(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. opposition Labour Party has urged Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak to focus more effort on protecting young people from the effects of what could be the worst recession in three centuries.
Sunak will on Wednesday unveil the next stage of his program to reduce the damage done to the British economy by coronavirus. The government is trying to restart businesses that have been closed since the country went into lockdown in March, with pubs and restaurants the latest to reopen their doors. But Labour is concerned that the young will be particularly badly hit.
Ed Miliband, Labour's business spokesman, told the Resolution Foundation think tank he hoped the government would recognize “the particular impact on particular groups in this crisis” such as young people. Over one million young people could be out of work by the end of the year, according to research by the Institute for Public Policy Research.
“Governments tend to think that the danger is that they do too much too quickly, when really the danger is doing too little too late,” Miliband said. “I hope we see a response which is equal to the scale of the emergency, particularly facing young people. What you don't want is a kind of abyss between the end of furlough and the job-creation measures in place.”
Among Sunak's announcements on Wednesday will be a 111 million-pound ($140 million) program to triple the number of traineeships for young people, but Labour argues that more is needed.
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Labour's Treasury spokeswoman Anneliese Dodds told Sunak in Parliament on Tuesday the government's current proposal “hardly reflects a focus on jobs, jobs, jobs.” The Chancellor replied that tens of thousands of “good local jobs” would be created through new grants for energy-efficient housing.
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