Brown pledges to build Britain's future
Updated on 29 June 2009
The prime minister announces reforms to boost employment for young people and give greater guarantees for public service standards.
Unveiling the government's legislative plans for the year to the next election, Gordon Brown told the Commons the government would spend £1bn to create 100,000 jobs for young people and another 50,000 in areas of high unemployment.
Promising not to "walk away from the British people during difficult times", he said an energy bill would support up to four commercial-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration plants.
There would be a £150m "innovation fund" for biotechnology, life sciences, low-carbon technologies and advanced technologies, that would lever up £1bn in private sector investment.
The prime minister said the government would also treble investment in housing to £2.1bn.
Mr Brown said as the government sought to move the economy out of recession it was setting out steps to support growth and jobs.
"In the last two recessions tens of thousands of young people were written off to become a generation lost to work - a mistake this government will not repeat."
Starting from January every young person under 25 unemployed for a year or more will receive a guaranteed job, work experience or training place.
He said £1bn was being set aside for the future that will provide 100,000 jobs for young people, with another 50,000 in areas of high unemployment.
Liam Byrne, the chief secretary to the treasury spoke to Jon Snow about how the new initiatives would be funded in the current downturn.
"The package that we set out today has very clear costs attached to it. The way in which it is being funded are by some very difficult decisions and priorities. Just over half of the resources come from underspends which have been created in departments by a very strong management of programmes," he said.
In response to how this initiative would deal with the government's indebtedness Mr Byrne
said, "Alistair Darling set that out very clearly in the budget and what he said is that if we face up to some tough decisions on tax, which we did, and if we face up to tough decisions on efficiencies, which we did… we can grow day to day spending and half the deficit over five years.
"The package that we set out today…is a package that has involved difficult decisions about where money is spent but it all fits within that overall 'ceiling' of public expenditure."
In response to a question on whether money for the new initiative would come from projects such as Trident or ID cards Mr Byrne said, "in terms of the broad public spending questions that you posed these are questions that Alistair Darling will return to in the pre-budget report later this year.
"What we are setting out today is an ambitions plan in setting out and creating new jobs and opening those jobs with higher wages to people from any walk of life through investment in our public services.
"What we need to do now is not just make sure that we have in place programmes to fight back against this downturn but we have to make sure we are making investments now to make this country grow faster in the years to come."
