Ministers ‘failing jobless young people’ after breaking pledge to recruit 30,000 Whitehall apprentices
A different story. I am very committed to trying to find meaningful employment opportunities in rural settings for talented young people. As the labour market tightens we all need to see a stronger commitment to the issue of supporting apprentices in rural settings. This article is a wake up call on that score.
Ministers have been accused of failing jobless young people, after falling far short of a promise to recruit 30,000 new apprentices to the civil service.
A senior Conservative said the government had not made achieving the pledge “a priority” – and criticised an attempt to blame the embarrassing shortfall on Covid-19.
In fact, the target was set four years ago – to ensure that Whitehall “leads by example” – and only 16,155 apprentices had been recruited by the time of the lockdown in March.
It follows a wider failure to sign up 3 million apprentices across the economy between 2017 and 2020, with only around 2.2 million recruited.