The 300,000 placements are targeted at young people to give them the opportunity to gain ‘hands-on experience, build skills and move into work over the next three years’.   

This move comes after Alan Milburn, former minister at the Treasury under Tony Blair, released a highly critical interim report into the fate of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs).

Milburn pulled no punches stating: ‘We are at risk of a lost generation.’

 ‘Shockingly, six in 10 young people who are NEET today have never had a job, up from four in 10 in 2005,’ he wrote.

There were 1,012,000 unemployed people aged between 16 and 24 in March, revealed the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).