Vocational Qualifications Reform Plan

Baroness Wall of New Barnet Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend always speaks with great expertise on several areas. He has done so again in drawing attention to this issue. As he asked, I will pan out on this and reassure him. On the issue of engineering, he will recall that I mentioned Trailblazers in response to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Young. The 29 additional industries and sectors we will look at include various elements of engineering, including civil engineering and rail. That will be led by organisations that include Jacobs Engineering, Atkins, CH2M Hill and Hyder Consulting. My noble friend also talked about crafts. That is another sector that will be covered by the second phase of the Trailblazer scheme. It will be led by organisations including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cockpit Arts and the Mulberry Tree Woodturnery. I hope my noble friend is assured that, as I said earlier, across these 29 sectors 345 employers have now demonstrated their willingness to be part and parcel of this scheme.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet (Lab)]

My Lords, I raise in particular the advanced apprenticeship in health, which I am steering through the round-table discussion that has been going on—I am not sure if the noble Lord is aware of it—working with all the unions and legislation bodies in nursing. We are still having this debate and it is very new; we have had one round-table discussion on nursing. We agreed that we would launch it as a Trailblazer but with the reservation that we are still doing a lot of work. Our next meeting is in two weeks’ time. I wonder why the document insists that the apprenticeship route will get to a stage where it must be university driven. In fact, we have talked to FE colleges, which do all the other apprenticeship and higher level stuff. Why can we not ensure that we have that opportunity? Certainly, that is the discussion we had in the round table. Maybe this is an early Statement and will change, but it needs to reflect that we have FE colleges working with our apprenticeship nurses.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I of course pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work in this respect. It is exactly as she said: round-table discussions are taking place. We want to see what works effectively for all sectors. I certainly take on board her comments. I am sure that issue will be taken on board as we move the nursing element of these Trailblazer schemes forward.