Tories ‘distracting from failures’ with DWP expertise bootcamps for unemployed
Tory ministers have been accused of “distracting voters” from their failings with plans for skills “bootcamps” for people on unemployment benefits.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride announced plans today to give benefit claimants training for roles in key sectors facing shortages. They include industries hit by more hardline Home Office visa rules including hospitality, care, construction, manufacturing, and logistics.
The measures include a ban on overseas care workers bringing over family dependants and drastically hiking the salary threshold for skilled workers. Skills bootcamps – lasting up to 16 weeks – are already in place to help people re-train, but the new drive focuses on sectors hardest hit.
Speaking at a Jobcentre in London, Mr Stride admitted the new Home Office rules will result in a “recruitment challenge” for some employers. But he claimed: “But this is also a huge opportunity for the thousands of jobseekers in our domestic workforce to move into roles that have previously been filled by overseas work.”
The DWP said the plan for “skills bootcamps” will be similar to measures introduced in 2021 to target the shortage of HGV drivers. Gavin Edwards, the head of social care at Unison, said: “There’s nothing wrong with promoting social care as a career and offering proper training to try to attract new recruits to the crisis-stricken sector.
“But forcing the unemployed off benefits and into caring roles, while keeping pay rates low, simply won’t work. Most people will neither want to do the jobs, nor be remotely suited to them. This latest foolish idea shows ministers are clueless about how to fix care. It’s yet another desperate attempt to distract voters from years of government failure and broken promises.
General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Paul Nowak, added: “Any government serious about upskilling its workforce wouldn’t have made 40% cuts to education. If we want to plug gaps in our labour market we need a proper skills strategy – not preformative politics.”
Mr Stride also used his speech today to announce a new government advertising campaign encouraging firms to recurit workers from the skills bootcamps. But Alison McGovern, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, added: “After 14 years of Tory failure, Mel Stride cannot escape the Tory record on work.
“The Conservatives have run down our skills and training system. And we now have record levels of net migration. They should be putting in place proper plans to tackle worker shortages and adopting Labour’s plans to connect the immigration system to skills, not setting up another talking shop.
“Labour have a plan to get Britain working by cutting NHS waiting lists, reforming jobcentres, making work pay and supporting people into good jobs across every part of the country. Change with Labour cannot come soon enough.”
