Apprenticeships

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Wall for giving us this opportunity to have such an excellent debate and I congratulate all those who have taken part in it. However, I shall not describe noble Baronesses in quite the same way as did my noble friend Lord Liddle, in case they indict me for political incorrectness.

The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, talked about bright young Ministers. I am not sure whether I was a bright Minister but I certainly fulfilled the criterion of being a “Young” Minister. I had the pleasure of dealing with skills and apprenticeships. I say that because, as a former apprentice, I have had a lifelong involvement with this matter. The noble Lord talked about there being too many new initiatives. However, some of those new initiatives were needed. The previous Government created a National Apprenticeship Service, for which I do not apologise as I consider that it was needed. We came up with the idea of an online vacancy matching service with regard to apprenticeships. Fortunately—fingers crossed—that computer service is still working and has not crashed. The noble Lord commented on the lack of employer involvement. I take issue with that view, as we have sector skills councils, which very much involve employers in the creation of apprenticeship frameworks and the development of apprenticeships. He talked about literacy and numeracy. As my noble friend Lord Liddle said, we invested a huge amount in, and achieved, improvements in literacy and numeracy.

I could not help noticing that the current Secretary of State, Vince Cable, recently said that he was surprised that there were only 250,000 apprenticeships. I thought that it was lucky that he did not inherit his department in 1997. He would have been appalled, even flabbergasted, as then there were only 65,000 apprenticeships, with a completion rate of 25 per cent. I am puzzled by his surprise, but there are a number of things about the Secretary of State’s recent statements that have surprised not just me but a number of others.

In the previous Government, we tried to adopt a strategic approach. I only wish that my noble friend Lord Leitch was here for me to congratulate him on his report, which mapped out our problems in skills and what we needed to achieve. That is what we based a lot of our policies on. As a number of noble Lords have said, we introduced the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act, which did a number of important things. It legislated to give all suitably qualified young people the right to an apprenticeship by 2013, created the National Apprenticeship Service, created a statutory framework for apprenticeships and ensured that all young people at school receive adequate information, advice and guidance about apprenticeships. That, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, reminded us, has not yet been achieved in all schools; my experience from visiting schools is that the situation is gradually improving, but it is not good enough. We should also remind ourselves that we gave 22 million workers the right to ask for time to train. Unfortunately, only a third of employers provide training; two-thirds of employers have not yet seen the light or they indulge in poaching. In terms of legislation, my noble friend Lady Jones referred to our raising of the participation age. That was another fundamental improvement for young people, who were told that up to the age of 18 they ought to be in either education or training.

I put in a Written Question, which was answered by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, asking how the Government were going to achieve their stated aim of an additional 50,000 apprentices. We all welcome the aim and Ministers have said that they will fund it by transferring money from the Train to Gain budget. That will have an implication in itself. However, putting that to one side, I asked what measures were to be put in place to achieve those additional 50,000 apprentices. As we know, it is one thing to say that you are going to achieve apprenticeships but it is another to realise that target. I was directed by the noble Lord towards the Government’s Strategy for Sustainable Growth, but all it says, apart from a few warm words, is:

“The Apprenticeship programme, newly refocused to prioritise progression to Level 3 and higher will help deliver the technician level skills that a dynamic economy needs. This year we will ... provide incentives to encourage provision and take-up of training in priority areas including a growth and innovation fund”.

The House needs to be assured on the detail of that because, unless you have a clear strategy to achieve those 50,000 places, the statement of that aim will, unfortunately, be just warm words.

Another Minister of State, John Hayes, has been referred to a number of times. I cannot help feeling that he, too, is on a voyage of discovery, because he says:

“I know that the work of GTAs (group training associations) has not been sufficiently recognised in recent years by the Government and its agencies. I know, too, that this neglect cannot be allowed to continue”.

I could not help bridling at that. We spent a lot of time and effort recognising the work of group training associations and, indeed, putting in additional money to encourage more of them to be created. Why did we do that? It is because GTAs are a means of ensuring that small and medium enterprises can gather together and cut the administration costs of employing apprentices. I suggest that the Minister of State does a little more homework before he makes that kind of comment.

There have been many good speeches in this debate, but I hope that noble Lords and Baronesses will forgive me if I do not refer to all of them; after all, that is the Minister’s job when replying. However, I will pick out one or two points. There have been a lot of references to both the cost and value of apprenticeships. I am making a plea for us to get the balance right. Of course there is a cost in employing an apprentice. However, we too often neglect the fact that apprentices also have real value. Not only do they foot the ladder, but they bring a lot of invigorating new ideas to companies. It is a two-way street. You need good-quality mentors, but the people who deal with young apprentices say that they are themselves enthused by their contribution. Apprentices want to get involved in real work as soon as possible.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Sugar for his contribution to that apprenticeship campaign. A lot of people expressed cynicism, saying: “What is the point of employing somebody like Lord Sugar for this? What does he know”?. Well, as he reminded us, he proved his worth in the increased interest that we got from employers. I would not say that I agreed with every aspect of his assessment of the value of FE and other forms of training. We were reminded by my noble friend Lord Haskel of the vital contribution of FE colleges.

I remind noble Lords who spoke about public procurement that that was also something that we did. We insisted that public procurement contracts must in future define how many apprentices there will be and what training will take place. There is sometimes a little collective amnesia in this area.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, reminded us about the collapse of manufacturing. It was not only the collapse of manufacturing that caused the decline of apprenticeships; that was also an unintended consequence of privatisation. The number of apprenticeships held in nationalised companies dropped alarmingly.

My noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya made an interesting contribution. His point about loans for apprenticeships as well as universities was so good that I wish that I had thought of it myself; I can pay no higher compliment than that. Indeed, I was getting around to that idea, but he was ahead of the game.

We should remind ourselves that the previous Labour Government guaranteed all 16 and 17 year-olds the right to an apprenticeship or school, college or training place by the end of September of each academic year. As I said, we wanted every young person to be in education, training or an apprenticeship until the age of 18. We had an education maintenance allowance for over 500,000 young people. We backed employment for young people with an investment of £1.2 billion in the Future Jobs Fund, which has unfortunately been scrapped.

I do not have time to go into all the details of some of the other things that we did, but there has been a lot of talk about advanced apprenticeships. That was part of the previous Government’s strategy, with three key parts. We talked about expanding the number of apprenticeships on offer by 35,000 to create a new class of skilled technicians. We intended to introduce skills accounts for each individual to invest in their education. There would also have been a radical simplification of the skills system.

I liked the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, about celebrating apprenticeships. He will be pleased to know that a number of enlightened employers have graduation days for their apprentices. British Telecom is one. It is a really good idea: we should celebrate finishing apprenticeships. It is just as much of an achievement as when an undergraduate graduates.

I have been told to wind up. In conclusion, I say this to the Minister. In a debate yesterday, she talked about getting the CSR out of the way. I do not think that we will get it out of the way: it will have long-term repercussions. I hope that the PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast yesterday about the loss of jobs in both the public and private sectors is wrong, because we do not think that unemployment is a price worth paying. I hope that the Minister can demonstrate how, as we go through this very difficult period, the Government will nourish and sustain apprenticeships.

I will end on this note. We have often been accused by the Government of not fixing the roof when the sun was shining. We fixed the roofs of colleges when the sun was shining and when it was not. In 1997, the National Audit Office spoke of a crumbling infrastructure. I hope that this Government will improve on that record.