LET'S DITCH THE TRAINING LEVY

摘要

'Tear down the barriers to training." So said David Willetts, the shadow secretary of state for skills. If you put that to the folk at ConstructionSkills, they would yell hurrah! And if you put that to building contractors they would shout hurrah! And if you put that to my cleaning lady, she would say: "What barriers?" Well, I'll tell you - it's a piece of awful law. It's called the Industrial Training Act 1982 and it's time for it to go. The awful thing is the piece of law in the act that drags a mandatory annual tax from almost every contractor. The dreaded "levy" ... no, the despised and detested levy that makes contractors turn against ConstructionSkills, their main training body. The levy is a great big stick. It is supposed to persuade contractors to take on apprentices so as to get the tax paid back in labour. If it worked, you would not have 50,000 youngsters seeking apprenticeships and companies saying, "no, thanks" to 40,000 of them.