The government’s plans for an internship scheme look like a smokescreen for the numbers of highly qualified jobseekers facing the dole.

This was the headline to a thought provoking article I read in the Sunday Times today. The article is right to question the Labour Government’s unveiling of a new student internship scheme, as it seems details of the scheme are rather thin on the ground. Two companies, Microsoft & Barclays, have announced their support for the scheme but further investigation reveals that they were both already planning to take on 200 and 100 interns respectively as they do every year. The Microsoft spokeswoman was even quoted as saying:

“We have had 200 paid interns a year for a number of years and we very much anticipate doing the same this year. In some ways it’s business as usual.”

So let’s look at the facts, the government have announced a job creation scheme but not revealed any substantive details on it and the two companies that have signed up for it aren’t planning to do anything different from what they normally do.

Well, excuse me if I seem to be a bit cynical here, but I can’t see many students or graduates jumping for joy over this announcement. No, the government needs to show much more commitment than that if they want to make any lasting difference. They should be looking at measures to seriously help employers hire graduates and there are plenty of measures they could adopt.

Come on Gordon, let’s see a bit more imagination and action.