Youth Unemployment

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my colleague Chris Grayling is responsible for unemployment generally, and of course youth unemployment within that.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, what are the Government doing to stimulate the introduction of apprenticeship schemes in the private sector to make sure that such schemes are available to young people who otherwise would not have appropriate training?

[Lord Freud]

Apprenticeships are one of the key things to help youngsters into the market. There were 457,000 starts in apprenticeships in 2010-11, and 60% of those are for the age group that we are talking about, the 16-24 year-olds. We are pushing apprenticeships very hard, and we have put in a programme to reinforce that with incentives to SMEs: for each apprentice they take on, they get £1,500 a year. That is being financed for 40,000 youngsters.