Vince Cable is wrong to attack employers over apprenticeship wages says Will Davies, co-founder of aspect.co.uk
Last month, Vince Cable announced an increase in apprentice pay of three pence to £2.68 an hour and promised “tough new measures” to punish errant employers. In making the announcement the business secretary overruled the government’s own minimum wage adviser, the Low Pay Commission, which sets the wage every year and recommended that the apprentice rate be frozen at £2.65 an hour.
However, Cable said he was overruling this and increasing the payment because too many employers were ignoring it. “Apprenticeships are at the heart of our goal to support a stronger economy, and so it is important to continue to make them attractive to young people,” Cable was quoted as saying.
However, I believe the business secretary is being disingenuous when he accuses companies of not being prepared to pay apprentices the minimum wage rate and is just trying to deflect attention from the real problem. In my experience – and I am a long-term campaigner for apprenticeship training – trade-based programmes pay well above minimum rates and the real problem is the lack of motivation within the young workforce.
My own property maintenance and refurbishment company aspect.co.uk runs trade-based apprenticeship schemes and we pay – at the very least – three times the minimum rate, but our problem is finding suitably motivated young people. We we believe in giving youngsters a chance and we have returned to a system of old fashioned apprenticeships to train our young workers.
Last year, we organised a series of apprentice “boot camps” to select apprenticeship candidates where youngsters were put through a series of fitness, literacy and numeracy tests.
We have found that the individuals who were prepared to contribute the most to a boot camp were the individuals who aspect.co.uk has most benefited from employing.
The issue the government should be tackling is the apathy that has been created in that segment of our society and the fact that the young are leaving school or college with a lack of desire and ill-prepared for the next stage of their lives.
They are too ready to accept the couch potato lifestyle of benefit culture and are not prepared to learn a trade that will earn them a living for the rest of their lives.
It’s key in my view that we deal with this. Employers invest a great deal of time and money in training young people and government should be encouraging them to take on more youngsters. There has been an alarming drop in the numbers of tradespeople available within the building sector, which is only going to manifest itself in alarming skills shortages when things start to pick up in the economy and the sector.
Research from a leading UK small business insurer discovered that 25% of plumbers and 19% of bricklayers have left their trades over the last four years.
The government says that it is preparing to invest in infrastructure projects and home building. Where do they think the skilled tradesmen will come from?
It needs to support and encourage employers to create more apprenticeship schemes if we want to see growth in the economy. Suggesting that they have done a great thing by instigating an extra three pence per hour raise on minimum rates of pay is merely an attempt to divert attention away from the real issues.
Will Davies founded aspect.co.uk four years ago. It provides property maintenance and refurbishment across the domestic and commercial sectors and is based in South West London. In July 2011, the company launched its nationwide franchise business.
