Should the Taxpayer Fund My Business’s Future?
Should taxpayers be expected to fund what is, fundamentally, my business’s investment in its own future workforce?
That is the question I keep coming back to when we talk about apprenticeships. If I want skilled roofers working alongside me in the years ahead, I have a responsibility to help train them. The business benefits from that investment, so it is reasonable to ask how much of the cost should sit with the employer.
I am not arguing that government support has no place. I am asking whether funding, on its own, creates the right incentive—and whether we sometimes lose sight of the young person behind it.
An investment that starts to pay back
In my own experience, intensive, everyday training on site can bring an apprentice towards covering their ongoing cost within about six months. That is my experience in my business, not a promise that every apprentice or every employer will reach the same point.
It certainly does not mean someone becomes a fully trained roofer in six months. Learning a trade takes years. But there is a difference between mastering every part of roofing and becoming a useful, productive member of the team under proper supervision.
When I am paying for that training myself, I have a clear incentive to teach useful skills properly and quickly. I need to explain the job, demonstrate it, watch how it is done and correct mistakes. The apprentice needs to understand why a detail matters, not simply be told to get on with it.
That takes time and patience at the start. As confidence and ability grow, so does the contribution they can make. The aim is steady progress, with safety and the standard of the work coming first.
I want an apprentice to have a future here. If I invest in teaching them well, the return is more than today’s output. It is a person who understands the work, cares about the customer and can become a skilled roofer.
What the YTS years taught me
I grew up in the trade during the 1980s, and I remember the Youth Training Scheme era very clearly. There were good employers who used those schemes properly and gave young people real opportunities. It would be unfair to suggest that every employer abused them.
But I also witnessed employers taking young people on because government funding made them cheap to employ, using them largely as labour rather than giving them proper training, then letting them go when the funded period ended and starting again with someone else.
The concerns were much wider than my own experience. They became part of national debate, including discussion in the press and the House of Commons. In the Commons debate on youth training on 8 July 1983, MPs raised concerns about cheap labour, the replacement of ordinary apprenticeships and employers taking another intake of funded trainees when the previous year ended.
Those were criticisms raised in a political debate, not proof that every placement was poor. But they show that the concern was serious enough to be debated nationally, rather than being an isolated complaint.
That experience has stayed with me. A funded place is only worthwhile if it leads to real learning and a worthwhile opportunity. The number of young people taken on tells us very little unless we also ask what they are taught and what happens to them afterwards.
Young people deserve more than an audience
More recently, I saw an online video presented as a 16-year-old apprentice being put through a wheelbarrow ‘test’. What stayed with me was the mockery in the comments.
I cannot judge a whole workplace or a person’s intentions from a short clip. But I can say what I believe an apprentice should experience when they come into a trade.
A young person starting work has a great deal to learn. They need guidance, clear expectations and the confidence to ask a question without feeling foolish. There is room for humour on a building site, but filming a beginner’s difficulty for an online audience raises a different question: what is that young person learning from it?
We should be showing apprentices that they have value, that their work matters and that there is a future for them in the trade. They should be learning skills and earning confidence, not becoming entertainment for people who have forgotten what it was like to start.
That is why I am proud of the lads in my own team. I care about the roofers they are becoming, but I also care about the young men they are becoming: how they speak to customers, respect people’s homes and take responsibility for their work.
Support should strengthen responsibility
Government support can have a useful place. Help with training, qualifications and access to opportunities can benefit young people, employers and the wider trade. There is a public interest in having a skilled workforce.
But support should strengthen an employer’s commitment to training, rather than become the reason for taking someone on. A grant cannot do the daily teaching, provide a good example or give an apprentice a sense that they belong.
If I want a future for my business, I need to invest in the people who will help build it. That means accepting the time and cost of training, passing on what I know and treating the next generation with dignity.
The question is not simply whether the taxpayer should contribute. It is whether we, as employers, are taking our own responsibility seriously. Whatever support is available, that responsibility starts with us.
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