Budget backs apprenticeships and AI as employers question delivery
Apprenticeship support, union learning and AI funding feature in the Budget, as employers warn that conflicting policies could limit their impact.
The Budget has confirmed support for apprenticeships, workplace learning and adapting to AI, but employers warn that tensions between skills policy and the wider costs of employment could limit its impact.
The measures include £100m to expand local apprenticeship services in England, the restoration of the Union Learning Fund and funding to examine how AI is changing jobs and productivity. They bring support for recruitment and workforce development alongside the government’s investment in technology.
The CIPD welcomed the apprenticeship and AI measures but questioned whether they would work alongside changes to employment taxes and regulation.
Neil Carberry, chief executive of the CIPD, said: ‘Policies on skills, AI and other job measures are seen in isolation and unrelated to decisions on employment taxes and regulation which too often pull in the opposite direction.’
The apprenticeship funding will extend mayoral brokerage pilots from seven to 14 areas across 2027/28 and 2028/29. The services will help young people find apprenticeships and support employers, particularly smaller businesses, to create opportunities. The expansion was announced in September and confirmed in today’s Budget.
Carberry described the expansion as ‘a positive step to boost young people’s job prospects’. He also welcomed the pause in equalising youth and adult minimum wage rates, arguing that it could help protect recruitment.
For people already in work, the Union Learning Fund will return in England with a programme budget of £15m a year from 2027/28, supporting union-led learning and training projects.
The Budget also provides an additional £23m for the AI Economics Institute to investigate the technology’s effects on productivity, growth, jobs and living standards. A £60m AI Pathfinder Fund will test responses to challenges and opportunities arising from the transition.
Responding to the AI investment, Louise Newbury-Smith, head of UK and Ireland at Zoom, told Computer Weekly: ‘The UK’s ambition to become an AI superpower will be won on adoption’. She called for adoption to extend across local government, high streets and smaller businesses throughout the regions.
Carberry said funding to understand AI’s effects on jobs and industries would be vital if organisations were to use it safely and productively. However, his wider warning was that individual initiatives would struggle without more coherent workforce policy and greater employer involvement.
‘We need the government to do the hard work and join the dots on some of the most pressing issues facing employers today,’ he said.
‘Without a joined-up approach, any measures announced today, will struggle to have the impact Government wants, and that employers and individuals need.’