Memo to Dave and Nick

Many thanks for responding to my twittering by setting aside £1bn to help get youngsters into work. The speed with which you have dreamed up and then announced this measure is very impressive and shows just how much you care about the votes of this, sorry, I mean the lives of this damaged group.

Yet again, however, the speed at which you are operating does suggest the possibility of error. You might just want to have a look back through the detail.

What is effectively a relaxation of the minimum wage for the young, in which you pay them the difference, is an interesting idea. However, a scheme with a direct subsidy to the employer against wages seems dangerous. How many employers will just grab some cheap labour and then, in six months, let that lot go and grab some more? It's a difficult one to guard against, and a longer scheme is probably a luxury we cannot afford. Or is it? What is the true cost of crime and exclusion? Of broken families? Of girls and boys doing things they will regret to earn blackmarket cash? Things that lead them to a permanent lifestyle outside the system, or worse.

It is tempting to say that you could have avoided the obvious riposte from the left if you had costed this human tragedy which will burden all of us and announced it as part of the scheme funding. Savings in this area might even enable you to justify a bigger or longer scheme. Even if that does not stack all the way up, it must account for some of it. If you paid on achievement of externally-moderated qualifications, rather than as a wage subsidy, it might make employers concentrate more on providing meaningful work than was the case in some of the YTS placements that I saw years ago. And then, at least if employers did let people go the employee would have something tangible to take with them. If the savings across the wider system were measured and captured as the scheme builds, it might even be possible to lengthen the placements once people are in situ.

In this way, by fully counting the societal benefits and the value of the qualifications, I would expect that you could argue this scheme to be a fine investment in the future. There would be some tangible immediate benefits alongside significant longer term impacts. I am also sure our young people would prefer to think that their government is investing in them, and their long term future, rather than just bribing someone to get them to empty the bins for a few months.

I am probably being a bit harsh with the last statement, but that is they way the 'man on the street' is talking about this. However well intentioned it is seen as government trying to capture votes by giving out cash. Change that to an investment and return dynamic, perhaps in the style of an Impact Bond, and change the scheme to have more meaningful and measured outcomes. You could make everyone happy.