| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
I remember that some time back we were talking about the retail area and how important it is to help the small-shop community-I have often taken up issues of small shops in my time in Parliament-to be able to obtain some apprentices and to enable them to engage with apprenticeships rather than finding them a burden. There are many different issues here, and I congratulate my colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, on saying that this is an issue that we must keep our eye on. Hopefully, we will produce some tangible solutions.
Lord De Mauley: My Lords, to emphasise the concerns that noble Lords have expressed, in his 2003 Budget Gordon Brown promised that apprenticeship places would rise to 320,000 by 2006, but by 2006-07 we were 80,000-that is, 20 per cent-short of that total. Indeed, numbers were falling. That disappointing performance reinforces the concerns of my noble friend Lord Eccles. I am sure that the Minister will repeat his words about the need for balance, and we are all in agreement about the need to spend taxpayers' money carefully, but there seems little point in enacting this part of the Bill if there is no hope of the places being achieved. What reassurance can the Minister offer to both my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Layard, that apprenticeship provision will indeed increase in order to meet demand?
Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I understand the desire of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, to increase the number of apprenticeship places. That is a desire that I am sure everyone in the Committee shares; the question is how we achieve it. As has already been said, demand exceeds supply quite significantly.
12.30 pm
We have to examine what has been achieved so far and I make no apologies for repeating what I have said on a number of previous occasions. I was really surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, say that we had failed to make progress. Perhaps I may remind him of the inheritance. In 1997, apprenticeship schemes were dead on their feet; only 65,000 were left and just over a quarter of them were being completed. If we wind the clock forward 10 years, we will see that we have a quarter of a million people engaged in apprenticeships, with over two-thirds completing them. That does not sound like failure to me; it sounds like success. Just occasionally, it would be appreciated if we acknowledged that success, because an awful lot of people have contributed to it-not least many employers, whose views I feel sure the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, is keen to represent. Employers have worked hard on this, so we should acknowledge that progress has been made.
The noble Lord, Lord Leitch, set us a very ambitious target in relation to young people, and meeting it will of course be a challenge. It is true that we have lost some apprenticeship places during the downturn. The downturn has had an impact on some young people, but it has not been as bad as in previous recessions because more employers are heeding the message that if you want to keep on trading, you need to keep training and that apprentices are a worthwhile investment.
15 Oct 2009 : Column 339
Can we deliver? That is a profoundly important question. We cannot afford to be complacent, which is why the Prime Minister announced in January this year a further £140 million for creating approximately another 31,000 apprenticeship places. The public sector, which accounts for 20 per cent of the workforce, has only 10 per cent of apprenticeships. So we have launched a real drive to create more than 20,000 further apprenticeships in the public sector and, we hope, another 15,000 in the private sector.
We have created the National Apprenticeship Service-400 staff dedicated to ensuring the provision of apprenticeship places and that those employers who are interested in apprenticeships have a one-stop shop for handling them. We have also created a new database. We used to call it the Vacancy Matching Service; we have now made it a bit snappier and called it Apprenticeships Online. Young people and employers can go online and see what is available. Employers can register their vacancies, and young people, parents and mature people can go online and check availability. That is all part of ensuring that people understand the value of apprenticeships. We have had some successful marketing campaigns on apprenticeships, helped by the noble Lord, Lord Sugar.
The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, expressed his lifelong concern about SMEs and small firms. It is a concern which I share: they make a valuable contribution. Small businesses are already big apprenticeship providers: firms employing fewer than 25 people are delivering almost three-fifths of 16-to-24 apprenticeships, despite accounting for less than a third of all employment. So they are making a good contribution. What are we doing to help them in those circumstances? I think that I have explained previously the concept of group training associations, where small firms can gather together under that umbrella and some of the training ability and administrative costs are provided. There are lots of good examples. We are putting more money into expanding group training associations and other models. We have also introduced the expansion pilots, giving more money to some employers to take on more apprentices than they might need, possibly for their supply chains, and we have had a good response on that front as well-I think that another 3,000 apprenticeships have been created as a result.
On disproportionate expenditure-that phrase will be engraved on my heart after this Bill-I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Rix that we will bring forward amendments on Report. My noble friend Lord Layard asked about apprenticeship funding. We invest a huge amount of money in apprenticeships: we pay for the whole cost of training for those under 19 and a proportionate amount for those over 19. We are able to channel money directly to employers who can prove
15 Oct 2009 : Column 340
It is a question of priorities. From 2015, everyone up to the age of 18 will be required to participate in either education or training, or employment with training. That is a profound step forward in how we are trying to deal with young people. We are ensuring that never again will we have a situation where young people leave school or college at the age of 16 and do not get any training at all. There will be a real requirement. Noble Lords should not forget that we have also built in the right to request time to train. We are therefore in a new environment. We hope that we are creating a better culture within this country where people acknowledge the value of vocational training and apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are a major pillar of our strategy, which is why we have made apprenticeship for 16 to 18 year-olds our priority, and we make no apologies for doing so, given their impact on youth unemployment.
