Apprenticeships

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Housing 21, which benefits from funds for apprenticeship training in care and housing management services. I ought to begin by apologising for being churlish in calling the noble Lord, Lord Young, churlish the last time we had a debate on this subject. I think it was an initial reaction but it was also disrespectful given his deep commitment to this subject and, indeed, what he said today.

Maybe I should go on to say that the doubling of apprenticeships by this Government is one of their major achievements but it was built on the foundations laid by the previous Labour Government. All of us—such as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and I—who were in the newspaper industry will remember, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, told us, the devastation of apprenticeships in the 1980s and 1990s. One of the great achievements of the past five years is that we have recovered from that devastation. This is against the background of a 7% fall in output; in many previous recessions, we would have seen a doubling of unemployment. Youth employment was high at the time of the recession, but it could have grown even more. Undoubtedly, the growth of apprenticeships has helped in the greater flexibility of the labour market in countering some of those trends. As a country, however, we still have a lot to understand as to why that flexibility has been so successful in countering the employment trends of the recession.

Getting the number of apprenticeships up has been a major achievement for the Government, but they have also been trying to address quality issues and to ensure that we are improving the quality of the training on the ground. We have heard today in the debate about the various efforts of the Government to improve the qualification standards, the Richard committee and the initiative to drive aspirations by including a route to university standards through the apprenticeship system. It is a remarkably popular initiative, and the problem for us is that supply is still not meeting demand.

Productivity and competitiveness in the economy can be addressed only through greater skills development and business development. As we go forward, the debate has shown us today that there cannot be any complacency in the sector. It is so important to us, as the economy starts to recover; we are already aware of significant skills shortages, which often take five to six years even to address, let alone to overcome.

What areas should our debate conclude need most attention? Many have been raised already. First, there is a continuing initiative to improve the standards of qualifications and training. We have to be careful that we do not get involved in excessive regulation, but we also have to make sure that, when we allow employers to have a greater say in the training requirements, they also make sure that those requirements are wide enough to deal with the wider needs of industry and not just their own companies.

This debate is meant to concentrate on the 16 to 18 year-olds, where we have heard that there is still disappointment on the training figures. The Government have estimates of what they expect to do this year. Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether we will see an improvement. That shift is important because the major beneficiaries of the expansion have been the over-25s, which may not be a bad thing. It may be that we have not dealt with that age group well before due to the problems that I mentioned earlier, such as the destruction of that sort of training in the 1990s. However, we must certainly address the 16 to 18 year-olds.

We have heard that the figures are still very disappointing in construction and engineering. I shall read the report of the noble Lord, Lord Best—I am glad for that prompt—but, although construction is a cyclical industry, we know that there are huge skills shortages that need to be addressed.

I welcome the suggestion in the Budget that there is to be further help for small employers. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, told us, there is huge capacity there; with the small number of firms taking up this initiative, there is a great potential to publicise and extend what we are doing.

Finally, we have heard about the importance of raising aspirations in our schools and the standing of apprenticeships. The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, said that we need to give more attention to careers guidance. I hope that the progression to university-level qualifications through the apprenticeship system will provide an alternative route to self-improvement and career progression. The Government have made major inroads, but they must keep up the pressure to do much more.