Wednesday 9 February 2011

Raising our Apprenticeship Campaign with the Prime Minister


Guy Opperman MP: During a recent visit to Ponteland high school, pupils told me that apprenticeships were their No. 1 priority. With strong ongoing local schemes already operating in the area at Egger and SCA, will the Prime Minister back our skills for work campaign to encourage more youngsters in the north-east to take up the apprenticeships that are there?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this. We have made some difficult decisions in this spending round, but we have increased the funding for apprenticeships so that we will be funding 75,000 more apprenticeships than what was planned under Labour. We think this is absolutely vital not just to help young people into work for the short term but to make sure they can have good and worthwhile careers in our rebalanced economy.