David Willetts: Labour’s New Deal for young people has a focus on apprenticeships – a good idea if understood properly
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
David Willetts is President of the Resolution Foundation and is a member of the House of Lords.
My column a fortnight ago looked at the three key Conservative proposals for a New Deal for young people – removing the interest rate on graduate debt, boosting apprenticeships and diverting £5,000 of national insurance into a savings pot.
This is a good start. And the new report by Next Gen Conservatives, which Tali Fraser covered yesterday, would take the Party a lot further. It tackles some tricky Tory taboos. The triple lock really does have to go. We need planning reform and it is often Tory councils in the prosperous South East who have been most hostile to development as their votes, older Tory homeowners, don’t want more houses near them.
And with Government borrowing at almost 100 per cent of GDP and the urgent need to invest in defence it is hard to pledge tax cuts. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reform taxes – their strong candidate is to get rid of employee national insurance, a tax on work, and shift to income tax which covers income from all sources equally.
Meanwhile the Government announced yesterday their own plans to help young unemployed people. It includes measures to try to shift the apprenticeship levy away from older employees (who usually go for degree apprenticeships in business courses) and back towards younger people and new recruits. There is extra funding for SMEs to take on apprentices. They are also planning significant expansion of their new Foundation Apprenticeships which funds further education and training for young people getting into basic entry-level jobs. These are sensible proposals. But actually delivering these programmes will be quite a challenge.
Apprenticeships are very popular – they always poll well. Politicians like them and are endlessly announcing new initiatives for them. By contrast the university route gets pretty hostile media coverage and scepticism even though it is the most popular route for young people to take. The residential university is in some ways the heir to the apprenticeship tradition – you used to leave home to live with the master for whom you worked. That is one reason university has replaced the apprenticeship as the main transition to adulthood in many advanced Western countries.
Conservatives in Government tilted the balance more towards apprenticeships – funding them out of a new tax on employers (which was relatively uncontroversial because it was for apprenticeships – any other such tax would have been politically impossible). Meanwhile we also shifted more funding of higher education on to graduates who pay back more. But these changes did not really dent the growth of young people applying to university. Nor did they lead to a surge of apprenticeships – if anything …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
David Willetts is President of the Resolution Foundation and is a member of the House of Lords.
My column a fortnight ago looked at the three key Conservative proposals for a New Deal for young people – removing the interest rate on graduate debt, boosting apprenticeships and diverting £5,000 of national insurance into a savings pot.
This is a good start. And the new report by Next Gen Conservatives, which Tali Fraser covered yesterday, would take the Party a lot further. It tackles some tricky Tory taboos. The triple lock really does have to go. We need planning reform and it is often Tory councils in the prosperous South East who have been most hostile to development as their votes, older Tory homeowners, don’t want more houses near them.
And with Government borrowing at almost 100 per cent of GDP and the urgent need to invest in defence it is hard to pledge tax cuts. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reform taxes – their strong candidate is to get rid of employee national insurance, a tax on work, and shift to income tax which covers income from all sources equally.
Meanwhile the Government announced yesterday their own plans to help young unemployed people. It includes measures to try to shift the apprenticeship levy away from older employees (who usually go for degree apprenticeships in business courses) and back towards younger people and new recruits. There is extra funding for SMEs to take on apprentices. They are also planning significant expansion of their new Foundation Apprenticeships which funds further education and training for young people getting into basic entry-level jobs. These are sensible proposals. But actually delivering these programmes will be quite a challenge.
Apprenticeships are very popular – they always poll well. Politicians like them and are endlessly announcing new initiatives for them. By contrast the university route gets pretty hostile media coverage and scepticism even though it is the most popular route for young people to take. The residential university is in some ways the heir to the apprenticeship tradition – you used to leave home to live with the master for whom you worked. That is one reason university has replaced the apprenticeship as the main transition to adulthood in many advanced Western countries.
Conservatives in Government tilted the balance more towards apprenticeships – funding them out of a new tax on employers (which was relatively uncontroversial because it was for apprenticeships – any other such tax would have been politically impossible). Meanwhile we also shifted more funding of higher education on to graduates who pay back more. But these changes did not really dent the growth of young people applying to university. Nor did they lead to a surge of apprenticeships – if anything …
David Willetts: Labour’s New Deal for young people has a focus on apprenticeships – a good idea if understood properly
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
David Willetts is President of the Resolution Foundation and is a member of the House of Lords.
My column a fortnight ago looked at the three key Conservative proposals for a New Deal for young people – removing the interest rate on graduate debt, boosting apprenticeships and diverting £5,000 of national insurance into a savings pot.
This is a good start. And the new report by Next Gen Conservatives, which Tali Fraser covered yesterday, would take the Party a lot further. It tackles some tricky Tory taboos. The triple lock really does have to go. We need planning reform and it is often Tory councils in the prosperous South East who have been most hostile to development as their votes, older Tory homeowners, don’t want more houses near them.
And with Government borrowing at almost 100 per cent of GDP and the urgent need to invest in defence it is hard to pledge tax cuts. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reform taxes – their strong candidate is to get rid of employee national insurance, a tax on work, and shift to income tax which covers income from all sources equally.
Meanwhile the Government announced yesterday their own plans to help young unemployed people. It includes measures to try to shift the apprenticeship levy away from older employees (who usually go for degree apprenticeships in business courses) and back towards younger people and new recruits. There is extra funding for SMEs to take on apprentices. They are also planning significant expansion of their new Foundation Apprenticeships which funds further education and training for young people getting into basic entry-level jobs. These are sensible proposals. But actually delivering these programmes will be quite a challenge.
Apprenticeships are very popular – they always poll well. Politicians like them and are endlessly announcing new initiatives for them. By contrast the university route gets pretty hostile media coverage and scepticism even though it is the most popular route for young people to take. The residential university is in some ways the heir to the apprenticeship tradition – you used to leave home to live with the master for whom you worked. That is one reason university has replaced the apprenticeship as the main transition to adulthood in many advanced Western countries.
Conservatives in Government tilted the balance more towards apprenticeships – funding them out of a new tax on employers (which was relatively uncontroversial because it was for apprenticeships – any other such tax would have been politically impossible). Meanwhile we also shifted more funding of higher education on to graduates who pay back more. But these changes did not really dent the growth of young people applying to university. Nor did they lead to a surge of apprenticeships – if anything …
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