Party leader unveils plans including 5,000 guaranteed jobs for unemployed young people in bid to stave off disaster at general election

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Jim Murphy has pledged more than £1bn on a revamped jobs and students package in an effort to woo back hundreds of thousands of former Labour voters who have defected to the Scottish National party.

The Scottish Labour leader unveiled plans for a fund to guarantee work for 5,000 unemployed young people, alongside a £100m project to reverse Scottish government cuts to college funding.

His initiative, launched in a speech to Labour activists and executives at London PR firm Finsbury on Wednesday, came as fresh polling evidence suggested a large majority of Scots believe Labour has lost touch with voters.

With Scottish Labour languishing at 27%, according to a Guardian/ICM poll on Monday, a separate Times/YouGov poll found only 29% of voters felt Labour cared about their concerns and 69% believed it had seriously lost touch with ordinary working people.

As the SNP branded the figures a “reverse honeymoon” for Murphy, the YouGov poll found that 51% of voters felt the party cared for them.

Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said: “The lack of progress being made by Labour shows that it is still paying the price of working hand in glove with the Tories during the referendum, and for lining up with them at Westminster to vote for further austerity.”



With six weeks to go until the election, Scottish Labour is rapidly unrolling a series of new spending commitments in a bid to avoid losing dozens of seats.

Murphy has collected a kitty worth roughly £500m a year to invest in education, jobs and the health service, largely from Scotland’s share of new UK-wide taxes and spending policies proposed by the Labour leader, Ed Miliband.

Scottish Labour’s warchest is expected to swell by £250m a year from a share of the proceeds from Labour’s mansion tax, a new tax on tobacco firms and one on hedge funds. A new Scottish Labour jobs guarantee will be funded with the bankers’ bonus tax, while Miliband’s decision to cut English university tuition fees to £6,000 will see Scotland receive £200m a year as its share of the costs.

Murphy’s spending plans include a £175m Scottish welfare fund – giving jobless 18- and 19-year-olds a £1,600 grant to buy tools, find a training course or start a business – free bus passes for up to 40,000 apprentices, raising student bursaries for the poorest applicants by £1,000 after Scottish government grant reductions in 2012, and guaranteeing 5,000 out-of-work young people a job.

However, these policies are conditional on Labour winning the general election and next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections – a challenging goal given the SNP’s substantial and consistent lead in both UK and Scottish opinion polls.

Murphy asserted these new projects were only possible because Scotland was part of the UK and able to benefit from Labour’s commitment to redistribution.

The greatest impact of the party’s new taxes on mansions, bankers’ bonuses and pensions will be felt in London and the south-east of England.

Murphy added that the SNP would be unable deliver this spending given that Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader, said on Sunday that it would not support tax rises or vote for new taxes in a UK budget.

He told the audience in London: “This is a debate where the gap between socialism and Toryism, between socialism and nationalism, is clear.

“If we can end Tory austerity and invest in our young people, we can replace the pessimism and cynicism of the last few years with hope for the future. That has to be an investment worth making; £1bn is a price worth paying to end long-term unemployment and guarantee opportunities for young Scots.”