Apprenticeship Levy

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Given that the creative industries are full of small and medium-sized enterprises, I assume that it is the vast majority. If it is different from that, I will write to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, in recent years a practice has sprung up in British industry of not training staff but recruiting them directly, already trained, from overseas, often from countries that could benefit from having their own trained staff stay at home. This leads to the shortages of skilled staff that we have in the economy and surges in immigration through work visas, which we find difficult to accommodate with housing and adequate social services. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will not waver in their application of the apprenticeship levy, which is making an important difference in stimulating firms to start training their own staff in the way that they used to? Will the Government also take steps to stop the abuse of the levy when it sometimes gets employed for management training for long-serving senior managers, who would be trained by the company anyway in the ordinary course of events?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am happy to reassure my noble friend that we have no plans to do away with the levy. Indeed, as I said, based on the OBR forecast we expect it to increase to £2.7 billion in 2024-25. The levy is part of a wider strategy to offer more flexible opportunities, such as modular learning and the lifelong loan entitlement, to potential employees and address the skills gaps of employers more effectively.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Baroness Barran

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is quite within his rights to press me and the Government as hard as he sees fit, but I have set out the Government’s position as best as I can at this stage.

Turning to the other aspects of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I agree that the list of qualifications—

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

I am sorry—I know that the point has been made—but I find this an extraordinary approach to legislation. Everything that the Minister has said so far has given examples of things that the Government are doing that are compatible with the amendments that we are discussing. She has not raised a single objection in principle to either of the amendments, but she has been given a brief saying that it is not necessary to legislate. What harm is done by legislation, given that so many Governments in the past have, in the end, fallen rather short of their agreements in principle?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think that the Government’s priority is to see this measure working in practice. Many of your Lordships have far greater experience than I do of how attempts have been made to reform this area, including through legislation, which have not delivered the outcomes that noble Lords across the House violently agree we want to see. So, our focus—