Key events
UK inflation falls to 3%, boosting hopes of early cut in interest rates
UK inflation tumbled to 3% in January, giving a boost to hopes of an early cut in interest rates by the Bank of England. Phillip Inman and Tom Knowles have the story.
Graeme Wearden has reaction and analysis on his business live blog.
The Federation of Small Businesses has said that it does not support raising the youth rate for the minimum wage to bring it in line with the full adult rate. In an interview with Sky News, Tina McKenzie, the FSB’s policy and advocacy chair, said:
The youth unemployment is the highest in a decade. When will they start to believe what we’re saying?
She said her message to government was:
Take your head out of the sand and realise if you continue to increase costs of employment, and you make hiring young people more difficult for small employers, then all that’s going to happen is that they will hire less young people.
Starmer urged to stick to manifesto following reports lifting of youth minimum wage may be delayed
Good morning. Figures out yesterday showed that the unemployment rate for 18- to 24-year-olds was 14% in the three months to December, which is the highest rate for nearly 11 years excluding Covid. The Times this morning is running a story saying that, in response to concerns about youth unemployment, ministers are “considering ditching Labour’s manifesto pledge to pay young people the same national minimum wage as older workers”.
The Times says:
Business groups have told ministers they are “pricing a generation of young people out of the workplace” by increasing the cost of hiring workers through rises to the national living wage, wider employment rights and a tax raid on employers’ national insurance.
In response, ministers are reviewing their promise to equalise national minimum wage rates by the time of the next election. A decision could come within months when the government sets its annual remit to the Low Pay Commission, which makes recommendations for rises in the national living wage.
Currently workers have to be 21 or over to get the national living wage – the term used by the government to describe the full minimum wage. Workers aged 18 to 20 get a lower rate, described officially as the national minimum wage, and there is a lower rate for under-18s.
Jo Stevens, the Welsh secretary, was on the Today programme this morning and she said what the Times was describing was not government policy. She said:
There’s an unsourced briefing or whatever in the Times this morning, that is not government policy. Government policy is as we set out in our manifesto.
We’ve had many naysayers over the years about the national minimum wage.
People said in 1998 that it caused mass unemployment, and it didn’t. And every time there is a rise in the national minimum wage, people complain about it.
But the Guardian, like the BBC, has been told that, while ministers are going to give up on the goal of raising the youth rate to the full adult rate, they are thinking about slowing down the rate at which equalisation happens.
Even this would be controversial. The BBC also interviewed Andy Prendergast, the GMB’s national officer, on the Today programme this morning and he said delaying or halting equalisation of minimum wage rates would be unacceptable. Asked what the GMB would think if this happened, he replied:
We’d be extremely unhappy about that. This is a manifesto promise. This has been our union’s policy for a long period of time.
Younger workers are not less productive. Businesses hire on the basis of need. They don’t employ more young workers than they would older workers.
And fundamentally I think this is the wrong prescription for the problem. As Jo [Stevens] says, we’ve had the minimum wage for 27 years. We’ve been repeatedly told that it will lead to unemployment. That’s never happened. And yet these people are listened to time and time again, and they come out with the same prescription for the same problem. And that’s what we’re hearing here.
We may get to hear from Keir Starmer on this later. He is on a visit in Wales this morning, and will be giving interviews. He and Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, are promoting plans for a rail investment in Wales that will see seven new stations opening.
The only other item in the diary today a speech from Robert Jenrick, who was yesterday appointed as Reform UK’s Treasury spokersperson. He will be up at 11am.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/feb/18/keir-starmer-labour-youth-unemployment-minimum-wage-eluned-morgan-wales-robert-jenrick-reform-conservatives-kemi-badenoch-uk-politics-latest
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