Apprenticeships

Debate between Chuka Umunna and Stephen Lloyd

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) says that he has. I have not been able to because I am right up to my limit on my staff allowance, but I would very much like to. One challenge in representing an inner-London seat is the amount of casework that is involved, but I would love to take on an apprentice if we could all convince the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to provide us with more money to do so.

I have talked about what our record was and what this Government are doing, but what do we plan to do in the future? At the Labour party conference in 2014, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition outlined our ambitious six national goals for Britain in 2025, which included ensuring that as many school leavers go on to apprenticeships as go to university. That will require a dramatic increase in numbers. To achieve that, we will work in partnership with employers to ensure that apprenticeships are appropriate to their needs, which in turn will boost employer demand for them.

We will give employers, through sector and industry bodies, a greater role, ensuring that courses reflect their skills needs and that rigorous standards are set. The aim is for a skills system that is better aligned to the needs of employers and that delivers a pipeline of talented employees. We will also look to boost take-up by employers locally, which is best done by colleagues in local government working with their businesses locally and by those coming together to form combined authorities. We need to see more of such practice. Just look at the incredible progress that has been made by the Labour-run authority in Leeds under the leadership of Sir Keith Wakefield. The city’s new apprenticeship hub has doubled the number of apprentices in the city, especially among small and medium-sized businesses. Labour colleagues in Plymouth, Bury and Reading are actively engaging with local employers to boost apprenticeship opportunities, too, and we want to see lots more of that.

Alongside such practice, we would use the money that the Government already spend on procurement to require major suppliers on Government contracts to offer new apprenticeships. In that way, we can create thousands of new apprenticeship opportunities. That builds on the successful approach of the previous Labour Government. It is an approach that has been backed by the cross-party Business Innovation and Skills Committee, which has suggested that a minimum of one new apprenticeship place could be created for each £l million spent on public procurement. So a major project such as HS2 could, under Labour’s plans, lead to the creation of as many as 33,000 new apprenticeships.

As I said earlier, quality matters. Under Labour’s plans, all apprenticeships would last a minimum of two years and be level 3 qualifications to safeguard the trusted and historic apprenticeship brand, which has been tarnished in recent years. Those new rigorous standards would ensure that apprenticeships are, once again, a trusted gold standard and address the way they have been downgraded under this Government.

We were attacked for setting high standards by the Deputy Prime Minister in a frankly embarrassing and cack-handed response by him at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions last March. He lambasted us for apparently wanting to halve the numbers of apprenticeships by requiring that all apprenticeships be set at level 3 and last for at least two years. The truth is that we want to rename intermediate apprenticeships to protect the “apprenticeship” brand. Apprenticeships that do not currently meet the criteria will continue but under a different name.

The Deputy Prime Minister also got very excited about the use of the word “deadweight” in the independent report into apprenticeships that was produced for us. Chaired by the Institute of Education’s Professor Chris Husbands, the report recommended that we adopt those criteria. What the Deputy Prime Minister failed to notice when he got himself so excited about the use of the word “deadweight” is that the Business Secretary had published a report in 2012 with the title “Assessing the Deadweight Loss Associated with Public Investment in Further Education and Skills.” Clearly, the sooner the Business Secretary successfully carries out his coup of his party, the better.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a key reason for retaining level 1 as an entry for apprenticeships, is that apprenticeships offer an opportunity for lots of young people who do not have the education or the academic skills? If we do not let them in through a level 1, they will not have the opportunity to go up the apprenticeship ladder. That is a profoundly important point.

[Mr Umunna]

I am talking about not doing away with the qualifications of levels 1 and 2, but calling those levels something different and maintaining the badge of quality for apprenticeships by having them at level 3 and above. That will bring us in line with many other European countries.