Chancellor Rishi Sunak to unveil ‘kickstart jobs scheme’ for young people

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is set to announce a £2 billion “kickstart scheme” later to help create more jobs for young people in the UK

This comes after Downing Street has rejected calls for the Prime Minister to apologise after he said that “too many care homes didn’t really follow procedures” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new fund will subsidise six-month work placements for those people who are on Universal Credit between the ages of 16 and 24, who are at risk of being unemployed long-term.

The Labour Party has said that more action was needed to be taken in order to tackle the “scale of the unemployment crisis” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chancellor Sunak is also thought to be announcing a temporary stamp duty holiday in order to help stimulate the UK’s property market. This tax holiday would exempt the first £500,000 of all sales on property from stamp duty tax.

The new scheme targeted at young people between the ages of 16 and 24 will include the jobs pledge alongside a further £3 billion “green” fund, as well as a national boost for apprenticeships.

This comes after the Office for National Statistics only 22% of people testing positive in the UK for the coronavirus reported having symptoms on the day of their test.

The scheme will start to be open for applications in August of this year, with the first jobs utilising the scheme expected to start in the autumn, running until December of 2021, with a chance of it being extended.

It will cover England, Scotland and Wales, with the government saying that it would provide further funding in Northern Ireland with a similar scheme.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, are also calling for fiscal rules to be relaxed in order to allow them to borrow more and spend unused capital funding to address the “monumental challenges” of the economy following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The director-general of the CBI, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, said the announcement could see the government “lessening the potential scarring impact of the pandemic for the next generation”.

But she said businesses and the government needed to “work to deliver the kickstarter scheme simply and at speed”

“There can be no time lost in preparing young people who are entering one of the toughest jobs markets we’ve seen in decades.”

Downing Street has rejected calls for the Prime Minister to apologise after he said that “too many care homes didn’t really follow procedures” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chancellor Sunak has already outlined a number of other measures in the lead-up to his statement, including:

• Vouchers of up to £5,000 for energy-saving home improvements as part of a wider £3bn plan to cut emissions
• A pledge to provide 30,000 new traineeships for young people in England, giving firms £1,000 for each new work experience place they offer
• A £1.6bn package of loans and grants for the arts and heritage sector
• The doubling of front line staff at job centres, as well as an extra £32m for recruiting extra careers advisers and £17m for work academies in England
• Employers will not have to pay any tax on coronavirus swab tests provided for their staff