Apprenticeships

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I am very pleased to have a chance to speak in this debate, which is very timely given the recent focus on youth unemployment. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) and for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), I left school with few qualifications. I did not go to university, and I spent a wee while as an unemployed person. That is why I believe that apprenticeships are so important. They are a vital weapon in combating youth unemployment. We have all seen that the youth unemployment figures have risen to over 1 million for the first time. Opposition Members have, in their own charming way, tried to make out that the coalition Government somehow invented youth unemployment and that this problem appeared from nowhere on 11 May 2010. As ever, they display impressive amnesia about their own 13 years in office.

The truth is that youth unemployment sky-rocketed by 40% under Labour. That massive increase took place entirely after 2004. That fact must be greatly puzzling to many Opposition Members. For the largest part of that period, the UK enjoyed strong economic growth, so a lack of jobs cannot explain it; the “evil Tories” were not in office, so they cannot be blamed; and we all know that it could not possibly be the Labour party’s fault. So what could possibly have gone wrong?

The root causes of the unprecedented increase in youth unemployment are many and complex, and if we are to address the problem, we must consider them all carefully and take smart, targeted measures. It will not do just to repeat the vague mantra that “we need to invest in young people”. Many Opposition Members are fond of doing that, but although it might make them feel better, it does not achieve anything.

It is no coincidence that the dramatic increase in youth unemployment began in the same year that the European Union was enlarged to include eastern Europe. This was the biggest ever expansion in the history of the EU and, despite numerous warnings at the time, the Labour Government decided against having transitional immigration controls. The consequences have been significant. After all, how can a 16-year-old with a blank CV and no training compete in the jobs market alongside 30-something migrants with lengthy work experience? Why would employers take on the risk, costs and effort to train school leavers who have no way of demonstrating they are reliable, ahead of older migrants who are already trained and have a CV demonstrating a strong work ethic? That question illustrates why apprenticeships are absolutely essential in tackling youth employment.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning on the passion and expertise he has brought to the job. The record number of people starting and completing apprenticeships is testament to his hard work. It makes me proud to support this Government, and I applaud the work they are doing on apprenticeships. I am delighted that the Government are going further, by making it even easier for businesses to take on apprentices by slashing red tape, creating cash incentives for small firms to take on apprentices for the first time, and giving businesses direct access to huge levels of public investment. Those are all very welcome measures.

Apprenticeships are not just important to the apprentices who benefit directly from them. They benefit everyone. They help ensure that our workforce is equipped with the necessary skills to enable us to compete in this era of globalisation. They are an essential ingredient in the Government’s efforts to rebalance the economy away from the City of London and towards manufacturing in places like Northwich and Runcorn. I am particularly delighted that in the past year there has been a 71% increase in new apprenticeships in my constituency.

All this progress is very encouraging, but there remains so much more to do. The challenge is to ensure that apprenticeships directly benefit those young people who are hardest to reach: those living in severely deprived areas, who may have grown up in a family where nobody has had work for several generations and whose opportunities have been far too limited for far too long. I know that the Government take that challenge seriously and are treating it as a priority. We need to drive up standards in all our schools, radically reform the welfare system, control immigration, cut red tape and rebalance our economy.