The amendment proposed by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, would effectively remove the apprenticeship scheme. While we could not accept that, I assure the noble Viscount that the National Apprenticeship Service will have wider responsibilities to boost employer engagement and apprenticeship opportunities for all.
I turn to Amendment 202 and my noble friend's suggestion of providing further financial incentives to employers. We do not agree that this is the right way to engage more employers in the apprenticeships programme for three reasons. First, as I have already said, the way to boost employer engagement is to disseminate positive messages about the benefits of apprenticeships in terms of increased productivity and improved staff retention. From my experience of visiting chambers of commerce or gatherings of employers, I know that there is nothing like peer-group recommendations when employers hear other employers say to them that apprenticeships are a good investment. We have to change attitudes.
Secondly, employers already benefit from considerable financial incentives. Apprentices aged 16 to 18 receive fully funded training from the Government, which means that employers do not have to pay these costs. Thirdly, an additional financial incentive runs the risk of creating dead weight, as public funds would be used to subsidise the cost of more than 100,000 young people already taken on by employers every year as apprentices. I assure noble Lords that employers can get apprenticeship training funding directly. Indeed, many large employers already take advantage of this. The National Apprenticeship Service will certainly publicise this opportunity through the information that it provides to employers.
I reiterate that everyone in this Committee wants to increase apprenticeships. We believe that we have the right strategy. Our track record since 1997 demonstrates a huge achievement. Achieving our goal will be challenging; we cannot afford to be complacent for the reasons that I have outlined; and all the measures that we have taken so far to drive up the number of apprenticeship places will enable us to meet our objectives. I hope that, on this basis, noble Lords will agree not to press their amendments.
15 Oct 2009 : Column 341
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, I confess that I am somewhat surprised to hear that my rather modest amendment, changing the duty to "maximise" and making it a best-endeavours clause rather than a commitment to provide apprenticeships to everybody, would have the effect of abolishing the scheme. However, since I am probably going to withdraw the amendment, I shall not stand guilty of such an outcome. I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and to all those who have taken part. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, seems to be able to get what he wants with commendably few words.
We need to keep on listening very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, says. He did not get a great deal of comfort from the Minister, but I suspect that that will not prevent him continuing with his campaign. We all hope to find that things go back to where they were. When I first joined the engineering industry we did not have to be told, persuaded or cajoled into the idea that apprenticeships were a good thing; we automatically took on apprentices because we knew that we had people retiring and we knew we would need to replace them.
With the RDAs, I suggest that it might conceivably work, as long as their regional strategy is confined to a fairly general paper of about 10 pages long and nobody is allowed to discuss it in any formal meeting or minute any views on it. The only way in which we will get to where the Government want us to arrive and where we all support them is by working at the grass roots and not top down. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Layard: I am grateful to the Minister for his reply, and particularly for his acknowledgment that we are facing a huge challenge. We are talking about doubling the number of apprenticeship places for people under 19, with something like 100,000 extra places in five or so years. That is an extraordinary challenge to bring about an education revolution and to deliver the raising of the education participation age, which cannot be done except through this channel. It is extremely worrying that there is not more public talk about this; we do not hear enough about it from Ministers or local MPs, although this is a great new thing that should be happening in their constituencies. I am still not satisfied that there is a strong enough marketing of this to employers. Can the Minister not think of something new that can be done? I was depressed by elements of what he said, which suggested that what we are doing is fine, because what we are doing is not going to be up to the task-
Lord Elton: I just wonder whether the noble Lord is still speaking to the amendment that has just fallen in the previous group. The House is expecting him to speak to Amendment 200, which he should be moving. I hope that I am not confusing the issue, but the noble Lord may want to use that information to focus what he is saying on the amendment.
Lord Layard: I am speaking to Amendment 202, which is in the grouping and is the same amendment that I spoke to earlier.
15 Oct 2009 : Column 342
Lord Elton: We have not got there yet; we have only got to Amendment 200. Amendment 202 should not be spoken to now, even by the noble Lord, because it fell with the group of amendments whose lead amendment was spoken to by my noble friend Lord Eccles. I do not mean to be discourteous, but the procedure is that we now move on to the amendment in the noble Lord's name, which is Amendment 200.
Lord Layard: I see, thank you. Sorry.
Lord Layard: As I have just said, one of the most important achievements of this Parliament is the introduction of the apprenticeship entitlement. That is how it is always referred to in government documents and pronouncements, except in this Bill, whose Clause 90 simply says that a person who satisfies the requirements,
That wording is simply not strong enough. We are therefore in this amendment urging the Government to say that an individual is entitled to elect for the scheme. That is in line with the concept of an entitlement, and we earnestly hope that it is possible.
