Flypuppy, that's just plain wrong, Blairite propoganda perhaps
.
In fact, it was the conservative administration that
introduced the NVQ scheme and thence NVQ tax relief. The scheme was cancelled in mid 1999 (how would a government removed from office in May 1997 do so?) by Tony Blair's government, with a comment in parliament by a man who drives a Jaguar and gets driven around in another: "Some people even use it to learn to fly"
It is true that NVQ tax relief was abused for PPL training, but that would be easy to remedy. Force people to wait until they are on a CPL course before claiming. In any event the most people could cheat by that method was around the £2000 mark.
The replacement scheme was the ILA. Note this was introduced in mid 2000, a political device to con people called fiscal lag: cancel a scheme, but announce a replacement at the same time as cancellation to avoid political fallout. Delay the replacement by a year, reducing commitment to the scheme but lazy journalists don't notice, so no-one cares except those affected.
In this case the total was also capped for £150 for the first year, and for individuals indefinitely. Companies could sponsor their workers tax-free through the account in later years (more fiscal lag) but the unemployed trying to better themselves (most of us) were forever blocked.
Of course it turns out that animal rights campaign groups and other organised criminals defrauded the scheme of at least £50 million by setting up fake training schemes. The most an individual has been found to have stolen was £170,000 (a little more than £2000 maximum from NVQ) though more may have been discoverd. Therefore this scheme has been cancelled with no replacement in sight. Thus we have a Tory government helping to fund retraining, and a Socialist government cancelling that out of envy. They make the self-fulfilling assumption that only well-off people fly: it is now the case, as this government put an ATPL out of reach of those without capital, whereas before some might persuade a bank manager to (just about) fund the lot.
This government makes me sick.