I have never believed that young people are apathetic. They campaign on issues like jobs, hunting, climate change, green power, safer streets, global trade and world poverty.  Labour will continue to listen to young people’s opinions and deliver real support to help them get on in life.

I have been talking to young people all over Swindon in the past few months and am confident that they will reject the selfishness and rashness of the Conservative Party,  and support Labour’s “Future Fair For All”.

Labour has delivered change on the issues that matter to the under-25s and will continue with specific policies to help them.

Labour is offering a GUARANTEE to today’s young people:

• Everyone aged 18 to 24 will, with Labour, be guaranteed a job, training or work experience place if they are unemployed for more than six months.
• There will be a guaranteed place in education or training for all 16 and 17 year olds.
• We are offering more apprenticeships – we have an ambition of creating 500,000 apprenticeships starts a year across the UK by 2020.
• And we are offering 20,000 extra university places starting in 2010-11 so there will be places for those who want them.
• We are committed to increasing the number of people going to university and we continue to aim to ensure that 50 per cent of young people get a chance to go to university by the time they are 30.
• We are making a further pledge to Britain’s young people that, by the age of 30 we want 75 per cent of young people to have been to university or completed an advanced apprenticeship or equivalent technician level qualification.

The National Minimum Wage, opposed by the Conservatives, has lifted a generation of young people out of poverty and it is Labour’s Child Tax Credits, Child Trust Funds and Sure Start centres that are helping give young families the best start in life.

Even with recent house price falls many young people are still priced out of housing in many areas. To remedy this, we have now set about delivering a rapid increase in affordable housing, including shared ownership schemes to give people a leg-up on to the property ladder. And to give first time buyers an extra bit of help we have announced a two-year Stamp Duty holiday on properties up to £250,000.

Young people are more likely to experience crime than adults. So we will clamp down on antisocial behaviour, we will protect frontline policing and give new guarantees on minimum standards from the police – including guarantees on response times.

We are expanding high quality youth provision, particularly in areas where there are high levels of antisocial behaviour. We are focusing particularly on extending provision on a Friday and Saturday night. Extended schools offer young people a range of out of school activities – sports, music and other clubs. And through our Youth Community Action scheme, we are creating the expectation that every young person should contribute to their local community and put something back into society.

We are investing in nationwide, next generation high-speed broadband coverage so that no young people are left behind.

Labour is in tune with modern Britain on such issues as civil partnerships and backing young people in the fight against the BNP and far-right extremism. And Labour understands that the internet – Twitter and Facebook – used by the Tories as a gimmick, is an important means of communicating seriously with young people.

The Conservatives offer a gamble not a guarantee for young people. They won’t match Labour’s guarantee to protect investment in frontline schools and refused to support our £5 billion investment to help people back to work. Instead, they have shown where their priorities lie by continuing to prioritise an inheritance tax cut for the wealthiest.

Victor Agarwal, Labour Candidate, North Swindon – vote Labour in the local and national elections on May 6th.

Caption:  my campaign team in St Philips with local candidate Joe Tray (right).

The Tories are spending millions (literally) on their poster campaigns and must be helping the economy doing this. This is a nice picture of Gordon that I spotted at the Moonrakers Roundabout, but it’s a pity that the Conservatives didn’t check the facts before printing it…

… the facts are that, if we exclude the full-time students from youth ‘unemployment’ (and that is the definition of the International Labour Organisation), there are 657,000 young people who are unemployed, compared to 830,000 in the early ’90s and more than 1 million in the early ’80s.  It was the Tories who turned their back on young unemployed and left a lost generation, whose scars we have seen for very many years.

Labour is not prepared to turn its back:  which is why we are investing in the youth guarantee.  Labour is backing 470,000 additional youth opportunities, including through the £1 billion future jobs fund, as well as extra training and job opportunities. That is part of the youth guarantee:  which is that all young people should be guaranteed a job, training or a work placement if they have been unemployed for more than six months. The Tories oppose all this and are pledged to scrap the guarantee.

So can I thank my Tory opponents for paying for this expensive poster.  I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to put the facts straight.

Incidentally,  total unemployment in the UK is now 7.6%.  That’s not acceptable,  but its 2% lower than the EU average and only 0.1% higher than Germany.  The Tories voted against most (all?) of the measures that we put in place to save jobs through the depression.

Victor Agarwal, Labour Candidate, North Swindon.