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LABOUR has pledged to provide new opportunities for young people to earn and learn with a plan to create 100,000 apprenticeships.
The party said that the plan would see a wage subsidy boosting capacity for employers to take on young apprentices aged 16 to 24, creating new training opportunities to fuel the economic recovery from Covid-19.
Shadow education secretary Kate Green said: “The government has overseen a decade of decline in apprentice numbers and has no plan to reverse this trend.
“Apprenticeships should be a gold-standard training opportunity but they have been neglected by successive Conservative governments which have entrenched inequalities and denied young people the opportunities they need.”
Under the Conservatives, apprenticeship starts have declined by over 40 per cent, with 188,000 places disappearing since 2010, according to government data.
The decline has been starker for young learners from the poorest backgrounds, with apprenticeship starts falling by 52 per cent.
Labour’s plan would use £377 million of last year’s £1.3 billion unspent levy funds to help employers cover the new wages for their first year in the job.
