You can’t keep clobbering employers and then ask why they’re not taking on more people.

With the Budget coming, the Government needs to understand a basic fact of business: before you can give somebody a job, you have to be able to see a future where you can earn the money to pay them.

Yet whenever Whitehall needs more cash, it seems to go back to the same well, employers. Another tax, another charge, another increase in the cost of putting somebody on the payroll! And ministers wonder why businesses aren’t recruiting.

I started Pimlico in 1979 with a bag of tools and a second-hand van. Over 41 years we created thousands of jobs and around 1,200 apprenticeships. Today, with WeFix London, we’ve already got 75 vans on the road and employ more than 100 people.

I know what creating jobs looks like. And every new employee requires an employer to put money on the table before that person earns the business a penny. That’s why constantly increasing employment costs is so damaging. The Treasury sees extra revenue. The employer sees the apprentice they can no longer afford.

So here’s an idea for the Budget: instead of taxing employment, subsidise apprenticeships.

I’ve proposed government support worth £45,000 per apprentice over three years. Businesses provide the workplace, supervision and proper training; government helps cover the wages. Yes, it costs money. But compare that with the alternative and the future looks bleak!

A properly trained plumber, electrician, carpenter or heating engineer could spend decades earning good money, paying taxes and contributing to the economy rather than depending on it. And Britain desperately needs these kinds of skilled workers.

You’re not going to build hundreds of thousands of new homes with ministerial speeches. Somebody has to fit the pipes, wire the houses and install the heating. We need to start with trades where we know skills shortages exist, measure the results and expand what works.

Government has bills to pay. I understand that, and I’ve paid taxes all my working life. But continually squeezing the businesses that generate jobs and tax revenues eventually becomes self-defeating.

Give an employer confidence and they’ll buy the next van, take on the next apprentice and win the next customer. Stop treating British business like a cash machine. Help us put more people on the payroll instead.