Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

5. How many apprenticeship places his Department plans to fund in 2010-11.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

6. How many apprenticeship places his Department plans to fund in 2010-11.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

Just days after taking office we announced—

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[Mr Hayes]

Yes; we appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point. I have asked my officials to look closely at these matters. We appreciate that some of the supply-side barriers to small businesses, in particular, getting involved in apprenticeships need to be lifted. We know that to rebuild the apprenticeship programme after the sorry state it was left in by the previous regime—I do not want to be unnecessarily unkind, but I emphasise the word “unnecessarily”—we will have to do a lot of work to involve more businesses to satisfy our demands and learner wishes.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank the Minister for the answer that he has just given my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle). How will the Minister ensure that apprenticeship schemes are made available to all people, not just young people?

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to consider closely not just the apprenticeships that are available to people as they leave school or college, but those for people who want to reskill or upskill. Lord Leitch, in a report that the previous Administration commissioned, made it clear that that is vital because of the demographics, the challenges that we face and the competitive pressures from those countries that have invested in apprenticeships. We will certainly take his remarks on board.

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[Vince Cable]

I am sorry that I did not have the opportunity to visit the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I will try to make up for that in future. We want to attract inward investment, but it was not at all clear that the best way of doing so was through the RDAs, which were duplicating each other’s work. In key overseas countries, for example, there have often been several RDAs competing with each other, using public money in a completely unstructured and unhelpful way. We are going to resolve that.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

T6. In my constituency of Pendle, many graduates earn far less on average than those working in other parts of the country. Does my right hon. Friend welcome the Browne review’s proposals to raise the threshold for fees repayment from £15,000 to £21,000?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend draws attention to an important feature of the Browne review, which is also one reason why the analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggested that the poorest 30% of students would be better off as a result of those proposals.