Conservative business spokesman Chris Grayling says the UK needs to get back to being an ‘entrepreneurial country’ which this scheme would aid in.

According to the proposal, unemployed people will be encouraged to start their own companies and given advice on how to do so by private and voluntary firms.

In a Dragons’ Den-style, the prospective business owners would be required to pitch their ideas and have them approved by other companies.

Successful firms will then be given a £2,500 government grant to help them set up the venture, an increase on the £400 currently awarded to start-up businesses.

Grayling says: ‘We want a programme which empowers an army of ‘jobmakers’ for the future that helps create 20,000 new businesses a year and with them many thousands more jobs.’

He adds there is no other way to create the positions which will be needed in the future.