Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend question the arrogance of people who think that they should be able to introduce a Bill and have it nodded through Parliament without any scrutiny whatever? Is that not the type of activity that does disservice to the House?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. This morning’s debate is not on the process of private Members’ Bills or its merits. There has been an exchange but I am sure that the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) now wishes to come back to his specific points on the Bill. That would help all of us.

[Mr Nuttall]

I was being dragged off there by the shadow Minister, but I will come back to the specific points that I wanted to make on the Bill.

The Bill is not new. In many respects, it mirrors the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill that was introduced in the first Session of this Parliament on 14 September 2010 by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). It is interesting that when that was introduced by way of a ten-minute rule Bill, the hon. Lady prayed in aid the Federation of Small Businesses, which my hon. Friend made clear now has serious concerns about this Bill. It is concerned that the Bill may harm the progress that has been made during the last three years. My hon. Friend made a good point.

I am sure that it was only the large number of hon. Members who wanted to support the hon. Lady’s Bill that stopped the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish being one of its supporters in 2010. But I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing his Bill because it gives me and my hon. Friend an opportunity to make clear what has been, by any measure, one of the great success stories of the present Government.

The coalition programme for government said:

“We will seek ways to support the creation of apprenticeships, internships, work pairings, and college and workplace training places as part of our wider programme to get Britain working”.

It is worth noting at the outset what is meant by an apprenticeship. Basically, it is a paid job that incorporates both on-the-job and off-the-job training. When someone has completed an apprenticeship, they will have a nationally recognised qualification.

In response to the shadow Minister, I said that I had personal experience of this, and I do. Using the definition of an apprentice as someone who learns and earns at the same time, that is precisely what I did for 10 years after I left school. Rather than going to university, I joined a local firm of solicitors as a trainee legal executive, for which I was paid a wage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, in the past being an apprentice often meant starting at the bottom, which is exactly what I did. I was one level up from the office junior, as I used to say at the time.

I then went out on day release to study in the afternoons and evenings for examinations under the auspices of the Institute of Legal Executives. As part and parcel of its training requirements, a person could not become a fellow until they had been employed for eight years, to ensure that they had a thorough and grounded knowledge of the processes. It was a nationally recognised qualification. I used it, along with the degree I studied for at the same time through correspondence from London university, to go on and work for two more years as an articled clerk, which is really just a different term for an apprentice solicitor, before qualifying as a solicitor.

The shadow Minister, having launched his personal attack on me and used a clever way to name my opponent at the next general election, has now left his place on the Front Bench, but I think it is fair to say that I have personal experience of working, learning and earning at the same time.

Public procurement contracts should be awarded on the basis of value for money. Even without the Bill, projects already promote apprenticeships. Crossrail will deliver over 400 new apprenticeships through its supply chain over the lifetime of the contract. All main works contractors will create one new apprenticeship, or the equivalent training opportunities, per £3 million of spend. Crossrail is working in partnership with the National Apprenticeship Service to support contractors in delivering the apprenticeship programme.

The National Apprenticeship Service was established in April 2009, under the previous Government. It has overall responsibility for apprenticeships in England. It promotes apprenticeships to employers and those seeking to take up an apprenticeship by providing support throughout the recruitment and training process. It maintains a national online apprenticeship vacancy system that allows employers to post vacancies and aspiring apprentices to search and apply for them. It is interesting that a requirement to post an apprenticeship through NAS is not included in clause 2.

Apprenticeships have changed considerably in recent decades. There are now over 200 different types of apprenticeship available across a variety of sectors, including: agriculture, horticulture and animal care; arts, media and publishing; business administration and law; construction, planning and the built environment; education and training; engineering and manufacturing technologies; health, public services and care; information and community technology; leisure, travel and tourism; and retail and commercial enterprise. Virtually no aspect of Government procurement does not fall within one of those sectors.

Each apprenticeship is made up of three elements: first, the national vocational qualification, which examines work-based skills; secondly, a technical certificate, which examines theoretical knowledge; and, thirdly, key skills, which examine transferable skills—for example, numeracy and literacy.

Apprenticeships can be studied at different qualification levels, starting with basic, intermediate level 2 apprenticeships, equivalent to A*-to-C GCSEs. Above those are advanced level 3 apprenticeships, equivalent to A-levels. Finally, there are higher level 4 apprenticeships, equivalent to a Business and Technology Educational Council professional diploma or a higher national certificate.

The rationale behind the Bill is well intentioned—to encourage more companies to provide apprenticeships. However, I am not convinced that the way to do that is by passing such legislation as this. The way to create a more skilled, better qualified work force is to have a growing economy in which companies can compete in the global marketplace. When they want a larger work force, they can train people using the apprenticeship route, working with the Government to set nationally recognised standards and with a training provider to which they can send their employees for off-the-job training. The companies themselves train them on the job and give them work.

The latest figures show that there has already been a significant increase in the numbers—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I have been closely following what the hon. Gentleman has been saying. He has made his preliminary remarks and discussed extensively apprenticeships and the different definitions. Now I would like him to relate his comments to the Bill; he has been speaking for 32 minutes. This is not a general discussion about apprenticeships.

[Mr Nuttall]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will. The rationale behind the Bill is that there are not enough apprenticeships; that can be the only reason for the Bill. However, official data show that last year more than 500,000 apprenticeships were created, which demonstrates one of my arguments for opposing the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has just put very succinctly his point about the Bill. I am asking him to make sure that all his comments refer to the Bill with the same clarity, rather than referring to every industry that might offer apprenticeships.

