Apprenticeships

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing this important debate. I confess that my main purpose in taking part was to listen to what I thought would be some useful and interesting contributions and, in particular, to hear how my noble friend the Minister and the Government intend to deal with some of these issues. Do not let us kid ourselves: this is a very old problem. I once said in this House that it is a problem going back more than 100 years. I remember that Lord Dearing, whom we miss dearly, immediately corrected me, saying, “No, it’s at least 130 years”. Then, in evidence to a Select Committee, he referred to 150 years.

In this country, we have a very reasonable standard of higher education. I declare an interest as chancellor of Brunel University. As far as I am concerned, I gave honorary degrees to the two noble Lords in this Chamber who have made the best speeches. I can also see others to whom I have given honorary degrees over my time as chancellor. However, I had great pleasure in giving the noble Lords, Lord Sugar and Lord Layard, honorary degrees. There may be one or two noble Lords to whom I have not yet given such degrees, so if they can give me their names I will see what I can do.

For the rest of our population, we have a history of low productivity and low wages, at much detriment to our economy, and needless disaffection among the young, as the noble Lord, Lord Layard, said. In many European countries, as we saw when we were doing our Select Committee inquiry, apprenticeship is an important way of dealing with a number of these problems. As has been said, I chaired the Economic Affairs Select Committee some years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, was a driving force and was very helpful in educating us in a number of areas where we needed education. My impression was that there is a mighty challenge. I am most interested in hearing how the Government are setting about tackling it.

I read, as I know a number of other noble Lords have read, with interest the speech made by my noble friend’s colleague, John Hayes, on 29 September. It was a good speech and a lot of work went into it. It is clear that the Government are taking this seriously and making a number of initiatives. My worry is that they make too many initiatives. There have been enormous numbers of initiatives, but not enough follow-ups. It is partly the fault of Governments, in the sense that, in my experience, they have been for ever changing the structures of government. They put in a bright, young Minister in order to develop the policy on skills. The result of coming up with some sensible ideas is that he gets promoted to another job. The next Minister comes in and says, “Well, the way to get on in this world is to come up with another initiative”. Instead of following up on the good initiative, he produces another initiative. Our report did not put it quite as bluntly as that, but that situation occurs with government. As a result, we have a much too bureaucratic system. While I accept that there are good employers at all levels, small and large, I know that a lot of small employers feel that the whole thing is too bureaucratic for them to get involved, so they do not.

In essence, the problem is, first, that many young people leave school today without the basic functional literacy and numeracy required even to begin on apprenticeships. We saw that in the evidence that we took as we went around the country. There were kids wanting to do a good job—for example, work in a nursing home. Unfortunately, they could not do sufficient mathematics, so they were not even capable of dispensing medicine to patients. That is crazy. Secondly, many schools fail to inform their students about apprenticeship opportunities. I have a feeling that too many of our schools look on apprenticeships as a failure. They want to keep these kids on to become failures at A-level instead of saying to them, at the age of 16, “You have a real chance of a worthwhile career if you go into something else”.

The problems surround the apprenticeship programmes themselves. In my view, the Government have allowed individual employers too little involvement in how they are run, causing many employers to feel that they are just passive partners. This has been put more eloquently than I will say it, but employers need to be at the centre of apprenticeship provision. Apprenticeship schemes have suffered from too much emphasis on quantity rather than on quality. Completion rates for advanced apprenticeships are still too low, while progression through the different levels on to higher education also needs to be improved. Successive Governments have seen these problems, but they have not done enough about them, so we have a problem that is bad for the economy of the nation and bad for millions of young people who are missing out on a chance to improve their skills and earning capacity. That is a loss to the country.

I will be most interested to hear what my noble friend has to say. We have had this problem since long before she came into the Government and long before the last Government took office; it has been there for a very long time. I hope that we will not have to deal with too many new initiatives, because we have had enough of those. I hope that she will show us the way to give a lead that helps the many employers who will not play their part at the moment because they feel that the schemes are too bureaucratic.

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[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate this afternoon. I anticipated that it would be very interesting, but even I have been surprised by the things that I have learnt. I thank the Minister for her suggestion that she has learnt something today. I always take the view that if you participate in something but do not learn something, what was it all about? That applies to me and, I hope, to her, today.

I do not intend to go through all of the various points that have been raised. To some degree, I share the views of my noble friends Lord Sugar and Lord Haskel about FE colleges. Some FE colleges are great; some are less than great. I know from my experience that there is a lot to do to build some of them up to be the very best. We owe that to the young people who are going through their apprenticeship off-the-job training with them.

My noble friend Lord Sugar mentioned the importance of mentors. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, whether he could recommend a mentor to me, because I am really disappointed that he did not suggest that he would give me an honorary degree. Obviously, I need to do better, and I can do better only if I am mentored.

[Lord Wakeham]

I thought that I said that if anybody wanted to make an application, I would do the best that I could.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

I am verbally making the application, and I will make sure that I follow it up in writing.

Again, I thank everybody who has spoken; it has been a tremendous debate, with lots of good suggestions. To refer to a comment by my noble friend Lord Young in response to the suggestion of the apprentices’ day, he was being a bit humble, because he has supported me on a request on several occasions to come to a number of businesses to present awards to apprentices. The celebrations that happened on those occasions have been marked by big and small companies. I thank my noble friend, but I also thank the noble Lord for recognising, as the Minister described, that that is not only acknowledging what people have done but encouraging others in giving apprenticeships the value that they need. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.