Cameron pledge on apprenticeships

Ministers recently announced an apprenticeship drive

The Conservatives are vowing to create 100,000 more places for apprentices, saying the initiative would help to build family and social stability.

Tory leader David Cameron says his party would offer small and medium businesses in England £2,000 for every person who completed an apprenticeship.

The party believes getting more people into such schemes will encourage them to have more stable relationships.

Ministers say apprenticeships have doubled in the past decade.

Mr Cameron said the government had failed to deliver on its skills and training agenda.

Speaking at the launch of his party's "training and apprenticeships revolution" in Westminster, he said that the number of NEETs (not in education, employment or training) had gone up under Labour by a quarter.

There is a lot of evidence that if we want people to hold down a stable family relationship, being able to hold down a stable job is a particularly important part it David Willetts, Shadow skills secretary

Mr Cameron said the package of plans would make society stronger.

"This is a particularly important policy paper as it is one of the areas where the social agenda and the economic agenda come together," he said.

"Getting skills right is about strengthening society and strengthening the economy.”

Shadow skills secretary David Willetts said: "There is a lot of evidence that if we want people to hold down a stable family relationship, being able to hold down a stable job is a particularly important part it.

"These young men, they are being left to their own devices, not given the kind of practical training they really need so they are not getting into decent work.

"If you tackle that problem you can really start making a difference."

Definition

The Conservatives say there is a need to have more higher level apprenticeships - equal to A-level standards - and to cut the bureaucracy involved.

However there would not be extra money available, Mr Cameron said at the launch.

Mr Willetts told the BBC's Today programme Gordon Brown had only increased the numbers of apprenticeships by changing the definition of what one was.

"Now, things that would have been in the past dismissed as youth training schemes have been re-labelled as apprenticeships," he said.

England's Skills Secretary John Denham said the number of apprenticeships had more than doubled under Labour, from 75,000 in 1997 to 180,000 last year.

Promises

He said the Tories planned to fund the initiative by cutting existing in work training schemes run under Train to Gain.

"By cutting Train to Gain they will deny over 350,000 people the chance to get vocational qualifications that are proven to bring pay increases and promotion.

"Their plans to increase the number of apprenticeships are less ambitious than Labour plans to create 150,000 new apprenticeships and they would waste millions of pounds on paying for apprenticeships that are already being completed."

He accused the Tories of copying his government's ideas for reducing bureaucracy but sending apprenticeships back to the days when few people started them and fewer finished.

Mark Farrar, director of corporate services at the ConstructionSkills sector skills council said: "The construction industry misses out on thousands of would-be apprentices every year because of a lack of employer placements, therefore a move by any party to promote and introduce new initiatives to boost apprenticeships is great news for the construction industry.

"In the last few years, Labour has taken some big steps to help 'upskill' the current workforce, and it's reassuring that other political parties also recognise the continued need to address skills needs within our sector.

"It will be interesting to see how the Conservative Party view the role of the public sector as a client, because with just over 31% of construction output in 2006, the public sector is the single largest customer to the industry."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said apprenticeships had "collapsed" under the last Tory government.

"If there is now an all-party consensus that we need further growth then that is welcome.

"But quality apprenticeships require committed employers, and the test of any new proposal will be whether it secures more employer engagement. It is easy to talk about reducing red tape but if this means fewer checks on quality, then that will not help apprentices."