In this edition of his monthly column, Kit Malthouse, MP for North West Hampshire, discusses the launch of the Kickstart Scheme by national government to support young people’s employment.

Covid has suddenly hit the prospects of our younger generation and we need to turn this around quickly for them. July saw 537,700 16-24 year olds claiming unemployment related benefits across the country. That’s an increase of 296,000 claimants from March this year when lockdown began.

I’m pleased our much awaited ‘Kickstart Scheme’ has launched which ultimately takes young people off benefits and puts them into quality jobs.

If you’re a young person currently on Universal Credit, you can get a 6-month job with a local employer, fully funded by the government. You’ll be paid the National Minimum Wage and you’ll get the chance to get hands on experience and learn valuable skills at one of our many fantastic companies.

And if you’re a local business and you take on a young person through this scheme, you’ll get their full wages covered for 25 hours a week, as well as associated National Insurance contributions.

Applications are now underway and over the coming weeks, I will be talking to some of our fantastic businesses in North West Hampshire to see what we can do together to create and maximise good opportunities for our local young people.

We’ve put aside a £2 billion pot for this and if we get this right we can create hundreds of thousands of fully funded, high quality jobs in the country. I want Andover’s young people to get a good chunk of these.

Check back in next month for your local MP’s next column in the Andover Advertiser.