Economy: Creative Sector

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

I apologise to noble Lords. I am speaking in the gap and must exercise compression techniques as I have got about one minute. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for an absorbing and fascinating debate. I am going to focus only on my favourite issue—apprenticeships—which has been given a good airing.

We have seen some good progress and I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referring to the apprenticeship vacancy matching service, of which I am quite proud. It is one of the few computer systems I have introduced that has not, to my knowledge, fallen over or been hacked. We have recently seen some good examples. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, the noble Lord, Lord Hall, has been a good influence at the BBC. With the Royal Opera House, he created the Thurrock opportunity, which creates apprenticeships in production, scenery design, et cetera. We need to engage locally, so I put it to the Minister that there ought to be a creative job opportunity strategy involving every local employment partnership.