Apprenticeships

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for introducing this important debate because it is close to my heart. I left school in Bradford at 16, bored, and became a telecommunications technician apprentice with what was then the GPO. I was immediately thrown into the world of work and suddenly had to engage with adults on equal terms—at least, that was the idea. I had to get out of bed at 7 am, get in my dad’s car and go to work while listening to Terry Wogan chirping away on the breakfast show, which was a challenge for any teenager. I have spent the last 35 years as a social entrepreneur in both church and secular worlds, applying a business logic and principles to challenging social problems—I think that my colleagues and I have built more than 1,000 projects during that time—and those early skills, hard won through digging up roads, climbing telegraph poles, visiting customers’ houses and installing the old Strowger telephone exchanges, proved crucial in later life for the work of an entrepreneur. The culture was all about learning by doing, which is such a crucial skill and so relevant to the enterprise culture in which we all now live.

What now needs to happen to create greater availability and improve the quality of apprenticeships? What are the blockages? In a spirit of learning by doing, let me share with your Lordships what we have actually been doing on the Olympic Park in east London since the 2012 Games to challenge and break open some of those blockages. Here I must declare interests as a board member of the London Legacy Development Corporation and as chairman of the regeneration and communities committee. Since October 2012, the London Legacy Development Corporation has been delivering a large programme of construction works at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Through this wide-ranging construction programme, our focus has been on the creation of job and apprenticeship opportunities in legacy for local residents, particularly for young people and under-represented groups who face significant barriers to entering or returning to the construction sector.

The approach to date has been very successful. More than 120 young people have benefited from apprenticeships, hundreds of local people have trained in industry-required trades and skills at the park, and almost 30% of our workforce has been from the local area. Building on this success, the park will benefit from a significant volume of construction work over the next decade, ranging from the cultural education quarter at the £2 billion Olympicopolis development to 1,500 housing units at East Wick and Sweetwater. The breadth and scope of the planned activities present a significant opportunity to continue the LLDC’s best-practice approach and address some of the country’s current and future demand for skills, particularly through the delivery of apprentices.

Our work is premised on a number of key lessons learned—principles and practices that have enabled us to work with industry in delivering a high number of apprentices at the park. First, a strong client commitment to delivering apprentices is key. Secondly, we are using our procurement process to assess a bidder’s track record and proposals for securing local socioeconomic benefits, including apprenticeship delivery. Thirdly, we are embedding commitments contractually and working in partnership with our contractors, operators, tenants and developer partners to deliver them. Fourthly, we are focusing on early intervention with contractors to understand their recruitment needs and apprenticeship opportunities, while taking a leadership role in co-ordinating delivery models to support those needs. Fifthly, we are commissioning bespoke, demand-led training programmes that future proof local young people by providing them with the skills required by industry. Finally, we require that apprentices are paid at least the national minimum wage to aid retention among people.

We have focused on innovative and joined-up delivery models. Apprentices are the solution to solving long-term skills shortages in a multitude of industrial sectors. However, in the construction industry, for example, changing trends such as higher levels of subcontracting and shortened construction programmes have made it difficult for many firms to offer traditional apprenticeships. In response to that, we have promoted the use of shared apprenticeship schemes on the site, using an ATA to work with prime and subcontractors to broker apprenticeship and job opportunities for local people in transformation.

What were the blockages? First, the public sector was setting unrealistic targets. Secondly, there was a need for a whole supply chain approach. Thirdly, there were poorly co-ordinated public sector supply-side responses from the boroughs and further education colleges. All the LLDC’s employment and skills work is underpinned by a firm commitment to being employer-led. Fourthly, low wages feed low retention rates. We need to pay apprentices the national minimum wage. Our experience is that employers are willing to invest in motivated young people.

We all now live in an enterprise culture. Learning by doing needs to become the norm. What will the Minister do to ensure that those valuable lessons learned on the Olympic park are shared nationally across the country?