[Mr Nuttall]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to be as succinct as I can about the points I want to make about each of the clauses.

Clause 1 deals with apprenticeship requirements. It is the key clause because it states that when a public authority, defined as

“any body or person discharging functions of a public nature, including local authorities”,

prepares to issue a relevant contract—that is, one exceeding a total of £1 million—it must

“give due consideration to the relevant guidelines”.

We have not heard much about those relevant guidelines, but they were published by the Office of Government Commerce in 2009 in a document called “Promoting skills through public procurement”. It is a long document, but I want to refer to one particular sentence. The document goes through the process that a public body has to follow in granting a tender. It says of the stage at which the contract is granted:

“It is at this stage that public authorities should”—

I am afraid that the document is not written correctly because there is a word missing; I think it should say “should meet”—

“Regulation 39 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2006”,

which states

“that contracting authorities ‘may stipulate conditions relating to the performance of a public contract, provided that those conditions are compatible with Community law and are indicated in the contract notice and the contract documents or the contract documents’.”

Clearly, the 2006 regulations contained in the guidelines mentioned in clause 1 already give local authorities the power that the Bill seeks to give them in order to do all the things the hon. Gentleman would like them to do.

The second part of clause 1 would require that an authority “may specify” that

“a minimum proportion of the apprentices employed by the contractor are higher or advanced”

apprenticeship level. Because of the use of the word “may”, that could equally mean “may not specify”. The provision is therefore completely superfluous, irrelevant and unnecessary.

“Apprentice” is defined in clause 4 as having

“the meaning given in section 32 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009”.

I thought that I would have a look at that to see what the definition is. It gives a definition not of “apprentice” but of “apprenticeship agreement”, which is not what one would expect from reading clause 4. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, that should be looked at, because clearly some clarification is needed regarding the definition of “apprentice”.

Clause 2 deals with the advertising of work force vacancies. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said, “You must be in favour of that”, but it is not as straightforward as that. In some cases, these contracts cover the whole country. Does he intend that, if the contractor needs to take on half a dozen extra workers as a result of getting the contract, they should advertise every single one of those vacancies across the whole country? That is what the clause would mean if taken literally, and of course one has to take it literally, so, if it is a national contract, that is what the contractor would have to do. As the hon. Gentleman himself admitted, this is the one clause that is mandatory, because it

“must require the contractor to…advertise all vacancies”

in local jobcentres.

Another aspect is that many local newspapers rely on job adverts to survive in this day and age. I wonder what they would think of this provision if they suddenly lost their local job adverts as a result. The first thing that many people do when they are looking for a job is to turn to the local paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Any employer seeking to take on new apprentices or, indeed, new employees will want to cast their net as widely as possible. When I was an employer, we routinely advertised in the paper and at the jobcentre, because we wanted as many people as possible to see the advertisement, which is what any form of advertising seeks to achieve. This is not the worst clause I have ever seen, but I do not think there is any need for it, because any employer looking for new staff would automatically seek to cast their net widely.

Clause 3 states:

“Skills training provided by the contractor must form part of a nationally accredited scheme.”

Anybody who knows anything about the current form of apprenticeships will be aware that they result, by definition, in a nationally recognised qualification, whether it is at level 2, level 3 or level 4. I am therefore not sure what is added by clause 3.

The Government have done a lot to develop apprenticeships since taking office. They asked Doug Richard, an England-based Californian entrepreneur, to look in great depth at how the apprenticeship system was working. Hon. Members may remember that he came to prominence as a dragon in the first two series of the BBC’s “Dragons’ Den” programme. In 2008, he founded the School for Startups, which is an enterprise that teaches entrepreneurship in partnership with UK universities, the Royal Institution and the British Library.

The Richard review, which was produced in November 2012, is a substantial piece of work. Doug Richard spent months speaking to apprentices, employers and Government organisations. He highlights the problems that have developed in the apprenticeship system. The Government carried out a substantial consultation process for several months over the summer, which involved seven workshops covering assessment, qualifications and—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am afraid, Mr Nuttall, that you are again drifting beyond the purpose of the Bill. Let me be clear that your remarks have to relate to the Bill and its four clauses, which you have already debated rather extensively. We do not need a review of the Richard review. I want you to relate your comments to the Bill and its clauses. I hope that I have made myself clear this time, because I think that I might have failed last time.

[Mr Nuttall]

The reason the Richard review is enormously relevant is that in such a huge piece of work, nowhere did Doug Richard come up with the solution that is contained in the Bill. He spoke to hundreds of employers and Government organisations—I will not go through them all—but he did not come up with the solution in the Bill, and neither did any of people who responded to the Government’s consultation exercise over the summer. I hope that we hear more from the Minister about that, because he will have all the facts and figures at his fingertips. The Government’s work on the matter is therefore relevant.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley briefly mentioned, this week the Prime Minister himself announced the new trailblazer programme during his visit to the Mini plant in Oxford. That programme will move apprenticeships on to a new level and deal with the problem that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish says he is concerned about, which is the quality of apprenticeships. The Government’s approach is to have employers, rather than the Government themselves, lead the development of apprenticeships, and that is what the trailblazer system will ensure. As the Prime Minister said:

“If you want an apprenticeship, we’re going to make sure you do the best apprenticeship in the world.”

That sums up the trailblazer approach.