Apprenticeships

Damian Collins Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland]

That is an interesting point. As is clear from my accent, I do not have much knowledge of the Clyde, but I believe that more than 1 million manufacturing jobs were lost under the last Government.

The quality of apprenticeships depends on the quality of the colleges that provide the training. North Hertfordshire college has an inspirational leader, Fintan Donohue, who has been working very hard. I am grateful to the Department for Education for providing it with a studio school last week, one of 12 in the United Kingdom, which will focus on science and technology. That brings me back to MBDA and Astrium, whose apprentices specialise in those subjects. The headquarters of the Institution of Engineering Technology are in Stevenage, and it is very involved in the provision of engineering qualifications. We need more young apprentices gaining skills that will make firms want to employ them in real jobs.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that there is a role for local government? Shepway district council in my constituency runs a brokerage service enabling businesses with an interest in apprentices to contact the appropriate training providers.

[Stephen McPartland]

I think that there is a role for everyone to take on as many apprentices as possible. Some young people are interested in academic careers, while others prefer to pursue a more hands-on route. My view is simple. I believe that all that young people really want is a job. They want a route map: they want to be told “If you take this path, you will find a job at the end of it.” The Minister has done a huge amount of work in that regard, both in opposition and in his present post. He has kindly given me one “yes” already, but I wonder whether he would be consider fully funding, for two years, the cost of apprenticeship training for people between 19 and 24. At present only 50% of the cost is funded, and full funding could greatly help NEETs—people who are not in education, employment or training.

Let me end with a quotation from the deputy principal of North Hertfordshire college, Signe Sutherland.

“The changes to the single adult budget have been excellent and we have managed to grow apprenticeships by 300% I the last 12 months. This equates to… an increase of apprenticeships in numbers 500 to 2,000 so with perseverance there are jobs are there”.

That is important news. The college is based in Stevenage, but it does a huge amount of work throughout Hertfordshire. I think it is integral to the apprenticeship offer that we focus on the simple fact that what is important is giving young people the skills that they need to obtain jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to come to Sheffield to see the real consequences of Mrs Thatcher’s policy on steel and engineering in our city. Some 30 years on, we in Sheffield still live with the legacy of those policies: a lost generation who never made it into regular work and the social consequences of intergenerational unemployment. In the steel and engineering industries, apprenticeships were the route to highly skilled and well-regarded jobs that provided both a learning experience gained from respected role models in the workplace and experience of the discipline of working and of working as part of a team.

To revert to the spirit of bipartisanship, I am pleased that the Minister recognised the role the last Government played in restoring apprenticeships. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) pointed out, apprenticeship starts more than quadrupled between 1996-97 and 2009-10. I am deeply worried, however, that with youth unemployment now at more than 1 million, as in the 1980s, we again face the risk of there being a lost generation.

The Minister is an honourable man who is deeply committed to skills and apprenticeships, and he must therefore share our frustration that behind the Government’s rhetoric is a sorry picture in respect of apprenticeships. There is concern about the age profile of apprenticeships nationally, and that is certainly felt in my constituency. In 2010-11, just 150 people under the age of 19 started an apprenticeship, as against 200 people aged between 19 and 24 and 250 people aged 25 and over. Compared with the previous year, there has been a 27% decline in the number of apprenticeship starts for those under 19, as against an increase of 17% for those aged between 19 and 24 and a 313% increase for those over 25. In June, even the head of the Government’s apprenticeship service, Simon Waugh, had to admit that

“there is still a chronic lack of apprenticeship places for interested school and college leavers”.

Many people were shocked to discover that the growth in new apprenticeships under this Government has come in the 25-plus category. Astonishingly, the number of apprenticeships taken up by those aged over 60 increased tenfold between 2009-10 and 2010-11. What is the reason for that trend? There is concern that since the abolition of many of the training courses delivered under Train to Gain, there has been a rebranding of in-house training as apprenticeships. The Minister must address that issue.

I think the Minister will agree with me about the number of apprenticeships in small businesses. Only 8% of small businesses had taken on an apprentice in the past year according to a Federation of Small Businesses skills report in June. In October, the British Chambers of Commerce found that 53.7% of its members who were surveyed thought an apprenticeship was not relevant to their business or sector. The FSB backs that up in its report, saying that 46% of businesses did not think an apprentice was suitable for their business. That proportion increases to 60% for sole proprietors and 47% for micro-businesses. That perception must be challenged, because apprenticeships can play a valuable role in all sectors both in the workplace and in terms of gaining valuable skills.

I have been working on that issue with the British Chambers of Commerce, and that work has been reflected in early-day motion 2469, which has support on both sides of the House. It states that

“greater priority needs to be given to increasing the number of apprentices across the UK to provide essential career opportunities for young people”.

About 20% of small businesses cited each of the following three factors as major reasons for not taking on an apprentice: training time and general time constraints, costs, and the young people involved having no previous experience. The Government must consider how they might give better support to small businesses by disseminating information better to break down these perceptions and by providing the practical assistance that SMEs need.

[Damian Collins]

I do not wish to plug my district council in Shepway again, but it has developed a service to local businesses who may want to share an apprentice rather than take one on full time, and that service addresses how the council might help with some of the transport costs as well. Good local creative thinking may help to solve some of the problems the hon. Gentleman is setting out.

[Paul Blomfield]

I welcome such initiatives, while also recognising that many local authorities—such as mine in Sheffield, which is facing a 30% cut in funding over a four-year period—will have difficulty finding the money to launch such new initiatives. Assistance of that sort does need to be provided, however, and the Government might try to identify funds to support local authorities in taking initiatives such as that in Shepway.

We can also do more in our constituencies to work with small businesses, and I applaud the efforts of the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and other Members on both sides of the House in setting up the Parliamentary Academy. As employers, we are not dissimilar to SMEs. Our offices operate as micro-businesses, and we are busy, money is tight and we might never have taken on an apprentice before. I was pleased to take on an apprentice even before the Minister invited us to do so. A young woman called Rebecca is working in my office as an apprentice secretary, in partnership with Sheffield college. At the end of the year she will gain a level 2 BTEC in business and administration, by spending one day a week in the college and four days a week in my office, with regular visits from the work-based learning assessor. She will come out of the scheme with skills and experience enabling her to get a job, and she will have assisted the work of my office over this year. There is a lesson in that for all small businesses. I encourage other MPs to take a lead on this issue by employing apprentices.

I hope the Minister will also recognise that there is much more that we can do collectively and that his Government can do to advance the cause of apprenticeships. I hope he will respond in his closing remarks to the comments of the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), about the powerful role the Government can play in public procurement. It is unfortunate that this Government have backed away from some of the initiatives Labour took when we were in power, and I hope the Minister will recognise the opportunities that exist to use the role of government locally and nationally as consumer in order to bind companies to take on more apprentices.