Labour proposes guarantee that every school leaver who gets the grades will be offered high-quality placement

Ed Miliband has pledged that Labour would create an extra 80,000 high-quality apprenticeships a year in England, as he spelled out the party’s business policy.



Labour proposed an apprenticeship guarantee, by which every school leaver who gets the grades would be able to begin a high-quality apprenticeship.



The offer is part of a wider productivity plan, which would also require large firms hiring skilled workers from outside the EU to create 100,000 apprenticeships over the parliament, a move that would inevitably increase the cost of hiring foreign workers.

Labour claimed that it would develop an extra 80,000 apprenticeships a year in England by the end of the next parliament, and says the offer should be seen as a parallel to the way in which students who get good academic grades can go to university. A new civil service apprenticeship scheme would be introduced, and companies bidding for large government contracts would be required to offer apprenticeships. Some estimates suggest that the investment in HS2 rail infrastructure could alone create 33,000 apprenticeships.

Labour promised that all apprenticeships would be level 3 qualifications or above, last for at least two years and focus on new job entrants.

Miliband, speaking at Jaguar Land Rover in Wolverhampton, also offered employers more control over how the government spends the near-£1bn-a-year apprenticeship budget, in return for guaranteeing more high-quality training places in their sectors and supply chains.

A Conservative spokesman said 2.1 million apprenticeships had been created since the coalition came to power, and the majority of people had been under 25, with an average of 87,000 more young people a year taking this route into work than under the last Labour government.

A majority Conservative government has already promised to create 3 million more apprenticeships by 2020.

Miliband complained that at present just one in 10 employers in England offers an apprenticeship, saying this is six times fewer high-quality apprenticeships than Germany. His commitment is part of a new industrial strategy designed to underline the party’s commitment to improving growth and UK productivity. It represents Labour’s response to the long-term economic plan, the centrepiece of the Conservative campaign.

It came as parts of the media tried to detail differences within the party over whether it is necessary to ask for receipts from traders to reduce the size of the black economy.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said it was advisable to keep receipts, but other shadow cabinet members tried to play down his remarks, which were condemned as absurd by Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary. Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, said there was no right answer to the question on tax receipts and described the whole issue as a storm in a teacup.

Miliband said he would strengthen Britain’s training infrastructure by introducing a universal gold standard for apprenticeships and ring-fencing the further education budget to support reform of colleges into new institutes of technical education.

He said: “Our plan is based on the idea that it is only when Britain’s working families succeed that Britain succeeds. Not the old idea that it is only from the top down that wealth flows. And it is only our plan that recognises that every person in every sector of the economy is a wealth creator.”

The plan in outline has the support of Lord Mandelson, the former business secretary, who sees the bulk of the policy similar to the industrial activism he championed in the last years of the Brown government.

Miliband will not recoil from the debate about the tax avoidance, despite the recent criticism of the tax arrangements of some Labour donors. He said: “There has been lots of debate about tax avoidance in the last few weeks. And nothing more symbolises their failing plan than seeing the tax gap – between what should be paid and the revenue received – widening while the number of apprenticeships available for young people fell in the last year.

“We need a better plan to replace an economy where tens of billions are lost in tax avoidance, with an economy where tens of thousands more of our young people are doing apprenticeships and we help more businesses grow, succeed and create wealth.”

The plan claims it can fund the additional places by reversing the Tories’ rebadging of in-work training schemes for existing employees. Labour said research by the business department confirms that two-thirds of employers recruiting apprentices from existing staff do not consider their qualifications to be apprenticeships at all, and this number is increasing.

It adds that the proportion of apprenticeship starts made by 16-to-24-year-olds has fallen significantly, from 82.3% when the last Labour government left office to 63.2% last year. 93% of apprentices over 25 years old already worked for their employer before starting their apprenticeship. This raises concerns that existing in-work training programmes have simply been rebadged as apprenticeships.