Duty to Participate in Education or Training (Alternative Ways of Working) Regulations 2013
Debate between Lord Young of Norwood Green and Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I have a couple of points before the Minister sits down. Her answer on public procurement was slightly different this time. Last time it seemed to be emphatic that there were legal barriers. I am challenging that. That does not appear to be the case, and I would welcome the Minister taking that away and giving me a more considered answer on that issue. I am quoting from the UK Office of Government Commerce guide.
I encourage the Government to look again. The Minister cited the large employers. Yes, they are good and if they were all like them we would not have a problem, but the difficulty we face is the point that the Minister made herself. Places are vastly oversubscribed. The demand is huge. We will raise the demand even further when we raise the participation age. My question to the Government is how we are going to meet that demand. Although the overall picture looks good, we still face the problem that in the 16 to 19 year-old age group there is a drop. I do not raise that to score any political point. I want the Government to succeed in this area, but somehow I do not detect enough urgency in the Government’s approach to this.
The more you meet young people—I go out and speak to lots of sixth formers—the more you realise the chances of a group of them getting more and more disillusioned and saying, “What is the point? When I get to the end of this what are my chances of getting a job?”. We know what the figures are for unemployment in various parts of the country.
We really should be straining every sinew to ensure that we give a work experience or job opportunity to every young person. That should be the target, and not at some distant point. If we do not do that, we will be in danger of creating another lost generation, and a generation that becomes disillusioned does not always respond in the most constructive way, as we witnessed not all that long ago. Therefore, I hope that the Government will reflect on this. There are lots of good intentions within these two statutory instruments and I do not challenge any of those.
There is one other point to which the Minister might reply in writing. We also need to check on the quality of training that employers provide. We know that lots of young people are going into a job. For those who want to do so and can get a job, that is great, but we want to make sure that every employer who takes them on has a proper training programme laid out, otherwise that will be another objective. I am not sure whether that was covered in the Minister’s response. If she does not have the answer to it now, I would welcome a reply in writing. Other than that, we will be supporting these instruments.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
Perhaps I may pose one further question to the Minister. Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the Act places quite a number of obligations on local authorities—in particular, the rather difficult obligation of chasing up and identifying the young persons not meeting the Section 2 duty. Guidance is to be published on the Department for Education website, but I wonder when it is likely to be published and what proposals it is likely to make. Given that the diversity of schooling now means that it is not necessarily so easy to chase up what young people are doing and how they are participating, I think that this is going to be quite a difficult task for local authorities.
Picking up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made—
Apprenticeships (Alternative English Completion Conditions) Regulations 2012
Debate between Lord Young of Norwood Green and Baroness Sharp of Guildford(13 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I too would like to thank the Minister for her explanation of the statutory instrument and I apologise for arriving late. The Committee moved on more quickly than I had anticipated.
I have two questions. First, am I right in thinking that these alternative regulations apply to relatively few young people? Given that this is an Olympic year, perhaps the numbers under Schedule 3 are rather greater than they might otherwise be, but the numbers under Schedule 1 are relatively small. On the issue of those made redundant, it will be impossible to tell because we do not know who might be made redundant. However, the total number of young people to whom these instruments might apply is relatively small.
The other thing to note, of course, is that these regulations are the result of an amendment that was carried when we discussed the Bill. At that point, we discussed at some length what would happen to those who were made redundant, and this has been put in specifically to make sure that there is a way forward for those who have more or less completed their apprenticeships. I am very pleased to see that. Perhaps the Minister could respond on the relative numbers in relation to the total number of apprenticeships.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for her explanation. I make no apologies for repeating a number of questions and concerns expressed by my honourable friend in the other place, Mr Gordon Marsden, as we—the royal “we”—are still awaiting written responses from the Minister.
On the question of quality, I was looking at the report of the Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee and read through the Minister’s contribution. At one point, he said:
“There are those who feel that I have gone too far on quality”.—[Official Report, Commons, Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee, 17/4/12; col. 3.]
I do not think that we have gone too far on quality, even allowing for a certain amount of his ministerial flamboyance, as I would describe it, in a nice way. I do not question his integrity or commitment on this issue but I do think there is no room for complacency
I listened carefully to what the noble Baroness said in her opening statement, where she described a fairly traditional approach to an apprenticeship. I do not know if noble Lords had the opportunity to watch a recent “Panorama” programme on apprenticeships which showed, unfortunately, a significant amount of exploitation of young people, who were led to believe that they were going to get training from this particular subcontractor. There was little or no training whatever. It was in no way the kind of quality we should expect.