From clueless politicians in Westminster to clueless politicians in City Hall, Labour’s latest apprenticeship wheeze is another expensive exercise in missing the bloody point!

Just when you thought the Government couldn’t dream up another way of wasting taxpayers’ money, along comes its latest bright idea, a £240 million ‘apprenticeship brokerage’ scheme run by regional mayors like Sadiq Khan.

Apparently, the solution to Britain’s growing army of almost a million NEETs, young people not in education, employment or training, and our desperate shortage of skilled workers is to hand responsibility from one bunch of clueless politicians in Westminster to another bunch of clueless politicians in regional government. Brilliant! What could possibly go wrong?

They call it mayoral brokerage. I call it passing the buck! We’re told these politicians will match youngsters with apprenticeship opportunities, a bit like university clearing. But here’s a question nobody in government seems capable of answering. What bloody good is matching people with apprenticeships if employers aren’t creating enough places in the first place?

You can’t match youngsters with jobs that don’t exist! I started Pimlico Plumbers with a bag of tools and a second-hand van. Over the years we created 1,200 apprenticeships. Not because some politician organised a brokerage scheme, but because we invested in training people.

The answer is staring these idiots in the face. Stop paying the clueless and start paying the employers! Give businesses proper financial incentives to recruit apprentices, cover the costs of training, including wages, and reward employers who produce qualified tradespeople.

Britain doesn’t need more political middlemen, committees or expensive schemes. It needs plumbers, electricians, engineers and thousands of other skilled workers.

Put the money where the apprenticeships are actually created, in the hands of employers, not politicians!