North-east employers have criticised the Scottish Government plans for a £10million skills fund.
Employability and training minister Jamie Hepburn revealed details of the workforce development fund which is part of the Scottish Government’s response to the UK Government’s apprenticeship levy.
Scotland will receive £221million in 2017-18 as its devolved share of the apprenticeship levy, which is expected to raise £3billion from UK employers when it comes into force in April.
Employers in oil and gas have warned the levy will fall harder on the oil and gas industry than other sectors and puts even more jobs at risk.
Yesterday, Neil Gordon, chief executive of trade body Subsea UK said the announcement “will not go anywhere near appeasing our members”.
He added: “As a result of the new levy, the Scottish Government will receive £221 million. The skills fund therefore represents less than 5% of this and is simply not enough to help achieve a real step-change in the number and quality of apprentices.”
Speaking at New College Lanarkshire’s Motherwell campus, Mr Hepburn said: “The UK Government took a decision to introduce their apprenticeship levy from 2017 without any prior consultation with the Scottish Government or, indeed, employers.
“To ensure that our response was right for the Scottish economy we undertook extensive consultation to make sure that the views of employers in Scotland were taken into account.
“As a result, we will introduce a range of measures that will support skills, training and employment to support our ambitions to increase starts to 30,000 by 2020.
“The announcement of the new workforce development fund today is an example of our commitment to use this opportunity to deliver skills and employment services that work better for Scotland, meeting the needs of individuals, employers and our economy.”
Mr Gordon said: “The oil and gas industry lobbied hard on this and many of our members took part in the consultation. But it is clear that the Scottish Government has not listened.
“We can only hope that the Scottish Government will commit to working with our sector to ensure we get the right type and quality of training designed to create valuable apprentices who will contribute towards our competitiveness.”
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