Lord Young of Norwood Green
Main Page: Lord Young of Norwood Green (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Prosser for initiating this debate and for her contribution. By the time we reach this part, most of the good points have already been made, but I am never afraid of reiteration, so I will do my bit to keep it relevant. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, I was a telecom apprentice, but it was slightly before him as it was called the GPO when I joined. I gained a lot from that.
However, times have changed considerably. I do not quarrel with the Government having a target of 3 million, but, like many, I think the figure needs to be disaggregated. You cannot escape from the fact that, unfortunately, the vast majority of apprentices were people in existing employment aged over 25. Whether that really merits the title of apprenticeship, I am not sure. Of course, we understand the need for lifelong learning and for reskilling and retraining, but the area where many people think we ought to be focusing is on 16 to 19 year-olds or, at a stretch, up to those aged 24.
We have a double whammy: first, demand certainly exceeds supply. A number of noble Lords have made that point in this debate. Secondly, there are the requirements. I thank the Library for its note, which was very helpful. If you look at sector, subject area and age, it is illuminating. There is very little, if any, growth in the construction industry, certainly for under-19s and 19 to 24 year-olds—in fact, there is some decline. If you look at engineering and manufacturing technology, there is a similar picture. In 2012, the figure for under-19s was 114,000, but in 2014-15 we are down to 101,700. That is surely something that should be worrying the Government.
I concur with people who talk about the need for quality as well as quantity. It should be a matter of shame for us that recently a young apprentice started a day in a job and did not finish it because he died. How have we come to a situation in which we are sending young people into an unsafe working environment? When we talk about quality, I hope that is going to include safety.
We welcome the levy and how it is going to be distributed, but we still have the age-old problem that Governments for the past 20 or 30 years have had of getting more companies and SMEs involved in apprenticeships. I notice that, according to the Library Note, even under the trailblazer schemes the involvement of SMEs is quite low. That is worrying if we are serious about wanting to increase significantly the number of apprentices and to inculcate the idea—we should not have to, but clearly we do—in the whole of British industry that, if we want to succeed, it has to contribute towards creating the next generation.
We have a wide range of apprenticeships. I could not help smiling when my noble friend Lord Snape complained about Subway. I do not know what the career opportunities are at Subway, but do not knock the retail trade as a whole. McDonald’s runs a very successful apprenticeship scheme; indeed, you can do a foundation degree with McDonald’s. It is rather like what my noble friend Lady Prosser said about the beauty industry, if it is right to describe it as that. Apprenticeships are rich and varied, although of course we want more high-level apprenticeships.
The final point is about public sector contracts. My noble friend mentioned Crossrail. It is a textbook example of how to run a big project, create apprenticeships and involve the whole of the supply chain. That is the point that I really want to stress. It is not just about creating the hub. If you examine the Crossrail experience closely, you will see that it has encouraged its companies right through the supply chain and across the country. The interesting thing about Crossrail is that those of us who saw the wonderful TV programme know that one of the main people in charge of that engineering project was a woman. So I am ending on a positive note, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.