I AM currently working with apprentices who were put on furlough but received no wages for two months and those who were informed they were no longer required via a text message or email — and then told they were not due any payments.

The current situation with the furlough scheme coming to an end will result in a larger number of apprentices losing their jobs by these very same tactics. The CITB have just issued figures that show 37 per cent of their apprentices are still sitting on furlough.

Unite has launched a campaign to lobby both governments to extend the furlough scheme for apprentices who are still awaiting a return to work, or worse — a notification of redundancy when their employers have to start contributing.

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) Scotland reports that 57 per cent of employers surveyed had indicated that they have changed their recruitment plans due to the Covid-19 crisis. They indicated that they are not taking on new apprentices this year or have reduced the number they had planned to take on.

We already have a skills shortage and this will exacerbate this shortage. Unite is also asking both governments to use the underspend on the apprenticeship levy to support a new intake of apprentices.

Youth unemployment figures are rising across the entire country and without government intervention this will spiral out of control. We need to create real jobs and opportunities for young people, not failed job creation schemes that park them for a few months and lead to nowhere.

In Scotland we are campaigning for the creation of more apprenticeships within the construction industry. Part of this is for the Scottish government to ensure that all publicly funded projects have a guaranteed quota of apprenticeships within the contracts issued, with a guarantee that the apprentice will finish their time and qualify in their trade. There are some major electrical infrastructure projects that have not one apprentice on site.

The Scottish government does have a strategy for the creation of first-class apprenticeships and wants to encourage more young people into the construction industry. They are working with the trade unions and the industry to facilitate as large a new intake as possible. But there are issues that need to be resolved if we are to achieve this.

Since 2017 when mandatory registration for construction apprentices with a relevant trade body was removed, more and more apprentices are left with no expert infrastructure looking after them.

Where the trade unions sat on these trade bodies and negotiated collective agreements for terms and conditions for the whole industry, more and more apprentices are now left to the vagaries of individual employers and the national minimum wage.

We also now have Forth Valley College attacking the terms and conditions of the lecturers who deliver the vocational qualifications. This college and others in Scotland have reduced the training provided from courses delivered by a lecturer to by an instructor.

Forth Valley College is now asking its lecturers to apply for this new instructor role and to accept a reduction in wages and a huge downgrading of their terms and conditions. How can we tell young people that vocational qualifications are just as relevant as all others, when we are also telling them that the standard of training does not justify a lecturer?

Unless we support the existing apprentices and ensure a maxim intake for this year we are only storing up problems that will create an even greater skills shortage in the future.

Our young people deserve better. We will not “build, build, build” our way out of recession if we don’t invest in construction projects and the people employed. Projects that should be creating the apprenticeships now, for our trades people of the future.