James Ashton: Getting apprentice plans up to speed

Snap election aside, the most important launch last Tuesday was the Institute for Apprenticeships. The venture has an image problem, as does the apprenticeship levy, which some business leaders hoped would be dropped post-Brexit as the country tumbled into recession and an extra payroll tax became a cruel burden at precisely the wrong moment. The UK is coping so far, and employers who are stumping up an annual £3 billion will learn to.

The institute will become a guardian of training standards in England, and soothe doubters’ minds that the money is being well spent on the road to creating three million quality apprenticeships by 2020.

It would do well to clarify quickly the training that can be paid for with the vouchers employers will receive in exchange for their cash. Representatives from several firms who attended the Mansion House reception were in the dark about where their money was going. Some heavy contributors griped they would get nothing back unless they adopted new, approved training courses in place of their own in-house efforts.

The institute must also mount a publicity campaign. Too often, it is parents who dissuade their children from taking up an apprenticeship for fear they will be exploited as cheap labour. Their generation was conditioned to believe that university was the pre-eminent route into the workforce.

But a new focus on apprenticeships might help iron out mismatches throughout the education system. The Higher Education Funding Council for England reports that computer science graduates earn lower average incomes and take longer to find jobs than other science and maths graduates even though there is a skills shortage in this area. Business group TheCityUK has begun work with universities to plug that gap for financial and professional services firms.

Meanwhile, the institute already employs 60 people, and will take on a bigger remit from next year to encompass technical education in England. Antony Jenkins, the former Barclays chief executive who has been appointed its chairman, warns that not everything can be fixed overnight and there is a rocky road ahead.

Shed more light on gig economy

A justified grumble from Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society. It appears that the Office for National Statistics has given up on efforts to improve the quality and timeliness of data on income for the self-employed, something it has been looking at for more than two years. This is a shame, given that the self-employed account for 15% of the workforce. Their efforts are still not included in the closely followed average weekly earnings data.

The gig economy will be an election issue, yet there is still insufficient information about how it functions. Matthew Taylor’s employment review will have to make some heroic assumptions when it is eventually published.

Regardless, expect the Chancellor to return to a National Insurance tax hike for the self-employed post-election, when the new government will be free of historic manifesto pledges not to do so.