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Sunak’s jobs scheme left young people in debt and failed to vet employers

Exclusive: Under-25s were treated like ‘free bodies’ under the government’s £1.9bn Kickstart project

By Martin Williams and Camille Corcoran
Sunak’s jobs scheme left young people in debt and failed to vet employers
Chancellor Rishi Sunak's Kickstart scheme failed to vet employers | Imageplotter/Alamy Live News
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Young people were pushed into debt and treated like “free bodies” under a flagship government scheme to help them find work during the pandemic, openDemocracy can reveal.

Our investigation found that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) failed to properly vet employers and consistently flouted its own rules over the ‘Kickstart’ employment programme.

Launched in September 2020, the £1.9bn scheme was intended to stop young people from falling into unemployment. Companies were encouraged to create new jobs for under-25s, with the government paying their wages for the first six months.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0