introduce a major programme of reform to support more people into work to bring the benefits bill down, including:

  1. A new combined national jobs and careers service – bringing together jobcentreplus and the careers service – to get more people into work and to support those seeking better opportunities with the means to find better paid work.
  2. New local plans for work, health and skills support to get more people with health conditions and disabilities into work, with devolved funding and leadership from Mayors and local areas.
  3. A youth guarantee that will mean opportunities for training, an apprenticeship or help to find work for all young people aged 18- 21 years old, to prevent young people becoming excluded from the world of work at a young age. 

A Labour government will also:

  • Prevent young people from falling out of education, employment and training before 18, by delivering 1,000 new careers advisers in schools, alongside good quality work experience, and providing specialist mental health support in every school.
  • Reform the benefit system so that it encourages work, including giving disabled people the confidence to try out a job without the fear of an immediate benefit reassessment if it doesn’t work out.
  • Make work pay by reforming Statutory Sick Pay, making flexible work the default, and introducing mandatory disability pay gap reporting for large firms.