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.

Today, apprenticeships are very different to those that were available to previous generations of young people who had just got their GCSE or A Level results.

Fantastic opportunities are now available for talented and ambitious young people from all backgrounds to train and establish themselves for a huge variety of high-paying and prestigious professions.

In the medical profession, apprenticeships are available for the nation’s future nurses, midwives, paramedics, radiographers, and advanced medical practitioners.

Improving the skills and training available to young people through a sharp increase in the number of apprenticeships is one of the Government’s better ideas in principle.

So is taxing big businesses to pay for it. Given the way in which that the Treasury has been steadily decreasing their corporation tax burden, they ought to be able to afford it.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it is the way ministers propose to achieve their aims that is flawed.

For a start, the sheer scale of the plan is problematic.  As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted in a new report, the creation of 3 million new apprenticeships in just five years was always going to create problems, not least with ensuring that they are all worthwhile to the people who take them up.

It also raises questions about the method of funding. The Apprenticeship Levy is a payroll tax which affects employers with wage bills of above £3m. It therefore only applies to 2 per cent of employers.

Unfortunately, no less than the Government’s own Office for Budgetary Responsibility estimates that it will hit wages, to the tune of 0.3 per cent, and at a time when the Brexit induced weakness in sterling is stimulating inflation.

The OBR has also raised concerns that most of the £2.6bn raised won’t actually go towards funding apprenticeships – the budget for the plan is considerably lower.

According to the Department of Health, the first apprentice nurses could be working on wards from September, and once established, up to 1,000 apprentice nurses could join the NHS each year.

Aspiring nurses will join the apprenticeship at different stages, depending on their qualifications and experience, and stay in work whilst learning. By offering staff who want to progress more flexibility, regardless of whether they are health care support workers or already working towards higher level qualifications, employers will be able to open up a career in nursing to people from all backgrounds.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt describes how “nurses are the lifeblood of our NHS, but the routes to a nursing degree currently shut out some of the most caring, compassionate staff in our country. I want those who already work with patients to be able to move into the jobs they really want and I know for many, this means becoming a nurse. Not everyone wants to take time off to study full time at university so by creating hundreds of new apprentice nurses, we can help healthcare assistants and others reach their potential as a fully trained nurse.”

In a speech at the NHS Providers conference on 30 November, the Health Secretary announced the new role as one in a series of measures to help improve the working lives of staff, including:

•improving working conditions by setting expectations about the use of e-rostering in Trusts, supported by up to £200,000, so Trusts can manage staff rotas and staffing levels on wards and staff can check rotas online and make requests; and

•confirming that statutory professional regulation is a necessary requirement for the new nursing associate role and asking the Nursing and Midwifery Council to begin this process, in the same way that it already does for nurses, and the GMC does for doctors.