The Labour leadership have allowed benefits to get out of hand (Image: Getty)
The Labour Party is considering paying families on benefits hundreds of pounds-a-month to urge their children to start apprenticeships. It comes as the Government’s work tsar Alan Milburn has warned that the benefits system is holding back teenagers from working because of perverse incentives. Mr Milburn revealed that almost one million young people are not in education, employment or training (Neets), making a reset “absolutely essential”. He also shockingly revealed: “For every £25 that we spend keeping young people on benefits, we spend only £1 helping them get into work through employment support.”
Ministers fear families on welfare were discouraging their teenage children from leaving full-time education and taking up apprenticeship courses because they would lose handouts such as child benefit and parts of universal credit. In the worst-case hypothetical scenario found by the social security advisory committee, a single parent whose disabled child was the last person on the benefit claim would receive £339 a week less if the teenager started an apprenticeship.
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Families fear their kids starting apprenticeships could affect their benefits household income (Image: Getty)
So instead it has been suggested they may announce a bursary for 16 and 17-year-olds as part of the Government’s drive to reform the welfare system.
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The Telegraph reports that plans being discussed by ministers include parents in some scenarios receiving grants worth hundreds of pounds a month to bridge that income gap.
There is also the option of handing funds to the young person taking on the apprenticeship.
Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is understood to also be considering expanding an existing scheme called the Sector-based Work Academy Programme, which allows benefits claimants to try work for six weeks.
The scheme, which guarantees participants a job interview at the end of a placement, could be extended so young people could be guaranteed an apprenticeship interview instead.
The national minimum wage for most young 18 to 20-year-olds increased from £8 to £10.85, but apprentices continue to receive the lower rate until they turn 21.
Ministers and think tanks have long warned that the benefits bill is becoming unsustainable and encouraging people to stay out of work.
Mr Milburn, who is to publish the first part of his review into the 957,000 people classed as Neets this week, told the BBC that Britain’s worklessness crisis had become “really shameful”.
He said: “It’s one thing to be ignorant. It’s another thing to be neglectful, and we as a society – and we in politics – have been neglectful of what is, frankly, a scandal. It’s a scandal that we can’t afford.”
Charities and the skills sector have previously proposed allowing parents to continue receiving the child element of universal credit – an extra monthly payment added to a standard allowance for each eligible child living in the household – while their child is in an apprenticeship until the age of 18.
But Mr McFadden is understood to be considering the targeted bursary system instead.
The Government has invested heavily in encouraging young people to undertake apprenticeships but the number starting them has dropped by 40 per cent during the past decade.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said: “We are determined to reverse the 40 per cent drop in young people starting apprenticeships over the last decade.
“To give every young person the best start in their career, we are investing £2.5bn to tackle youth unemployment and creating 50,000 additional apprenticeships for young people.”