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Prime minister David Cameron has today announced that a government scheme to help the jobless set up their own firms is to be expanded to assist up to 40,000 new businesses by 2013.
Cameron said the New Enterprise Allowance scheme (NEA), which will be rolled out in the autumn, would help make the coming years "some of the most dynamic and entrepreneurial in our history" and said the government was "focused relentlessly" on supporting growth and job creation.
The scheme will aim to give unemployed people financial support for their early months of self-employment, access to a start-up loan, and an expert business mentor to help guide them through the early months of their business.
The NEA will be available to twice as many people as was originally planned when announced by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith last October.
In order to qualify, applicants will have to provide a business plan which their mentor judges to be viable. The programme will be launched later this month in Merseyside and rolled out nationwide by the autumn.
Cameron, who has embarked on a regional tour to promote the government's strategy for jobs and growth, said: "It is vital that we ensure businesses, and those people who find themselves out of work but have the drive and desire to set up their own business, have all the advice, support and mentoring they need.
"Together we can make the years ahead some of the most dynamic and entrepreneurial in our history."
Shadow business secretary John Denham welcomed the creation of new jobs but said that the move was "too little too late" for UK businesses because the government had failed to get the banks lending to smaller firms.
He said the plan was "little consolation for small businesses hurt by this Tory-led government's failure to get lending going".
Cameron also announced that an overhaul of the government's online resources for business will be completed by April.
More than 170 publicly funded websites are being streamlined into a single website for businesses at www.businesslink.gov.uk.
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