Enterprise Bill [HL]

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we have heard a lot today about the new world of apprenticeships and the many good things that will happen as a result of this Bill, and, as I said at the beginning, we are not opposed to what is being proposed. There are questions about how it will happen—and we have talked a lot about that—but the key element that we have all agreed on is that these new statutory apprenticeships must be of high quality. However, the question is: who is going to police that and report on it, so that we maintain quality? Obviously, we are aware that the Skills Funding Agency will play a part, but it is not clear to me what its role is. I hope that, when the Minister responds, she can sketch out a little bit what the SFA’s role will be in this area.

We have also heard that trading standards bodies, probably in the form of the Trading Standards Institute, will have some part to play, and that is what this amendment seeks to probe a little bit further. As I understand it, trading standards bodies have accepted a responsibility in relation to universities, but it is important that we also get the issue right here. However, I gather that the TSI’s role there, which is exercised through the individual trading standards bodies at local authority level, is to check whether a particular organisation—mainly, one that exists in bricks and mortar close to the locality of the trading standards officers who are investigating the case—is a registered university in the sense that it has a royal charter and performs all the functions required under the Act. In other words, trading standards provides an institutional check; it is not a question of looking at the individual courses that any university might provide, and it is certainly not looking at the classroom accommodation or laboratories or—heaven forfend—the social facilities that every university must have these days. It provides a one-off, tick-box exercise: does this organisation or building fulfil the requirements of a statutory university?

As I understand it, the requirement on checking whether statutory apprenticeships are working well will be to look at the particular apprenticeship in terms of the training provided both on and off the job. That will involve looking at the individual companies and the colleges that the apprentices attend, so we have a rather different job here, and it is not at all clear to me why the TSI is the right body for this. That may be why the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, put down their amendment suggesting that a more appropriate body might be the enterprise partnership, which will at least have a knowledge of what is happening more generally in the area and will have a concern about the employers who are operating apprenticeships and what sort of services and provision they provide.

There are a lot of questions around this. I am not sure what role the TSI will have, but if it will have a role, can the Minister explain what exactly she has in mind here? Will this duty be placed on all the weights and measures operations in every local authority across the country or will it be taken up by the new Trading Standards Institute? If it is either the former or the latter, what funding will be provided? Will the funding be on a targeted basis, will it be a lump sum, or will it be for a certain number of posts? We need more detail here. We need to be quite clear that, if there is going to be just some sort of notional adjustment to the revenue support grant that goes to local authorities, it will certainly not trickle out in sufficiently large amounts to the actual trading standards officers who will again be expected to pick up an additional duty without the resourcing required for it.

There are a lot of questions there, but the point is made in both my amendment and that in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that we need a bit more detail here. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I have to inform the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 51A by reason of pre-emption.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has already made the case for Amendment 51A. When I read this part of the Bill, I was jolted and thought, “Good heavens, why trading standards?”. In the briefing that it provided for us, the LGA was very unhappy about it being trading standards. It said:

“We are concerned about the proposal (clause 19 (7)) in the Bill to make local trading standards teams responsible for enforcing the protection of the term ‘apprenticeships’. The LGA has consistently highlighted the expanding number of statutory duties that trading standards teams are responsible for, at a time when budgets and staff in the service have reduced by an average of 40 per cent over the last four years. Government has recognised the issue and is currently undertaking a review of trading standards with a view to identifying key service priorities, yet in the past month alone it has introduced two new statutory duties for the service”.

It seems very odd for the Government to be introducing a statutory duty in an area where trading standards has no expertise whatever. Local enterprise partnerships have much more knowledge of what is going on with apprenticeships than trading standards. It is really rather absurd that we are looking to a body with no background or expertise in the area. We should be looking for a body that has some expertise and can do the job without too much difficulty.

It should be acknowledged that local enterprise partnerships are at the moment very sparingly funded; they do not have a vast amount of money at their disposal and, whether one likes it or not, this responsibility will require some resources, particularly if the body is required to make regular reports to the Secretary of State about what is going on. If we place that duty on local enterprise partnerships, we should know that they have sufficient resources to fulfil it.