Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

There is confusion because sometimes employers will call something an apprenticeship that we do not recognise as an apprenticeship and for which we provide no financial support. They are free to do that: we do not own the trademark of an apprenticeship. We make a choice, however, about which apprenticeships we support, and we have a clear policy that we enforce—they have to last longer than 12 months, they must pay the minimum wage for apprenticeships, and they have to involve training. If the training is not external—some big employers will have internal training arrangements—they have to be Ofsted inspected, like every other training provider.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

T5. What plans do the Government have to strengthen the prompt payment code to stop larger organisations taking advantage of their suppliers?

[The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We are strengthening the prompt payment code. We want more companies to sign up to the code and I am writing to all the FTSE 350 companies to encourage them to do so. If a company changes its payment practices for the worse and to the detriment of small businesses, I want to see a situation in which they will be kicked off the prompt payment code so that they cannot wear that badge of pride.