Money runs out for Carillion apprentices this week

Skills minister Anne Milton said that affected apprentices would only be paid by the receiver until the end of January.

Up to 1,400 young people were employed at apprentices with the Wolverhampton-based construction and services giant when it went into liquidation earlier this month, but some have secured new jobs elsewhere.

A written answer to shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said that the Construction Industry Training Board was "utilising their existing employer contracts" and grant incentives to secure employers for apprentices.

"Once alternative employment has been secured, it will be the responsibility of these individual employers to determine the frequency of payments to their apprentices," said the minister.

Rehana Azam, national officer of the GMB union, said: "Once again the Government's response to the Carillion crisis is inadequate and inept.

"These are young people starting out in their careers and they have no idea if they will have apprenticeships this time next week.

"It's simply not good enough - the Government has a duty of care to these people.

"They should give a guarantee these people gain the skills to become Britain's future workforce.

"We were told every Carillion apprentice would be contacted. The evidence suggests that is not the case."

Ms Rayner said: "This simply isn't good enough. Ministers had promised that these apprentices were being taken back in-house and that they were doing everything to keep them in training, but now they admit that they could stop being paid within a week.

"On their watch, Carillion was handed millions of pounds of public money and allowed to become the country's biggest provider of construction apprenticeships. They cannot now just stand by and allow thousands of apprentices who have done nothing but work hard for their qualifications to be abandoned, without pay, work or continued training.

"Only months after the collapse of LearnDirect highlighted the risks of over-reliance on private companies for the provision of adult training, it's high time the Tory Government started learning the lessons of their previous failures."