By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 11 June 2012
Holyrood will debate on Thursday why youth unemployment in Scotland is persistently above the UK rate, amid Labour claims that one of the main programmes to redress the problem is a ‘con’.
In last year’s election manifesto, the Scottish National Party pledged to provide 25,000 Modern Apprenticeships to help the young jobless. But Labour claims that most of the places in the scheme, which cost £70m last year, are going to people already in jobs.Kezia Dugdale, Labour youth employment spokeswoman, said that figures from Skills Development Scotland show that 61% of people starting the apprenticeships had been in jobs for up to six months, and 39% for longer. Among 16-19 year-olds, the equivalent figures were 81% and 19% respectively.
‘What the government is doing here is re-badging people in work as apprenticeships to hit their top-line figure and the 100,000 young Scots who are on the dole queue are suffering as a consequence,’ she said in a BBC Scotland interview.
The criticism drew a robust response from the SNP government. Youth employment minister Angela Constance said that the point of the programme was to tie in training to a real job, and that it had been open to both new recruits and existing employees ever since its inception under Labour.
Education Secretary Michael Russell added: ‘What happens is that an employer will take a young person in and assess their suitability for a modern apprenticeship, or maybe they will start them in there before they send them to college.’ Russell accused Labour of ‘running down Scotland’s young people’.
Meanwhile, Finance Secretary John Swinney has told the UK Treasury that he has closed a controversial tax loophole that allowed some top public employees to reduce their tax bill by arranging to be paid ‘off payroll’ through private companies.
It follows a Treasury review that uncovered more than 2,400 examples of quango executives using the scheme to pay corporation tax at 20% rather than higher-rate income tax.
In a letter to Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander, Swinney said that a parallel Scottish inquiry had uncovered around 20 such cases, and his officials were in touch with the individuals and agencies concerned to end the practice.
