Apprenticeships

Baroness Wilcox Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox)]

My Lords, it is wonderful to hear the former Minister speaking with so much enthusiasm that it is difficult to get him to sit down. I know that he enjoyed his job very much and I hope that he will be heartened by at least some of my words. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, for bringing to the attention of the House such an important issue—one on which she is obviously well versed. Her knowledge of engineering apprenticeships was an education for me. With consultations shortly to close on the new government strategy for skills, and with the return to the airwaves of the much loved programme of the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, this has been a timely debate. Therefore I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, and all noble Lords who have spoken. I am much encouraged and informed by what has been said. I was particularly moved when the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, talked about the construction industry. Her words will stay with me when I go back to my ministry and I welcome her to the House. I will try to address many of the points that have been raised. If I miss any of them because my time runs out, I will of course reply to noble Lords by letter.

Apprenticeships are at once the most ancient and modern form of vocational training. As has been said, in this country their formal existence dates from the Middle Ages, but in places such as China they have been around for a thousand years. Confucius explained why apprenticeships work by saying: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand”. The noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Bhattacharyya, had experience of apprenticeships of very different kinds. Apprenticeships have touched for the better the lives of many noble Lords who have spoken today. They touched my own, because my father started his life’s journey as an indentured apprentice to a master craftsman, to whom he referred with affection and respect throughout the whole of his subsequent career. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, would approve of this. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, also recalled this relationship at its best.

Today, thousands of young people are benefiting from the excellent start to working life that an apprenticeship can offer—but they are open not only to the young. Noble Lords may have seen recent reports in the media about current apprentices in their 60s and 70s. There is hope for all of us if we get thrown out of here. One of the many virtues of your Lordships’ House is its sense of fair play. It is in that spirit that I am bound to acknowledge that there is agreement on all sides of the House that apprenticeship training must be central to any Government’s approach to skills. I go further and acknowledge that one of the undoubted achievements of the previous Administration was to bring about a significant expansion of the number of apprentices in training. My noble friend Lord Wakeham can be assured that we aim to build on those initiatives, and although I may not be a bright young thing whom the Government are likely to move on ever so fast, I hope that I will stay in this ministry long enough to make sure that everything stays in place for a while.

I am convinced that, even in these straitened times, the task now must be not only to continue to increase the number and range of apprenticeships on offer but also to improve their quality. If we manage to do that, the historic promise that apprenticeships hold—of providing the right skills and knowledge to get on in life—will be delivered not just to some but to all apprentices. Happily, my conviction is shared across the coalition Government. In spite of the strain on the public purse, we all recognise the central place that apprenticeships must occupy in any successful work-based training system.

I was rather disappointed that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was not able to recognise the clear commitment that this Government have made to apprenticeships. I hope she will see that I do a bit better as time goes on. I also hope that the whole House will have welcomed the commitment made in the coalition’s programme for government to,

“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”.

In the light of the Audit Commission’s critical report on the Train to Gain programme, we redeployed £50 million of funding from Train to Gain to create up to 50,000 new apprenticeship places, which have been referred to today, in the current year. This is the way to deliver high-quality skills which are genuinely employer-led. In answer to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, the Skills Funding Agency and National Apprenticeship Service have been working alongside the further education and skills sectors to make those apprenticeship places available where there is local demand. They have reassured my colleague in the other place, John Hayes, that this process is going well and that we are on track to deliver our commitment.

Among many examples of steps that the Government are taking to increase the supply of apprenticeships in areas that most need them, I shall choose just one. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, has a special interest in the Government’s skills agenda. She may therefore have noticed that my colleague, the Minister with responsibility for higher education and science, announced that the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Birmingham Metropolitan College are creating 3,000 new apprenticeship places which are to focus on areas such as green technologies, business skills and high-tech engineering. I hope the noble Baroness will agree that this is exactly the sort of local partnership that we want to see more of.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, rightly said, in all our plans the apprentice can play a vital role in shaping the design and delivery of apprenticeships. I reassure the noble Lord that we see all apprentices as our most important asset in demonstrating the business benefits of the programme to employers.

As for the future, my colleague in the other place, the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, John Hayes, has already publicly made clear our priorities on a number of occasions.

