Rishi Sunak to announce £111m for traineeship programme
Chancellor Rishi Sunak will announce next week that the government will provide £111m in funding to triple the number of 16-24 year old trainees in England.
Sunak will use his summer economic statement on Wednesday to announce the extension of the programme, which will see participants receive maths, English and CV writing training in addition to advice about what to expect in the workplace.
They will also get a work placement for between six weeks and six months, with employers receiving a £1,000 bonus for every trainee they take on.
The increase in funding for trainees represents a threefold increase, with the Treasury aiming for numbers of trainees to rise to 45,000 people next year.
The government is also providing a further £21m for devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to follow suit.
Sunak will address parliament on Wednesday to deliver his summer economic statement, where he is expected to announce part of his vision for the UK’s post-Covid recovery.
Policy moves that have been mooted as potential announcements from the chancellor are a temporary VAT cut, one-off cash payments and a large expansion of apprenticeships.
The Observer also reported today that Sunak was considering handing £500 to every adult and £250 to every child in the country to spend on sectors worst affected by the coronavirus crisis.
The plans, which have been drawn up by left-leaning think tank the Resolution Foundation, would see people handed vouchers to spend on sectors such as hospitality and bricks and mortar retail.
Boris Johnson set the tone for the government’s next phase of its coronavirus economic response in a speech on Tuesday, calling for a “New Deal” for Britain.
The New Deal was a set of public spending programmes aimed at lifting the US out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
“We must use this moment now, this interval, to plan our response and fix the problems that are most brutally illuminated in that Covid lightning flash,” Johnson said.
“This economic crisis is the moment to address the problems we have failed to tackle for decades, because it’s one of the most extraordinary feature of the UK, in many ways the greatest place on earth, that we tolerate such yawning gaps between the best and the rest.
“It is time not just for a new deal, but a fair deal for the British people.”