Apprenticeships: Training Providers

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord is right, in that we do recognise this is a period of uncertainty for providers. The Education and Training Foundation is running a programme specifically to help the ITPs prepare for the transition and change. The Government are also making available £440 million for non-levy-paying employers, to cover the costs of new starts during the transitional period from January 2018 —that is until all employers use the new apprenticeship service, from April 2019. The SMEs are also very important for our economy and the Government are paying 90% of the training and assessment costs for 16 to 18 year-old apprenticeships in this area.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that, given the industrial strategy, Brexit, technological advancement and low productivity, there has never been a more urgent need to address and sort out our skills shortages? But apprenticeship registrations have fallen off a cliff because businesses—large and small—do not like the changes the Government are introducing. Is it not time to cut the business world a bit of slack and let them use their own money, raked in through the levy, in a more flexible way to address their actual training needs, and not force all the levy money into an apprenticeship straitjacket which serves little purpose, other than saving the Government’s face in their boast of creating 3 million apprenticeships?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, it is not a boast; it is a clear aim. As the House will know, a great deal of emphasis has been put on training and skills in the industrial strategy document. On the demand for apprenticeships, it is true that there has been a 59% fall-off, but that is not the whole story because between March and May there was a 47% increase, so the net decline was 2.8%. However, the overall picture—for which there is anecdotal evidence—is that over the next 24 months employers are looking to bed in the changes, and they are working very hard to do so.