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The government has today announced a drive to tackle youth unemployment, with a £60m funding boost aimed at boosting work prospects and improving vocational education.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg will together launch the £60m package aimed to help the one million young unemployed, by addressing the "structural barriers" to young people starting a career.
At an event later in London, the prime minister and his deputy will commit to provide funding for up to 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years, and fund 100,000 work placements over the next two years.
The government’s priorities are contained in a paper published today, which looks at ways to encourage social mobility and to ensure that young people have the chance to advance their career prospects.
Measures announced in the Supporting Youth Employment paper also include a pledge by more than 100 large firms and tens of thousands of small companies to offer work experience places.
And a new £10m a year innovation fund will be launched targeting the voluntary and community sector to help young people find jobs.
Cameron said: "It's time to reverse the trend of rising youth unemployment that has held back our country for far too long and help our young people get the jobs on which their future - and ours - depends."
Clegg said: "We all have a responsibility - government, business, charities, education providers - to work together to find a solution. Our young people have enormous potential and enthusiasm. We have to do whatever we can to help them aspire to be happy and successful, and look to the future with hope."
Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith said the Labour government had left Britain with record levels of youth unemployment and wage inequality at "record levels, the worst in my lifetime".
He attacked the scrapped Future Jobs Fund, branding it ineffective in tackling youth unemployment.
On the same programme, shadow employment minister Stephen Timms said the plans to slash youth unemployment were a "rather inadequate response as well as being overdue".
Timms said: "The real problem is a lack of real growth in the economy, it hasn’t grown at all in the past six months. There simply aren't enough jobs.
"Young people are being particularly hard hit."
"It’s always the case that when the economy hits hard times young people bear the brunt of it."
Timms added that government measures such as abolishing the educational maintenance allowance and increasing the cost of tuition fees will only make things worse.
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "The government's claim that it is providing funding for 250,000 more apprenticeships in the next four years and 100,000 work placements over the next two years will be a mirage without other efforts to revive our ailing economy.’
"Ministers speak with a forked tongue on this issue. On one hand, you have Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith saying that he wants to tackle the scandal of youth unemployment, yet the coalition scrapped Labour's £1bn Future Jobs Fund which helped many young unemployed people back to work and have priced them out of education."
The united presentation from Cameron and Clegg comes as the coalition suffered a surprise defeat in the Lords, after the flagship policy of directly elected police commissioners was voted down by 188 to 176.
Peers backed a rebel Lib Dem motion that would see the commissioners appointed rather than directly elected.
Article Comments
These announcements represent clear evidence that we are seeing more of a cross-governmental approach to avoiding a lost generation of young people.
Our biggest challenge now is finding enough employers who are willing and able to take on apprentices in the current economic climate, but training providers are working hard locally to persuade businesses of the obvious bottom-line benefits of investing in skills.
Paul Warner, director of employment and skills, ALP
12th May 2011 at 2:11 pm
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