Good morning. Last night Alan Milburn suggested that he would like the government to drop its commitment to pay all people over the age of 18 the national living wage. The former Labour health secretary was speaking after he published a major report on the rise in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) and he implied that when the final report is published in the autumn, with policy recommendations, it will propose changes to the national living wage/minimum wage system to encourage more firms to hire young people. A change to the “discriminatory age bands” policy seems to be quite high up his list of demands.

For the record, this is what Labour said in its manifesto.

Labour will also make sure the minimum wage is a genuine living wage. We will change the remit of the independent Low Pay Commission so for the first time it accounts for the cost of living. Labour will also remove the discriminatory age bands, so all adults are entitled to the same minimum wage, delivering a pay rise to hundreds of thousands of workers across the UK.

The TUC said yesterday that cutting the minimum wage for young workers would be a mistake – setting the scene for a fierce Labour internal battle over the manifesto pledge.

This morning, in an interview on the Today programme, Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, hinted that Milburn may get his way. Milburn, the TUC, and everyone else who has read the manifesto, probably assume that, when Labour said it would “remove discriminatory age bands”, it meant by the end of this parliament.

But it didn’t, Bell claimed. He said:

The manifesto sets out that the we should move the rates together over time. It doesn’t set a timeline on that because that’s the important role of the Low Pay Commission.

When the presenter, Justin Webb, said put it to Bell that people understood that as meaning by the end of this parliament, Bell replied:

No, that’s not what it says in our manifesto, Justin. But it’s an understandable mistake. It’s a long document.

Webb asked him to confirm that Labour is not committed to equalising the rates by the end of this parliament. Bell replied:

The manifesto commits us to equalising the rates. We’re absolutely committed to doing that. I’ve been a big proponent of the minimum wage over the last 25 years …

We’re going to do it in a way that relies on the Low Pay Commission to provide independent advice on how that can happen, and in general how increases in the minimum wage happen but in a way that doesn’t affect employment levels.

And if you look at what the Low Pay Commission said in their annual report, they didn’t find evidence that previous increases in the minimum wage for young people had had an effect on their employment. But it is right that we stay alive to that. It’s right that we keep looking at the evidence.

Asked again if the government was committed to the pledge, Bell said:

I’ve already said the answer is yes, we’re committed to our manifesto that we stood on and we will deliver it. But that manifesto did not set out the timeline.

Milburn is likely to be more happy about this answer than the trade union movement.

At the moment it looks as if it will be a relatively quiet Friday. Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, is on a visit this morning, and Nicola Sturgeon, the former Scottish first minister, will be at the Hay literary festival this afternoon. But last night Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham both published long and interesting responses to Tony Blair’s critique of the Labour government. Peter Walker wrote a story about them here.

But there is more to say about the Starmer and Burnham essays, and I will be having a detailed look at them shortly.

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