Speaking at Jaguar Land Rover’s £500 million engine manufacturing centre near Wolverhampton last week, Labour leader Ed Miliband made a pledge that every 18-year-old in England will be offered an apprenticeship if his party wins the forth-coming General Election — before adding that the would-be apprentices must have Level 3 qualifications (equivalent to having two A-Levels); those with only GCSEs will not qualify.
This initiative would involve creating around 80,000 new apprenticeships, of which some 33,000 would be involved in work associated with the HS2 high-speed rail project. As a result, many of them would be based in or near Birmingham, which was recently named as the home of the National College for High Speed Rail.
Conservative co-chairman Grant Shapps said: “Firstly, former PM Gordon Brown already made exactly the same promise when he was in power — and then they failed to deliver it. Secondly, we have already doubled apprenticeships during this Parliament and said that we will put three million people into apprenticeships during the next Parliament if we are re-elected — that is a massive increase.”
John Longworth, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: “Mr Miliband is right to focus on the importance of high-quality apprenticeships; collectively, we can work harder to deliver more of them. We also favour giving employers more control over funding, so that companies can train apprentices with the skills to suit their needs.”
A few days before the Labour leader made his apprenticeship pledge at JLR, Prime Minister David Cameron visited the Midlands to unveil a plan to create 300,000 new jobs across the East and West Midlands between 2015 and 2020.
Accompanied by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Mr Cameron also promised £5.3 billion of investment in transport in the region.
Mr Osborne said: “Our long-term economic plan for the Midlands aims to make it an engine for growth in the UK to ensure that we have a truly national recovery. Under this Government, the Midlands has been growing faster than the UK average and has created jobs at over twice the rate seen under the previous Government.”