Tim Newark
used to the scheme and most of them back the idea, seeing it delivering great national benefits in the future. The Chancellor recently pledged an extra £80million to help small businesses access the apprenticeship levy. Sir James Dyson, one of our greatest inventors, has long called for vocational courses to be given the same status as academic ones.
“If you’re an engineer and you’re very good with your hands and your brains,” Dyson says, “you shouldn’t be penalised because universities will only accept people with high academic A-levels where you only use your brain.”
The Brexit-supporting entrepreneur opened his own Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology where students do not fork out fees but get paid to work alongside top engineers.
A bigger kick-start, however, will be delivered by a successful Brexit. In the wake of the referendum recent government figures are already showing a decline in EU migrants coming to the UK. Significantly the number of EU citizens looking for work in Britain has decreased by a third.
That’s why it is very important that Theresa May sticks to the Brexit pledge of ending freedom of movement. She must not allow Michel Barnier and his Brussels henchmen to water down this vital element of leaving the EU in 2019. Some
BLAIR’S chancellor Gordon Brown wanted to create a low-wage fastgrowing economy like the US. A key contributor to that is mass migration, says Edmonds. “So there is a ready supply of labour and he [Brown] knows that immigrants don’t get jobs commensurate with their skills – they go in at the bottom. So the way to keep entry rates down is immigration, low minimum wage for everyone…”
The result has been more than a decade of stagnating incomes for many working people. As we take back control of our borders and reduce the number of job-seeking migrants, we must simultaneously upskill our own workforce to fill these vacancies. Other European countries are already doing this.
Austria recently passed a law giving all young people the right to an apprenticeship while Switzerland takes in hand underachieving students by switching them on to short vocational schemes. Almost two-thirds of German students opt for vocational training rather than university. This partly explains their very low youth unemployment rate compared with other EU countries.
They also manage to avoid the social stigma of such apprenticeships being only for low achievers. Hopefully, the oversubscribed courses offered at practical educational establishments such as the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology will help shift that attitude in the UK.
Brexit is a golden opportunity to improve the quality of our workers. We should start banging the drum for a renaissance in British industry and services. That means providing more and better job training for all our workers – whatever their age.
‘A golden opportunity to improve quality’