McDonald’s spends £10m of taxpayer’s cash from employment scheme without creating a single job – Mirror Online

McDonald’s has ­pocketed £10million of public money for an ­apprenticeship scheme …but has not created a single new job with it.

Source: aboutmcdonalds.com

Instead, the multi-national fast-food giant has spent the whole sum on ­“career progression” for 18,000 existing staff.

A Sunday Mirror investigation has found that among nine other major firms which take the most money from the scheme, ­£20million has been spent to create just 2,559 new jobs.

With unemployment hitting 2.67million PM David Cameron has pushed apprenticeships as a way to get young people back into work. In July he revamped the Skills Funding Agency to work directly with employers and recently said: “Apprenticeships are at the heart of the kind of economy we want to build: one where many more young people have the chance to learn a proper trade.”

Taxpayers have so far paid out £30,934,034 to create jobs which cost £12,088 each. But anyone on an appren­tice’s minimum wage takes home just £5,200 a year.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne said: “When a multi-billion pound company takes millions from taxpayers and doesn’t create a single new job, then you know the government’s back to work schemes are descending into chaos.

“The Sunday Mirror has shown the Government has big questions to answer. The Tories slashed Labour’s successful Future Jobs Fund. Now long-term youth unemployment has doubled and we have a million young unemployed. We want to know why more appren­ticeships aren’t being created for all this money.”…

via McDonald’s spends £10m of taxpayer’s cash from employment scheme without creating a single job – Mirror Online.