Our economy urgently needs the creation of more real apprenticeships. And by real apprenticeship, I don't mean (as this Government does) just renaming an existing College course an apprenticeship. What I mean is genuine, work-based training, with an apprentice spending most of their time in the workplace -developing experience in a day to day working environment. This is the kind of apprenticeship that was so effective for most of the post war years and gets a lot of support on the doorstep.
Using the Government's own figures, the number of apprentices have fallen by more than a third in one year. That is simply not good enough. Particularly when we need a highly skilled workforce to ensure that we can compete in a skills based global economy. It is absolutely not good enough when we have a record number of young people not in employment, education or training.
That is why I am calling for the creation of 100,000 new work-based apprenticeships and training places to help young people. We also need to make it much easier for businesses to run apprenticeship schemes. Having a highly skilled workforce is central to the future economic prosperity of our area.
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