That brings me to the second point, on the word "scheme". In many sections of the community, that word is frankly something that stinks. It means something low grade, like the youth training scheme, on which many people felt that they were marking time rather than moving forward in their lives. We urge the Government to drop the word "scheme". Almost any word would be better. "Entitlement" would be best, since that is what we are talking about, but the "apprenticeship offer" would be a perfectly serviceable term for what is being proposed.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: We are not totally unappreciative of what the Minister has said about the increase in apprenticeship places in the course of the last Government, but we wish to see it expanded and encouraged further. We support what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, has said about the use of the word "entitlement", which would be one vehicle by which the Government could show how they enforce their encouragement of apprenticeships. So we support the noble Lord's amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: I certainly support the amendment, which brings us back to the matter of entitlement. That is what everyone should have, whenever they reach a point in life when something could be beneficial to them. It is a lifelong learning point, again, I suppose. My concern remains with the financial side that a much higher priority should be given, even during this time, to seeing that there are the resources to enable that entitlement to take place.
15 Oct 2009 : Column 343
I still worry about those with a learning disability, who should be helped up to the age of 25. Nobody has covered the point, because the noble Lord, Lord Rix, has had all his worries sorted out, but we have heard nothing about them on the Floor of the House. I assume that the noble Lord has sufficient assurances about funding for that, but it would be nice to hear from the Minister that it is the case.
I, too, congratulate the Government on a lot of what they have achieved. However, there is a problem with the small and medium-sized businesses, and I am not certain that enough has been done in that respect. Perhaps we could encourage them to act much more as mentors of young people and really get value for that. I remember giving evidence on this sort of subject to an inquiry, and the biggest complaint was from the small or medium-sized employer, which was doing all this training only to have his apprentices, whom he had trained at cost to him, nicked by big employers that were not prepared to pay one penny for the training.
I very much support the amendment and hope that we hear encouraging words from the Minister.
Lord Young of Norwood Green: I agree that the public presentation of the Government's commitment to expand apprenticeship opportunities for young people is important. We are making an ambitious commitment and the scale of this ambition needs to be recognised.
The name we attach to these clauses changes neither the nature nor the scale of our commitment. However, the one thing that the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency is not able to guarantee is a job. He or she will encourage employers to provide employment opportunities for potential apprentices through a variety of measures. That is the challenge that we face. However, I recognise my noble friend's concern about the use of the word "scheme" presentationally-I hope to make him an offer that he cannot refuse, if he will pardon the pun-and have committed to consider an appropriate alternative which we will bring forward on Report. I hope that, on that basis, my noble friend will withdraw Amendment 200.
Amendment 203 would change Clause 90 so that a suitably qualified person "is entitled to elect for the apprenticeship scheme". This would not alter the substance of the clause. A person would still only be able to elect for the apprenticeship scheme if they satisfy the requirements set out in Clauses 90(2) and (3) and 93, and changing the wording to "entitled to elect" does not confer any additional entitlement. It is important that we are absolutely clear about this. However, with that caveat, I am willing to accept this amendment.
Lord Elton: I imagine that the noble Lord wishes to express his gratitude.
Lord Layard: I am not adequately versed in the procedure. Of course I am delighted with what the Minister has said on both amendments.
15 Oct 2009 : Column 344
202: Clause 89, page 60, line 4, at end insert-
"( ) The Chief Executive shall arrange that when a employer provides an apprenticeship place to a person aged under 19, the employer shall be paid a flat-rate sum in recognition of the costs involved in time off for off-the-job learning."
Lord Layard: When I spoke out of order, I wanted to say that I am not happy with what the Minister said on this. I very much hope that the Government can come up with some constructive suggestion about how it can be made easier for an employer to receive the money in an automatic fashion. Although there are national employers who receive money for apprenticeships, for a local employer that is not the standard system; the money is not pitched directly to them. There is no standard method by which an employer can simply take on an apprentice and go and ask for the money. That is what we need. I hope that the Minister can come back with some suggestion along those lines on Report.
Clause 89, as amended, agreed.
Clause 90 : Election for apprenticeship scheme
Lord Rix: My Lords, unfortunately the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, is not in his place, but I assure him that I learnt that brevity is the soul of wit the hard way in your Lordships' House. The first question I asked, nearly 18 years ago, was shouted down by the Conservative Government of the time as "making a speech". I was then severely ticked off by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. So I learnt in those days that to keep things short was preferable. I only wish that some of your Lordships would also learn that lesson.
Lord Rix: My Lords, in moving Amendment 204, I also speak to Amendments 205, 209 and 210. As I have reported, I and others have had the opportunity in recent weeks to discuss with the Minister and various officials within the department my ongoing
15 Oct 2009 : Column 345
I am also aware that other discussions have taken place, and continue to do so, between the Bill team and the representatives of Mencap, the Special Educational Consortium, Skill and others who are interested in maximising the opportunities for people with disabilities, including those with a learning disability, to access apprenticeships as a credible and worthwhile pathway to employment and, therefore, full participation in society.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |