Apprenticeships: Ethnic Minorities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

I cannot give the noble Lord details at the moment but I will of course write to him on what we are doing. Cutting down in any area like this is obviously difficult. No Government want to come in and find that the coffers are so empty that they have to withdraw that sort of help.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, can my noble friend assure me that the Government will look at all aspects of the apprenticeship schemes to ensure that people from all walks of society can be included in them? As we know—I have taken up a great deal of the House’s time on this—the biggest disability group, that of dyslexics, was once excluded. Can we look at the basic structure to make sure that there are no more such mistakes waiting to be unearthed?

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend does wonderful work making sure that dyslexia stays at the very top of my agenda, and he knows that we are working hard to see if we can get the right access criteria for dyslexia. Yes, we will continue to look at any group of young people who are being excluded from work. We cannot afford to have anybody out of work at the moment.