Above all—here I am responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and the noble Lords, Lord Layard and Lord Cotter—the Government want apprenticeships to become the gold standard for workplace training. They must become, even more than they already are, a form of training which employers are proud to offer because of the business benefits that apprentices bring, and to which prospective apprentices aspire just as much as people aspire to a university degree. As my colleague in another place, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pointed out in his Statement on higher education funding back in July, there should not be a rigid dividing line between higher and further education. Why not take an apprenticeship rather than a traditional degree course?

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, raised the important issue of careers advice in schools. Schools already have a clear obligation to ensure that pupils receive information about apprenticeships. The Education and Skills Act 2008 requires schools, in discharging their statutory duty, to provide careers education, as well as impartial information and up-to-date materials that present a full range of 16 to 18 education or training options. I reassure the noble Baroness that the commencement of Section 250 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 has been delayed pending the completion of that review. I should make it clear that that applies equally to the public and private sectors. Public sector employers have shown increasing commitment to apprenticeships and that should continue both for new staff, where those opportunities are available, and for existing staff. In government, it is important to practice what we preach and I am pleased to be able to tell your Lordships that there is an exemption to the current Civil Service recruitment freeze which allows departments to continue to recruit apprentices. I expect them to continue to offer apprentice places to existing staff also.

The question of the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, on promoting apprenticeships through government procurement is a very important point. The Government, and the public sector more widely, wield significant influence through the contracts which they negotiate and, like the noble Lord, this Government are interested in looking at what more can be done to use that influence to encourage employers with public sector contracts to consider the skills needs of their workforce.

To encourage more people in the public and private sectors to take up apprenticeships, the Minister for higher education and science announced only last week that people completing their apprenticeships in certain sectors will be given the title of technician. The National Apprenticeship Service will be working with the Technician Council and with the apprentices, providers and employers whom this announcement affects so that apprentices can soon proudly sport that badge of honour. I am drawn to the idea outlined by my noble friend Lord Taylor of a national apprenticeship day, commemoration stamps or anything else which will raise the expectation, the enthusiasm and the status of apprentices. Here I may be talking with prejudice, as I was brought up by my father who believed that universities were for people who thought and technical colleges were for people who did. I went to a technical college, so maybe I am prejudiced.

I fully realise that our ambitions for apprenticeships require urgent action in four main areas. First, there is a continuing need to expand the number of apprenticeship places on offer, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said. That is especially true of level 3 and above, where demand from employers for skills is growing and where the lifetime earnings premium of the apprenticeship is comparable with a degree.

Secondly, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, rightly said, we must create a much clearer ladder of progression within the apprenticeship programme. To that end, my department has already written to all sector skills councils asking them to develop level 4 and 5 apprenticeships’ frameworks to match those which already exist in sectors such as engineering. We recognise that there is much more to do on that front.

Thirdly, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and to my noble friend Lord Wakeham that we must make it easier for employers to offer apprenticeships by improving the information available to them and cutting unnecessary red tape. That is particularly true for small and medium-sized businesses which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, emphasised, form the bedrock of the apprenticeship schemes in this country.

Our final, and probably most difficult task, must be to reach a consensus on the right funding model for apprenticeships in our current circumstances and to establish a fair division of costs between the Government, employers and learners.

An advanced economy needs people with advanced skills in order to grow and we need to use all our talents. Here I pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Taylor. He pointed to the gender imbalance. I can reassure him that nearly 50 per cent of apprentices are women. However, he is right to note that that is not the case in all sectors. We have a huge task to break down entrenched gender stereotypes. We published a draft skills strategy in June and have been consulting with employers, learners and skills sectors over the summer. We will publish a full skills strategy to accompany my department’s growth strategy after the spending review, which will set out in more detail how we intend to support our learning, skills and priorities.

I hope that this will reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, that the coalition Government are committed to driving up the skill levels of the workforce. Apprenticeships already make a tremendous contribution to society, but this Government intend to go further: they intend to ensure that they are improved and expanded so that more individuals and businesses can benefit from the opportunities that they offer. I end with the words of that great exponent of crafts and apprenticeships, John Ruskin:

“The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it”.

Again, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wall, for bringing this debate to your Lordships’ House.