Chancellor John Healey has announced a £100 million scheme to help young people into apprenticeships, as part of a drive to reindustrialise Britain.
In his first speech to the Labour Party conference as Chancellor, delivered in Liverpool, Mr Healey said the new “Local Apprenticeship Service” would see teams acting like “football scouts” to link young people with firms, including those that had never offered an apprenticeship.
First job with training and a wage
“The best thing we can offer a young person isn’t a benefit payment, it’s a first job with training and a wage,” he told the conference. “Our determination to help, matched by their determination to hope.”
Mr Healey described the service as “a down payment” on the work of former Cabinet minister Alan Milburn to tackle the almost one million young people not in employment, education or training (Neet).
Economic vision and investment
The new service was the first announcement in a speech setting out Mr Healey’s economic vision for the country, pledging to bring about a “new age of industrialisation” for Britain.
In his speech, the Chancellor announced that Rolls-Royce would invest £300 million in factories in Derby, Bristol, Glasgow and Rotherham, describing the investment as a “new confidence in Britain lit by this Government, driven forward by business”.
He stressed that his first Budget next month would maintain the party’s commitment to fiscal discipline, saying it would also give the public “breathing space” and drive “good growth and jobs in more places”.
Warning on debt burden
But he warned that the UK faced more straitened times than when he had served as a junior Treasury minister under Gordon Brown’s chancellorship, blaming the Conservatives for the country’s debt burden.
