The Conservative chair of the Commons education select committee has called on his party to promote social justice and opportunity by guaranteeing an apprenticeship for any young person that wants one.
Robert Halfon - the Conservative MP for Harlow who was sacked as skills minister last year - said this morning that if the Tories wanted to turn around opinion poll ratings and avoid defeat at the next general election the party needed to “sort out our values and our mission”.
He said that the party could not match Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn’s, promise to scrap university tuition fees - that would cost billions and would not be fair for those who were not students.
But it could - instead of simply promising to have more apprenticeships - guarantee an apprenticeship for every young person that wanted one, said Mr Halfon.
Speaking to Sky News’ Sophie Ridge on Sunday Mr Halfon said: “We can’t match the Corbyn promise on tuition fees. That would cost billions and billions of pounds of tax payers money; it would not be fair to people who are not students who would end up paying for this.
“What we can do is say to every single young person, ‘we will guarantee you an apprenticeship if you want one’. So you get the skills, you earn while you learn, there is no debt, you climb up that ladder of opportunity, you get job security and prosperity at the top of the ladder.
“That is the sort of thing we should be offering our young people. We should be addressing social injustices.”
Mr Halfon’s call follows a report from his committee published earlier this month that called for a crackdown on low apprenticeship pay.
Companies that “exploit apprentices” by not paying them the legal minimum wage should face criminal prosecutions the committee said in its The Apprenticeships Ladder of Opportunity report
MPs also called for the Social Mobility Commission to conduct a study into how the benefits system helps or hinders apprentices. They wrote: “The government should act on its findings. No apprentice should suffer any financial disadvantage as a result of taking up an apprenticeship.”
In February 2017, Tes revealed that apprentices were being treated like “second-class citizens”, with those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds being denied thousands of pounds of financial support available for college and university students.
